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Title: The Information: Microsoft Engineers Forced To Dig Their Own AI Graves

Link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/05/21/2021255/t...

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: In what reads a bit like a Sopranos
plot, The Information suggests some of those in the recent batch of
terminated Microsoft engineers may have in effect been forced to dig their
own AI graves. The (paywalled) story begins: "Jeff Hulse, a Microsoft vice
president who oversees roughly 400 software engineers, told the team in
recent months to use the company's artificial intelligence chatbot, powered
by OpenAI, to generate half the computer code they write, according to a
person who heard the remarks. That would represent an increase from the 20%
to 30% of code AI currently produces at the company, and shows how rapidly
Microsoft is moving to incorporate such technology. Then on Tuesday,
Microsoft laid off more than a dozen engineers on Hulse 's team as part of a
broader layoff of 6,000 people across the company that appeared to hit
engineers harder than other types of roles, this person said." The report
comes as tech company CEOs have taken to boasting in earnings calls, tech
conferences, and public statements that their AI is responsible for an ever-
increasing share of the code written at their organizations. Microsoft's
recent job cuts hit coders the hardest. So how much credence should one place
on CEOs' claims of AI programming productivity gains -- which researchers
have struggled to measure for 50+ years -- if engineers are forced to
increase their use of AI, boosting the numbers their far-removed-from-
programming CEOs are presenting to Wall Street?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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