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Generative AI and The Future of Work

maestroai.substack.com

31–40 of 106 posts

Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work

#31
I paid for Tabnine pro since it was 50% off for a year but I won't renew it unless it massively improves.

I mean, it does give good completions sometimes but the time saved isn't that great imho. Maybe chatgpt is better but it feels like AI still have some way to go to actually be so useful you would be less sucessful without it.

Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work

#32

ChatGPT help me solve a refactoring bug today. I had spent hours messing around trying to figure out what the issue was until I realized, via asking ChatGPT, that I had misunderstood a piece of the code and the docs. It was able to answer and provide examples (until it had error and crashed) in a way a senior engineer might have been able to. The funny thing is I had tried just pasting in code and saying "find the bu…

Sounds a lot like “rubber duck” debugging.

Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work

#33

I don't have a problem with the main point of the article, but there is a huge terminology confusion that is rapidly gathering force to confuse people. The key breakthroughs of GPT3 et al are not primarily about generative AI. People had been building generative models long before GPT3, and it was generally found that discriminative models had better performance. They key to the power of GPT3 is that it has billions…

Good point on the terminology. What do you think the right terminology should be? LLMs is too much of a mouthful and is not as informative for the general public, imo. People are also using Foundation Models, which I rather like.

I don't like "Foundation Models" because it's a term invented by Stanford and they're pushing it hard while not really doing all that much in the field.

Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work

#34

ChatGPT help me solve a refactoring bug today. I had spent hours messing around trying to figure out what the issue was until I realized, via asking ChatGPT, that I had misunderstood a piece of the code and the docs. It was able to answer and provide examples (until it had error and crashed) in a way a senior engineer might have been able to. The funny thing is I had tried just pasting in code and saying "find the bu…

From Star Trek: First Contact: "When you build a machine to do a man's job, you take something away from the man."

You surrendered the need to think to the machine. You are lesser for it. I don't think these AIs are just removing drudgery, like, say, a calculator. They actually do the work. Or more correctly, they produce something that will pass for the work.

Wholesale embracing of this sort of technology is bad for us.

Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work

#36

ChatGPT help me solve a refactoring bug today. I had spent hours messing around trying to figure out what the issue was until I realized, via asking ChatGPT, that I had misunderstood a piece of the code and the docs. It was able to answer and provide examples (until it had error and crashed) in a way a senior engineer might have been able to. The funny thing is I had tried just pasting in code and saying "find the bu…

From Star Trek: First Contact: "When you build a machine to do a man's job, you take something away from the man." You surrendered the need to think to the machine. You are lesser for it. I don't think these AIs are just removing drudgery, like, say, a calculator. They actually do the work. Or more correctly, they produce something that will pass for the work. Wholesale embracing of this sort of technology is bad for…

That sounds pretty Luddite to me.

I don't think the average person wants to be doing the menial work, vs architecting a grander vision IE the purpose for the work.

Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work

#37

ChatGPT help me solve a refactoring bug today. I had spent hours messing around trying to figure out what the issue was until I realized, via asking ChatGPT, that I had misunderstood a piece of the code and the docs. It was able to answer and provide examples (until it had error and crashed) in a way a senior engineer might have been able to. The funny thing is I had tried just pasting in code and saying "find the bu…

From Star Trek: First Contact: "When you build a machine to do a man's job, you take something away from the man." You surrendered the need to think to the machine. You are lesser for it. I don't think these AIs are just removing drudgery, like, say, a calculator. They actually do the work. Or more correctly, they produce something that will pass for the work. Wholesale embracing of this sort of technology is bad for…

Meh. I'd rather find out where it can take us. That sounds more fun and interesting.

Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work

#38

ChatGPT help me solve a refactoring bug today. I had spent hours messing around trying to figure out what the issue was until I realized, via asking ChatGPT, that I had misunderstood a piece of the code and the docs. It was able to answer and provide examples (until it had error and crashed) in a way a senior engineer might have been able to. The funny thing is I had tried just pasting in code and saying "find the bu…

From Star Trek: First Contact: "When you build a machine to do a man's job, you take something away from the man." You surrendered the need to think to the machine. You are lesser for it. I don't think these AIs are just removing drudgery, like, say, a calculator. They actually do the work. Or more correctly, they produce something that will pass for the work. Wholesale embracing of this sort of technology is bad for…

Does this mean pair programming makes you a worse engineer?

Or even just "asking for a second opinion"?

Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work

#39

ChatGPT help me solve a refactoring bug today. I had spent hours messing around trying to figure out what the issue was until I realized, via asking ChatGPT, that I had misunderstood a piece of the code and the docs. It was able to answer and provide examples (until it had error and crashed) in a way a senior engineer might have been able to. The funny thing is I had tried just pasting in code and saying "find the bu…

From Star Trek: First Contact: "When you build a machine to do a man's job, you take something away from the man." You surrendered the need to think to the machine. You are lesser for it. I don't think these AIs are just removing drudgery, like, say, a calculator. They actually do the work. Or more correctly, they produce something that will pass for the work. Wholesale embracing of this sort of technology is bad for…

I don't know about you but if I had the ability to dictate requirements and to get a program out the other side that matches those requirements, the process of coding has become mere busywork that can be eliminated for the benefit of me and everyone else.

I'm sure the buggy whip makers had pride in their work as well.

Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work

#40
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate more on your process, and the venue/focus of the writing?

I write educational technical articles for a living. Dev tools, frameworks, security, APIs, infrastructure, web3, etc. I talk to the AI as if I would interview an expert on a subject matter. This usually gives a good starting point for an article, if the subject is general enough, and not too new. It's also good at structuring and rewriting texts. If you already have all the correct data, you can use it to write an o…

No offense but this approach worries me - it seems like a novel mechanism to (perhaps inadvertently) generate and spread false information. It takes a lot of fact checking to make sure everything is right, and if you do the research yourself that's a natural part of the process. It seems way too easy to minimize that effort in a process like this.

I was already worried about ChatGPT-like systems generating mass-produced nonsense and polluting the internet, but if people are also going to edit ChatGPT output just enough to make it seem right (a mechanism I hadn't thought of so far), that might make the nonsense a lot harder to detect.

I totally understand the reasoning though, it sounds like a productive workflow.

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