Will AI take programming jobs or turn programmers into AI managers?

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Prior to the last ten years or so when I’ve been mostly a full-time advisor, pundit, and columnist, I was a manager. I was a product marketing executive earlier in my career, and a publisher later in my career. I had people directly reporting to me for years.

I managed editors, salespeople, programmers, manufacturing teams, and other executives.

You want to know one of the best things about my encore career? No direct reports. I don’t have to manage anyone.

Also: 7 advanced ChatGPT prompt-writing tips you need to know

People who haven’t been managers think bosses get to spend their time dumping work on underlings and just bossing people around. Managers know that the reality is they spend oh so much time simply trying to get the people who work for them to execute their job duties as instructed.

Some of that falls on the manager, who may or may not give clear instructions. But an equal amount of that challenge falls on the direct reports who misinterpret instructions, passive-aggressively follow directions to the letter (this was my karma payback, because I did this to my bosses), or simply need to be negotiated with to do what needs doing.

Also: How to use ChatGPT to write code

It’s part of why I like programming so much. With programming, the computer will also do exactly what you tell it to do. Exactly. Of course, the precision with which a program follows instructions often leads to bugs, especially on the first try. But that’s okay, because whatever it does wrong is somewhere there, right in the code.

It may be a challenge to come up with the right algorithm or to translate the algorithm and data structures in your head into working code, but code is code. It’s consistent and reasonably predictable.

Then there’s AI. Giving instructions to an AI like ChatGPT is much more like managing a programmer than it is like programming. Everything is subject to interpretation and negotiation. Yes, you can get results, and sometimes you can get results you couldn’t have gotten without a lot of coding, but there’s still some degree of haggling, negotiating, reframing requests, and try after try to get it right.

Also: Okay, so ChatGPT just debugged my code. For real.

You can give an AI a prompt twice and it will return two different results. Unless your code has some sort of randomization function or serious bug, you can run your code twice and it will return the same exact results.

Will AI take programming jobs?

I’ve been giving this question a lot of thought, especially in light of some prompt writing I did this weekend while working on an article on advanced prompt writing. In that article, I tried to get ChatGPT to solve a very simple problem, and it would up taking me hours and more than 20 prompt attempts to get it to work reliably. The prompt was:

Word similar to devolve that begins

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Netflix and Microsoft show online video gaming has turn out to be also major to overlook

Youthful joyful Asian pair taking part in online video games in residing area. Cheerful people today having enjoyment with laptop or computer gaming principle.

Blue Planet Studio

The company of video clip games is possessing a moment.

A lot less than two weeks immediately after Get-Two announced its $12.7 billion for Zynga, and just times following Microsoft declared its report-breaking $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Netflix co-founder and co-main govt officer Reed Hastings said Thursday that building out video clip gaming to in which Netflix can “amaze our customers by getting the absolute greatest in the group” is his purpose.

“We have to be differentially excellent at it,” Hastings claimed through Netflix’s earnings meeting get in touch with. “When cellular gaming is earth primary, and we’re some of the finest producers, like wherever we are in film now, having two of the top 10, then you ought to ask what is future. Let us nail the detail and not just be in it for the sake of remaining in it.”

That’s a tall task for Netflix, which is making its gaming device from scratch. Netflix chief running officer Greg Peters reported Thursday the business designs to license “big activity” mental assets that “persons will identify” later this 12 months. Hastings additional Netflix will use its “stroll, crawl, operate” technique all around gaming, the place it purposefully grows the organization progressively to find out about person routines and use resources proficiently.

Netflix, of study course, has employed this general tactic in advance of — in streaming movie. The corporation accredited very well-recognised flicks and Tv set shows to develop out its user foundation as a cable Tv set health supplement in advance of gradually wading into primary content material. After decades of experimenting on a demonstrate-by-show or movie-by-film basis, Netflix felt its advice algorithm and user info could precisely predict new popular authentic articles. Currently, Netflix spends billions of dollars each year on originals.

The Microsoft acquisition and the Netflix commentary is a normal acknowledgment that gaming has turn out to be an important component of international entertainment, especially with young audiences. Netflix has typically pointed out that gaming, this sort of as Fortnite, competes with its main streaming provider for eyeballs.

This is not new, just. Microsoft has owned Xbox for many years. But it is really obviously under no circumstances spent approximately $70 billion to obtain something, enable by itself a video clip video game corporation.

Gaming has jumped to the forefront of numerous people’s focus as providers like Meta and Roblox establish approaches all-around a vaguely outlined immersive buyer computing approach referred to as the “metaverse,” which will just about definitely require gaming at some level.

But the acquisition rush likely implies a thing much less complicated: Gaming has turn into ubiquitous. Mobile units and on the net play, connecting men and women to perform real-time online games, has specified gaming a wider audience and significance in youth society. The Enjoyment Software Affiliation,

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