this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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Even free tier LLM's have been great as a coding assistant for me. I can see LLM's already being useful in a lot of roles, but without really tightly controlled ai agents (intermediary programs that require quite a bit of human involvement) I don't see how they can actually replace many entry level roles effectively. There is a lot of hype around these language models that seem to have created a bit of a bubble that will likely pop.
Having said that, like the dotcom bubble popping didn't stop the internet developing, ai is likely to continue past this hype/bubble period.
If a business thinks it will get a competitive advantage by using ai that business will use it, which drives competitors to have to do the same even if they don't particularly want to. You can scale this up to national competition between the US and China. In this way it is a race to the bottom.
If you're really concerned about work and stability, a job that involve staring at a computer all day where the product of the work is something that exists in the computer might be a job that is susceptible to being made redundant by ai agents eventually. Think about stuff that happens in the real world - skilled trades etc are the safest bet wrt ai. Read around and figure out what is best for you.
Programming isn't about syntax or language.
LLMs can't do problem solving.
Once a problem has been solved, the syntax and language is easy.
But reasoning about the problem is the hard part.
Like the classic case of "how many 'r's in 'strawberry'", LLMs would state 2 occurrences.
Just check googles AI Mode.
The strawberry problem was found and reported on, and has been specifically solved.
Promoted
how many 'r's in the word 'strawberry':Prompted
how many 'c's in the word 'occurrence':So, the specific case has been solved. But not the problem.
In fact, I could slightly alter my prompt and get either 2 or 3 as the answer.
None of this contradicts anything in my post.
Edit - but I will add that the ai agent is written to manage the limitations of the LLM. To do the kind of 'thinking' (they don't really think) the LLM can't do, in a very loose sense (to try and briefly address the point in your post).
That's actually well said. I use it a lot and really love it, but I found this is a forbidden opinion on fediverse 😆 Usually I get at least insulted immediately if not banned for saying that. I was in a company that tried to develop some ai apps, but kind of failed, but I learned a lot about how to use ai, what can be done and what is not sensible to do with ai.
I was thinking a lot when this whole thing began to find a job away from tech, but slowly realized this ai is not replacing humans any time soon so I remained in tech, but for good or bad, not in AI .
That's basically the "AI is replacing jobs. AI can't replace jobs".
C-suite don't get it. It's a hugely accessible framework that anyone can use. But only trained people can use the results. But c-suite trust the results because software has been so predictable (so trustworthy) in the past.
C-suite replace employees with AI. AI can't actually do the job that it pretends it can do. Everyone suffers, and the people selling the shovels profit the most from the gold rush.
It lies on its resume and in it's interviews, but in ways that are hard to detect.
I bet there was a similar sentiment when automation replaced blue collar jobs.
And yet, all those automations still require tool and die manufacturing and maintenance. Buy a tool & die from wherever which is purpose built to your process, and a year down the line you require the supplier to maintain the actual die - the actuators and machine can be maintained by anyone, but the "business logic" is what produces a good high quality part. Process changes? Updated design? Changing supplier to a slightly different material? Back to the supplier to new die.
But so many jobs were made "redundant" by cheap tooling and automation, and now it's (nearly) impossible to actually manufacture something at scale in America.
Except LLMs action the next most likely step to the most likely dimensions based on the prompt and based on the popularity of similar/previous processes.
Fine for art and subjective medium, not for manufacturing and not for engineering.
I guess you could write automated tests which define the behaviour you want.
Probably better to write the behaviour you want and get AI to generate automated tests....
I see my post has been downvoted a little bit; I don't think there is much wrong in it. I get that people don't want large parts of their job to be made redundant by tech bros, and assume that are probably just downvoting the entire concept. I haven't disclosed my opinion on the morality of a lot of what LLM builders have done, I just stated what I thought the reality of the situation was.
I will say that I think up and downvotes should be dropped, they instigate all sorts of unhealthy behaviour because the little dopamine hits they generate are addictive.
The reality is that 'bespoke' ai agents are being written and deployed on a small scale now and they are useful. And should large LLM's fail to achieve the results they have hyped (as I expect), ai agents are a rapidly developing technology waiting to go mainstream which, when successful, can harness the functionality of LLM's while eliminating a lot of the errors they make.
If you are career-minded and think your role could be affected I recommend looking into it and having a think. Or don't. Woteva - I can't predict the future but I do know the where the technology is at and am just doing people who are concerned about it a favour by giving them a bit of a heads up about ai agents. Should their 'potential' by fulfilled they will be hugely impactful but there is still time to prepare. Forewarned is forearmed.