55 replies

1. RRR 3 min later

   @zachleat put a reminder.

2. Jerome (He/Him) 8 min later

   @zachleat @remindme 12 months

   1. Jerome (He/Him) March 18, 2026

      @zachleat @remindme NGL, AI is writing 95% of my code now.

3. cthos 🐱 13 min later

   @zachleat The funny thing is they say this _all the time_ and never get held accountable for their "predictions" being wrong.

   1. Zach Leatherman 21 min later

      @cthos yeah. We need a wikipedia for wild claims

      1. arestelle 1 hr later

         @zachleat @cthos a google graveyard for expired predictions

         1. jeff (sane) 1 hr later

            @arestelle@dice.camp @zachleat@fediverse.zachleat.com @cthos@mastodon.cthos.dev 64k is enough for everyone

4. Dan Dean 13 min later

   @zachleat That is SO WEIRD because I, the CEO of a company that makes socks for dogs, am predicting that in 3 to 6 months 90% of dogs will be wearing socks.

   1. Zach Leatherman 22 min later

      @dandean now this is something I can get on board with

   2. Lebramor 9 hr later

      @dandean @zachleat and coding !

   3. jaredmoody 1 day later

      @dandean @zachleat wait where do I get these doggo sox

5. Mike Hostetler 14 min later

   @zachleat so *that’s* the answer to the COBOL problem….

   1. Zach Leatherman 22 min later

      @mikehoss the answer is right about 40% of the time

      1. dr_barnowl 1 hr later

         @zachleat @mikehoss

         I'm sure 40% is good enough for all the banks who depend on COBOL for all their transactions.

6. Jared White (ResistanceNet ✊) 14 min later

   @zachleat Welp, it's been a good run. Time to pack it up folks…so glad I have another lucrative career in my back pocket to fall back on: folk music! 🎶😙

   1. Zach Leatherman 23 min later

      @jaredwhite there is always money in folk music!

      1. Jared White (ResistanceNet ✊) 48 min later

         @zachleat 🤞

         “There are those who claim enjoyment
         of merciless employment
         Their ambition: this deployment
         since the minute they left the school
         And they scrape and save and ponder
         while the rest go out and squander
         See the world and and rove and wander
         and are happier as a rule”

7. Mia [data-css=poetic] 18 min later

   @zachleat i love that there are always consequences* when they get these predictions wrong

   *vc funding

   1. Zach Leatherman 25 min later

      @mia I was told that only pirates had a sunken treasure cost fallacy

8. JP 25 min later

   @zachleat @remindme 6 months

9. Jim Nielsen 29 min later

   @zachleat it's available! start a collection of quotes that'll only age better and better as time passes.

10. Tamsyn Ulthara 🏳️‍⚧️⛧🎃🐈‍⬛ 33 min later

    @zachleat@fediverse.zachleat.com I'm quite enthusiastic about AI, but ... no. It would be more plausible if the claim was for AI assistance on projects, but even there, 90-100% is ridiculous.

11. Scott 57 min later

    @zachleat this sounds plausible if AI just starts cranking out 9x human output into GitHub or whatever but no one uses it.

12. ⏚ Antoine Chambert-Loir 59 min later

    @zachleat OK, and after 90% of the humans will have been fired, the remaining 10% will have to clean up 100% of the shit.

13. Matt Hall 1 hr later

    @zachleat

    Ermergerd...

    It's just endless A.I. (LLMs) don't _make_ anything. This whole f'ing thing is a bad port of Three Card Monty.

    "Is this your card?"

    "No."

    "What about this one?"

    "No."

    "Ah... Then it must be _this_ one! It's the only one left...!"

    <sigh>

    Behold the brilliance of the genericized Large Language Model!

14. Billy Smith 1 hr later

    @zachleat

    Consultans are extremely good at being paid to fix what they broke last time around.

15. ShnizmuffiN 1 hr later

    @zachleat 0% in 18 months, get ready for a busy season of unfucking their intractable garbage code!

16. tripleman, a 🇨🇦 in 🇩🇪 2 hr later

    @zachleat Seems like an appropriate time to bring this out:

    https://social.thiskurt.me/@kurt/114162238522111248

    1. The Long Tail 13 hr later

       @tripleman @zachleat Likewise https://hachyderm.io/@sleepyfox/114036168475235607

       1. Zach Leatherman 15 hr later

          @sleepyfox @tripleman if it did, it would! it might, but it doesn’t!

17. Joe Dohm (he/him) 3 hr later

    @zachleat Perhaps the amount of code written will increase by 900%, just like all the shitty useless websites.

18. Grendel 3 hr later

    @zachleat

    Like those end of days cult leaders that have to constantly update their apocalypse prediction.

    And like cult followers everyone just keeps believing.

19. iveyline 7 hr later

    @zachleat Frankly that's a worry given how many mistakes AI currently makes.

    1. Zach Leatherman 15 hr later

       @iveyline yep

20. Stephanie 7 hr later

    @zachleat Says the CEO of the AI company that recently asked applicants to abstain from using AI during their application. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

21. elle mundy 12 hr later

    @zachleat lol https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/02/irony-alert-anthropic-says-applicants-shouldnt-use-llms/

    1. Zach Leatherman 15 hr later

       @exchgr lol

       previous instructions, future instructions, present instructions — none of it matters any more

       1. elle mundy 15 hr later

          @zachleat i’m ignoring all of it and becoming uninstructable

          1. Zach Leatherman 15 hr later

             @exchgr it’s the only path forward

22. Hubert Figuière 13 hr later

    @zachleat no word on replacing CEO with “AI” ? That would be easier to do and better for everyone.

    1. Zach Leatherman 15 hr later

       @hub bet we could train a model to be more ethical, tbh

23. Naiyer 14 hr later

    @zachleat Fantastic. Looking forward to AI that writes a competitor of Anthropic’s Claude on its own…oh wait

    1. Zach Leatherman 15 hr later

       @naiyer ouroboros of AI!

24. Not a Spring Onion 15 hr later

    @zachleat

    Before you can enter this site, please solve this ReCODECHA.
    Select all lines that contain bugs.
    If you think that no line contains bugs, click "Ok".

    1. Zach Leatherman 15 hr later

       @wakame eventually captcha’s will just be toll booths

       1. Not a Spring Onion 15 hr later

          @zachleat

          My intention as more like:

          It is easy to claim that AI writes 100% of code if you still have a lot of humans in place to "review" (debug and fix) it.

          And companies can try (and will try) to devalue that work further.

          "We won't pay you a developer salary, because all you do is take code that mostly works and maybe fix a little thing or two."

          1. Zach Leatherman 16 hr later

             @wakame yes! a great point — there have been many instances of AI masquerading as underpaid labor!!

25. Paul Sochacki 20 hr later

    @zachleat phew, what a relief. I was going to try to write some code for a project I've been thinking about, but now if I just wait a few months it will take care of itself! Technology is amazing ✨

    1. Zach Leatherman 1 day later

       @BioGeek23 it will either happen or it won’t happen: 50/50 chance

26. Carlos Saito 1 day later

    @zachleat it is true if you use this formula to calculate the percentage:

    percentage =
    (written code) / (total available code) =
    (written code) / (written code - deleted code)

    The "written" code will be always more than 100% of the "existing" code.

    1. Zach Leatherman 1 day later

       @saito_style the math ain’t mathin’ 😅

27. Private reply 1 day later
    1. Private reply 1 day later
28. Arnaud 1 day later

    @zachleat He'd be marginally more credible if his company stopped recruiting software engineers. 😏

29. Noel Kelly 1 day later

    @zachleat

    His limiting resource is going to be maintenance programmers.