If age attestation in the OS becomes law, there's much less friction afterwards to pass another law to have age verification as well. It should not be humored under the mistaken belief that "it's just age attestation in the OS - nothing invasive about that".
Sure it is. AI software development is here. It's not good enough for everything, but it's good enough for a majority of the changes made by most software engineers.
That's now. Right now, the tooling exists so that for >80% of software devs, 80% of the code they produce could be created by AI rather than by hand.
You can always find some person saying that it'll destroy all jobs in a year, or make us all rich in a year, or whatever, but your cynicism blinds you to the actual advances being made. There is an endless supply of new goalpost positions, they will never all be met, and an endless supply of chartalans claiming unrealistic futures. Don't confuse that with "and therefore results do not exist".
No, it isn't. There is a gigantic chasm of difference between "80% of code they produce could be created by AI" and "80% of commits they produce could be created by AI".
Mixing the two up is how we get a massive company like Microsoft to continually produce such atrocious software updates that destroy hardware or cause BSODs for their flagship Operating System.
That's not replacing software development. That's dysfunction masquerading as capability.
And none of what I said is goalpost moving. They are the goalposts constantly made by the AI industry and their hype-men. The very premise of replacing a significant amount of human labor underlies the exorbitant valuation AI has been given in the market.
It appears that your understanding of AI code generation reflects the state of 1-2 years ago. In which case of course it seems like what people are describing as reality, feels 1-2 years away.
> There is a gigantic chasm of difference between "80% of code they produce could be created by AI" and "80% of commits they produce could be created by AI".
This is exactly the goalpost moving I am talking about. I said 80% of code could be AI-written, you agreed, and followed up with "oh but it doesn't matter because now we're measuring by % of commits".
> That's now. Right now, the tooling exists so that for >80% of software devs, 80% of the code they produce could be created by AI rather than by hand.
Technically 100% of the code they could produce could be created by a ton of very specific AI prompts. At that level of control it would be slower than typing the code out though.
Just throwing out random numbers like this is complete nonsense since there's about a million factors which determine the effectiveness of an LLM at generating code for a specific use case. And it also depends on what you consider producing by hand versus LLM output. Etc.
Today I fed to Opus 4.6 five screenshots with annotations from the client and told it to implement the changes. Then told it to generate real specs, which it did. I never even looked at the screenshots, I just checked and tested against the generated specs. Client was happy.
No amount of time will let the U.S. - a country of 348 million people - replicate what China - a country with 1.4 billion people - a can do with manufacturing.
This isn't "working harder".
This isn't "rebuilding infrastructure".
This isn't "training people in trades".
The numbers are so cartoonishly lopsided as to be a non-starter for categorically replacing Chinese manufacturing.
600 million people live in North America. 1 billion people live in the Americas. Another billion live on the Pacific rim in non-Chinese countries.
Establishing regulatory harmony across all those countries is obviously not possible in the same way it is in a single authoritarian state, but if the US made it a priority to create a trade bloc capable of replicating China’s manufacturing capacity, it probably could.
Establishing regulatory harmony is not only not possible but the current regime is working in exactly the opposite direction.
If the US wants to take on China, and actually needs Canada's help to do it -- I can assure you they just set themselves back 10-20 years from achieving that. We no longer have any interest.
The labour forces of Mexico and Canada are not at the US's disposal for these kind of games anymore. For several decades we have been exploited by the US for low wages and cheap resources -- and now there's a regime that's making cheap political points by accusing us of the opposite while trying to emmiserate our populace. So, yeah, no thanks.
There was an APAC trade treaty called the TPP that Rodham-Clinton/Obama pulled out of which would have done exactly that. They were forced to withdraw because of pressure from unions, ie labor not capital.
Now it's the CPTPP and doesn't include the US.
Canada is looking to the Pacific and EU for trade now (and China as well), so is Mexico.
It's likely that the EU/UK trade bloc will connect with the CPTPP via both the UK and Canada, which connects them to the APAC/ASEAN nations.
Everyone is aware of the power of the Chinese economy and the idea of the CPTPP is precisely to build up a trade economy that can compete and co-operate with China on an equal basis.
In the meantime, China is using its Belt & Road Initiative as a sort of "Marshall Plan" to extend its influence by building infrastructure like ports and rail.
These trade initiatives are at least focused on increasing trade, as opposed to the US "trade policy" which is to use tariffs as a crude form of protectionism and extortion to "bring manufacturing back".
we don't have to entirely replace Chinese manufacturing to build back American manufacturing that's a false dichotomy.To compete we'll just have to be more revolutionary than the manufacturing industry already is.
China did in the 1990s exactly what the US did in the 1890s, steal IP to build up its own industries. The US did it to the UK and Europe back then, China has done it against the US/EU over the last 3 decades.
It's at the point now where it is self-sustaining, which is why you see China starting to enforce IP Rights, precisely because it is now generating its own IP that it wants to protect.
Any economist would say that if China did just "copy" US technology to make itself more productive, that's good economic practice, from China's perspective.
Moats only worked for a while to protect European castles, they don't exist now.
Ford is openly discussing the idea to have joint ventures with Chinese EV makers, the whole idea is to get Chinese EV techs in exchange for US market access.
People idealize US regaining manufacturing glory is like climbing from 1/5 back to 5/5 US industrial peak. Meanwhile is PRC grew he denominator and working at 20/20 scale. Ultimately 20 > 5 > 1, but better 5 than 1.
I mean...we're destroying advanced manufacturing where we make expensive things in exchange for cheap manufacturing of basics like textiles where tariffs of 1000% would be needed to make U.S.-made goods competitive. Exchanging high-paying jobs for poverty wage jobs.
so they can act accordingly is the variable, a simple headcount is one thing, but when it creeps like a census, then it is prone to polyusary.
putting the consiracy hat on, the exploit is to direct as many installed AGs to push for such bills, with no big letdown if they dont pass, why/because, the demographics on dissention are valuable and are, passed to a hostile federal government.
Being active about KOSA won't get you put on a "list of dissenters". This is an issue being pushed by the States and your federal lawmakers, not the executive branch.
reply