KVR Audio

Tiles · Post by **Tiles** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 6:11 am

Well, AI has been widely deployed for close to four years now, and the world has not collapsed or seen broad mass unemployment. That makes me somewhat optimistic.

That said, there are clearly areas under pressure. Especially in programming and graphics department where work is highly standardised. The impact so far looks more like uneven restructuring and shifting demand than a general collapse of employment. I'm curious how this turns out in let's say ten years.

jamcat · Post by **jamcat** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 7:22 am

I agree, and I think the West’s loss of our manufacturing base to China has been far more detrimental socio-economically than AI ever will be. Ironically, didn’t the politicians tell those workers to “learn to code”?

sandandpaint · Post by **sandandpaint** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 7:26 am

jamcat wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2026 7:22 am I think the West’s loss of our manufacturing base to China has been far more detrimental than AI. Ironically, didn’t the politicians tell those workers to “learn to code”?

My country hasn't lost its manufacturing base to China and manufacturing is just one component of the economy. The rise of humanoid-robots for example will affect service industries

jamcat · Post by **jamcat** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 7:30 am

Those robots will be made in China. Just as Chancellor Merz.

sandandpaint · Post by **sandandpaint** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 7:31 am

jamcat wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2026 7:30 am Those robots will be made in China.

of course they will - but that does not represent a loss of old manufacturing eg cars, consumer goods, it represents the creation of new manufacturing capabilities

The West could take the lead in biotech which is a long way off peaking, plenty of time and capacity, but I doubt it will

jamcat · Post by **jamcat** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 7:52 am

AI will take the lead in biotech. That much is certain. So the West will only take the lead if we’re smart enough to resist succumbing to the fear and loathing of AI that’s being pushed right now. But the West has always been a sucker for the latest moral panic.

sandandpaint · Post by **sandandpaint** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 8:01 am

The West has itself in an inescapable bind I think - the mass media is an attention economy that thrives by creating uncertainty and conflict. Representative democracy is, or has become, a popularity contest that must cater to whatever story mass media promotes.

legendCNCD · Post by **legendCNCD** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 8:01 am

I hope this is getting sorted out. At the sorting station at least.

TechHaus · Post by **TechHaus** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 1:04 pm

So many inaccuracies, false assumptions, and propaganda on the last page of this thread. Wow.

Touch The Universe · Post by **Touch The Universe** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 1:06 pm

Vortifex · Post by **Vortifex** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 1:15 pm

jamcat wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2026 1:45 pm See, here’s the problem with all this “vibe-coding” panic: In most software companies bigger than one or two people, there is a Technical Lead or Lead Software Engineer. This person will design the software conceptually, develop algorithms, logic and data flow, and document features for the programmers to implement. A Lead Software Engineer may not even write a line of C++ code themselves, and might only “describe the software in plain language” to one or more code monkeys (programmers) to implement.

An algorithm, by the way, is a universal step-by-step description of a process. It is described in plain language. An algorithm is what gets turned into a C++ function or Java method by a coder.

So essentially, a vibe coder is a Lead Software Engineer, and the AI agent fills the role of the code monkey. AI coding tools are to the point where they are on par with a top-level programmer. And of course there have always been plenty of programmers writing code who are not top-level. Sorry, but that includes most indie developers.

So the issue with “vibe coders” really comes down to whether or not they actually have the background skills and discipline necessary to be a Lead Software Engineer and logically design a piece of software inside and out and then communicate it clearly and methodically, not whether or not they can write their own C++ code.

Side note: a Technical Lead or Lead Software Engineer will typically review the submitted code, though that’s probably less important when a human coder with human error isn’t involved. Plus, you could just as effectively direct the AI to review, refactor, and optimize the code for you.

More importantly, software needs rigorous testing. Not because of bad code so much as for unexpected, unforeseen, and unaddressed behavior in the design. First with unit testing, which AI can do, and later with hands on beta testing, which AI can’t, because AI doesn’t have hands. With AI assisted coding, more time should be spent testing than coding. That is one area of development that pure “vibe coders” without real-world software development experience may not fully grasp.

