it’s getting to the point where I notice people say it a lot, especially IRL now for whatever reason recently.
And for clarity I’m not in research or anything, so these people just mean ‘LLM/image gen’, not utilities like OCR or (usually not) transcription.
Some have argued it’s just more efficient (which I can kind of get), while others think you’re actively hindering your intelligence somehow.
On the first point:
I’ve tried it occasionally to see how it compares to my own skill, and while it produces a functional result, it’s always very derivative work to the point where you can find things with the exact same names of other ‘public’ (but not libre) works, and often isn’t the ideal solution to what it targets. So I can see how you can get things out of it, but it never felt really that profound to me.
But for the second… isn’t this supposed to be the tool for people to do things they aren’t experienced in? If anything, you probably need to be able to understand how to write pertaining to the task so the token probabilities are biased toward writing from that area.
And even then, if all you end up doing is prompting AI, then wouldn’t you ultimately serve no purpose outside of being glorified QA?
I guess I’m trying to figure out what exactly non-users would be ‘falling behind’ in that affects them more than those who use AI?
AI is a tool. Learning to wield it effectively is a skill. What they’re saying is that if you don’t learn it now, you’ll have to learn it later when everyone is an expert and you’ll still be a beginner.
IMO it’s a bit like computers. I imagine at some point AI-resistant people will be like the “not computer people” that still do everything using paper and faxes.
I know every 2-3 years there’s a new hype in tech that eventually fizzes out: Web 2.0, social media, virtual reality, cryptocurrency, etc. All of them were supposed to revolutionize the world, but not all of them actually did. I think AI is a lot more like social media than crypto; it’s here to stay. I think the best possible outcome at this point is that the open-source models eventually get good enough and small enough to run on our local hardware, but things sadly don’t seem headed that way…
Do you think that comparison means that it’s a positive thing? Social media did a lot of damage.
Yeah, I choose that comparison intentionally. Social media was seen as good early on, but got enshittified beyond recognition. Shitty as it is, it’s still very much a necessity in modern life (see: institutions using it to broadcast information, non-tech people using it to communicate and organize events, etc).
AI will be similar, it’s already changed how I work: developing software now is much more about managing the process than writing code. I don’t mind that much; writing code was never the fun part for me. I also wanted to go into management at some point, but not like this… I’m also worried about the future of the profession; how are we going to create new senior devs if there are no juniors today?
Where do they say it is a positive thing?
They are saying it is here to stay. Whether it is like the common cold or the vaccine is up to you.