Who Would You Trust: The CEO Or The Janitor?

08 Dec 2024 #misc

More than 25% of new Google code is generated by AI.

That’s what Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, announced in the last earnings call—Q3 2024.

That’s scary. Not because AI is taking our jobs, but because they’re relying on who knows what kind of code. And if human-generated code has created all sorts of problems, what about the AI-generated code?

That announcement generated lots of discussions.

On Hacker News, a Google employee, probably behind a throwaway account, said that AI is autocompleting the lines he writes, but it doesn’t do any actual engineering or generate code from natural language. I was wrong about my initial thought.

On LinkedIn, there was a post dismantling that announcement and pointing to that Hacker News comment. Of course, someone didn’t believe what the Google employee wrote in that comment. “Would you trust a random employee?”

If you really want to know how a company is run, do you ask the CEO or someone with boots on the ground?

The best one to answer how a company runs is the receptionist, janitor, or an entry-level employee, not the CEO.

The CEO of a million-dollar company, to raise stock prices and invite investors to throw money at them, will say “AI,” “disruption,” “climate change,” “diversity,” or any trending SEO keyword.

I don’t believe what Google’s CEO said. I believe that random Hacker News comment.