TLDR; the potential pitfalls of vibe coding isn’t going to be the code itself. That will be solid. It’s the soundness of the design and the thoroughness of the testing where things may fall apart. But these are the typical failings of inexperienced developers, not AI coding agents, and these pitfalls are neither exclusive to vibe coding nor an inevitable consequence of it.

Not sure if this is a subtle work of comedy or merely an example of how wrong someone can be

Touch The Universe · Post by **Touch The Universe** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 1:17 pm

I can verify, you need to prompt every single detail. If you have OCD or like planning things, vibe coding is awesome.

Munin · Post by **Munin** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 2:44 pm

Sometimes it's a bit depressing when some particularly carelessly made plugins show up - you can usually tell by the UI and color choices -, but on the other hand it does give people who have some wild ideas an easier way to turn them into reality, so double-edged sword I guess? Going to be interesting to see what happens here in the future.

In my case, I spent over a year carefully designing the interface of our M4L device to implement the exact workflow I had had in my head for decades. I'm a C++ engineer by trade so I hand-wrote a Max extension in C++, wired the patcher by hand. Max for Live has a lot of API quirks, and I don't think AI is fully able to deal with that at this moment (guess it's coming sooner or later though). But because I'm a backend engineer, I did use some AI to get the website up & running faster, since if I did that myself it'd be looking like a Geocities page from 1996.

Aamong all DAW companies, Ableton seems to be happily moving the fastest into the AI-forward direction, so I think inevitably a huge part of really niche stuff is just going to be vibe-coded. I can't say yet I have a strong opinion about it yet, the only thing I definitely dislike seeing is stuff that is just an API wrapper over a LLM. I've already seen some "AI MIDI assistant" etc plugins and I find that stuff horrid for two reasons, one - the latency of sending requests back and forth destroys the spontaneity involved in music creation and instant response you'd expect from any sort of plugin - and two, at some point the online APIs or model endpoints might change and whoever created the plugin might not even be around anymore to fix it.

vitocorleone123 · Post by **vitocorleone123** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 3:54 pm

Munin wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2026 2:44 pm Sometimes it's a bit depressing when some particularly carelessly made plugins show up - you can usually tell by the UI and color choices -, but on the other hand it does give people who have some wild ideas an easier way to turn them into reality, so double-edged sword I guess? Going to be interesting to see what happens here in the future.

In my case, I spent over a year carefully designing the interface of our M4L device to implement the exact workflow I had had in my head for decades. I'm a C++ engineer by trade so I hand-wrote a Max extension in C++, wired the patcher by hand. Max for Live has a lot of API quirks, and I don't think AI is fully able to deal with that at this moment (guess it's coming sooner or later though). But because I'm a backend engineer, I did use some AI to get the website up & running faster, since if I did that myself it'd be looking like a Geocities page from 1996.

Aamong all DAW companies, Ableton seems to be happily moving the fastest into the AI-forward direction, so I think inevitably a huge part of really niche stuff is just going to be vibe-coded. I can't say yet I have a strong opinion about it yet, the only thing I definitely dislike seeing is stuff that is just an API wrapper over a LLM. I've already seen some "AI MIDI assistant" etc plugins and I find that stuff horrid for two reasons, one - the latency of sending requests back and forth destroys the spontaneity involved in music creation and instant response you'd expect from any sort of plugin - and two, at some point the online APIs or model endpoints might change and whoever created the plugin might not even be around anymore to fix it.

Waveform 14 already ships with AI integration. Ableton is not the leader in it (yet).

Tiles · Post by **Tiles** » Sat Jul 04, 2026 4:21 pm

Munin wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2026 2:44 pm Sometimes it's a bit depressing when some particularly carelessly made plugins show up - you can usually tell by the UI and color choices - ...

That's not really bound to AI imho. Good UI design needs quite a bit of a skillset and experience. And most programmers lack of this skillset and design it in the programmers way. It's a different way of thinking. AI can even help here.

Anyone else noticed the increase of Vibe coded plugins flooding the market?