The example they were using, however, was Devin, which is supposed to be autonomous. I think they're presenting a slightly different use case than the rest of us are.
How is it (conceptually) different than outsourcing stuff across the globe? You may not believe in it, but it's been happening for many decades. I agree that results are hit and miss, but it's still happening. Autonomous AI coding agents will happen as well. It's on the users how they process the outputs, same as before.
It's different because when you outsource work to a human being, including in another country, that human being can be expected to take responsibility for their work.
If they do bad work their reputation is harmed and they may lose opportunities in the future. They have stakes. They can take responsibility for what they produce.
I believe in AI-assisted development with a skilled human directing the work. That's a huge productivity boost for the humans who learn how to use the tools.
(Twenty years ago people studying computer science in the UK and USA were often told that it was a dead-end career because all of that work was going to be outsourced. That advice aged like stale milk.)
If you were writing code for a business and actually paid someone else to do a module of the code or whatever, I don't think that would actually change the use case? if you're submitting it as your work through the normal flow it should go through a normal reviewer right
Devin (https://devin.ai/) is another model. (So no, it's not like you're submitting it as your work.)
You create a ticket. The AI takes the ticket. The AI may ask questions. The AI creates a pull request. You review it as if it was another coworker.
Most people have not gotten good results from Devin yet. Their business hypothesis seems to be that the models will get good quick and they will have built everything just as the models are good enough to support the model, and will be poised to be first mover.
That's interesting, but it still seems like if I started using that at a job today it would be basically "subcontracting" to Devin. I might write up tickets for it to do some code but eventually I have to get those put into the real code base, and why would management let me say I've just reviewed the code personally for that?
I suppose their pitch is too eventually go directly to the business and replace the full dev team with this and some technical architects reviewing it but that seems quite optimistic
