The Loss of Control Observatory analysed over 183,000 AI interaction transcripts and found a 5x increase in scheming-related incidents over five months.
You know programmers who use llms believe they’re much more productive because they keep getting that dopamine hit, but when you actually measure it, they’re slower by about 20%.
Everyone keeps citing this preliminary study and ignores:
Its old now
Its sample size was incredibly tiny
Its sample group were developers not using proper tooling or trained on how to use the tools
Its the equivalent of taking 12 seasoned carpenters with very little experience on industrial painting, handing them industrial grade paint guns that are misconfigured and uncalibrated, and then asking them to paint some of their work and watching them struggle… and then going “wow look at that industrial grade paint guns are so bad”
Anyone with any sense should look at that and go “thats a bogus study”
But people with intense anti-ai bias cling to that shoddy ass study with such religious fervor. Its cringe.
Every professional developer with actual training and actual proper tooling can confirm that they are indeed tremendously more productive.
The difference, when the tool is used correctly, is so massive that only someone deeply uninformed or naive would contend it.
I got about 4 entire days worth of work completed in about 5 hours yesterday at my job, thats just objective fact.
Tasks that used to take weeks now take days, and tasks that used to take days now take hours. Theres no “feeling” about this, Ive been a software developer for approaching 17 years now professionally. I know how long it takes to produce an entire gambit of integration tests for a given feature. I spend almost all of my time now reviewing mountains of code (which is fairly good quality, the machines produce fairly accurate results), and then a small amount of time refining it.
People deeply do not at all understand how dramatically the results have changed over the past 2 years, and their biases are based on how things were 2 years ago.
Sure, 2 years ago the quality was way worse, the security was bad, the enforcement almost non existent, and peoples overall skill with how to use the tools was just beginning to grow. You cant exactly be good at using a tool that only just came out.
But its been two years of very rapid improvement. Its good now. Anyone who has been using these tools and actually monitoring progression can speak to this.
Things heavily shifted about 5 months ago when competition started to really fire up between different providers, and I wont say its even close to great yet, but its definitely good, it works, its fast, and it’s pretty damn good at what I need it to do.
Everyone keeps citing this preliminary study and ignores:
Its the equivalent of taking 12 seasoned carpenters with very little experience on industrial painting, handing them industrial grade paint guns that are misconfigured and uncalibrated, and then asking them to paint some of their work and watching them struggle… and then going “wow look at that industrial grade paint guns are so bad”
Anyone with any sense should look at that and go “thats a bogus study”
But people with intense anti-ai bias cling to that shoddy ass study with such religious fervor. Its cringe.
Every professional developer with actual training and actual proper tooling can confirm that they are indeed tremendously more productive.
ftfy
The difference, when the tool is used correctly, is so massive that only someone deeply uninformed or naive would contend it.
I got about 4 entire days worth of work completed in about 5 hours yesterday at my job, thats just objective fact.
Tasks that used to take weeks now take days, and tasks that used to take days now take hours. Theres no “feeling” about this, Ive been a software developer for approaching 17 years now professionally. I know how long it takes to produce an entire gambit of integration tests for a given feature. I spend almost all of my time now reviewing mountains of code (which is fairly good quality, the machines produce fairly accurate results), and then a small amount of time refining it.
People deeply do not at all understand how dramatically the results have changed over the past 2 years, and their biases are based on how things were 2 years ago.
Sure, 2 years ago the quality was way worse, the security was bad, the enforcement almost non existent, and peoples overall skill with how to use the tools was just beginning to grow. You cant exactly be good at using a tool that only just came out.
But its been two years of very rapid improvement. Its good now. Anyone who has been using these tools and actually monitoring progression can speak to this.
Things heavily shifted about 5 months ago when competition started to really fire up between different providers, and I wont say its even close to great yet, but its definitely good, it works, its fast, and it’s pretty damn good at what I need it to do.