'MLEs get replaced first'? Engineer's agent confidently set the wrong env var
vboykis · x · 2026-10-29
ML engineer vboykis spent a day debugging wrong results, only to find she had set an env var incorrectly "with the eager help of my agent." She quotes a circulating take that MLEs — not researchers — will be replaced by AI before senior engineers, since AI is great at tuning parameters given a clear optimization goal. Her anecdote is a wry counterpoint: agents can optimize parameters, but will also confidently misconfigure your environment.
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