When LLMs Collide With Software Development and Economics

March 21, 2023

Technology Category

Paul Kedrosky and Eric Norlin of SK Ventures wrote an interesting and important essay titled Society's Technical Debt and Software's Gutenberg Moment.

Summary follows. I encourage you to read the full essay.

There is immense hyperbole about recent developments in artificial intelligence, especially large language models like ChatGPT. And the material impact of these technologies on jobs also raises justified concerns. But observers are missing two very important things:

Every wave of technological innovation has been triggered by something expensive that has become cheap enough to waste. Producing software has been too complex and expensive for too long, leading us to underproduce software for decades, leading to immense company-wide technical debt.

This technical debt is set to contract dramatically economy-wide as the cost and complexity of software production plummets, unleashing a wave of innovation.

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