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Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

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Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#791

Post by hnfong »

surgical_fire wrote: post #273
sidlls wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally what the language model is. It might correctly generate a solution to a "novel" question/problem that is sufficiently close to one with an existing, known answer. But then again it might not. And in software development, it's going to take someone who is knowledgeable to tell the difference. I think software engineering is going to look very different in a few years, and likely be a smaller field wit…

The dude you replied to you gave out the sort of bad take I come here for. If anyone thinks genuinely that ChatGPT can meaningfully replace a software developer should be starting a tech business right now. You can replace basically your largest cost (staff wages, especially for expensive pesky software developers) with a $20 account that will work overtime, will never get tired, and whose performance will never fluc…

There's a difference between being able to do logical reasoning, and being able to do everything a competent white collar worker can do. For one, there's a token limit and memory limit, which limits the scale of the problems current iterations of GPT can do (and this limitation is not a limitation of logical reasoning ability). There's also (for GPT) no way for one to fine tune or train the model to work better in a specific domain unless you're in bed with OpenAI/Microsoft.

I think as a society we don't really have precise words for describing the different levels of intelligence, except in a "I know it when I see it" way. I don't think I'm LARPing in any way, I'm probably even less excited with it than you are given that you seem to be using it more often than I am. I'm just saying I think GPT does exhibit some logical reasoning abilities and not merely remembering statistical patterns.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#792

Post by scaramanga »

thecrumb wrote: post #348

Still waiting for flying cars, paperless office, robots that will steal my job and countless other promises of utopia.

Haha, yeah, don't worry though - if you're looking for another false-god to worship or a guru with a messianic complex promising to lead us to the promised land, then silicon valley shows no sign of stopping churning those off of the conveyor belt, despite their recent financial problems :)

If anything, I'd expect them to become more frenzied in their efforts.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#793

Post by ChatGTP »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #789
ChatGTP wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people want to build a nuclear reactor on the moon, I think these things should probably live on the moon or better yet Mars. That should be the place for experiments like this. Lowery latency links back to Earth and first see how it goes. Also you don’t think there will be resource constraints at some stage ? It’s funny we yelled at people for Bitcoin but when it’s ChstGPT, it’s fine to run probably tens of thous…

Personally I don't think AI tools energy usage are comparable to BTC yet. Also, with BTC it's literally burning it in an unproductive way for "improved security". It's like lighting a forest on fire to keep warm. All the AI tools combined, last I heard, aren't consuming 0.5% of the world's energy usage. And even if they were, it would be absolutely bonkers to argue we should keep doing that when there were alternativ…

So, there is money to be made from LLMs, there will be advertising injected into the models responses etc.

It's really the early days, but there's no way energy consumption won't grow exponentially now there is potential for earning money.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#794

Post by lelanthran »

908B64B197 wrote: post #744
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So exact in fact that they will need to specify a program in a click and drag interface, or in human language. This. I started programming in Machine Code, where the "editor" was a pad of graph paper. I've watched management- and business-focused people sneer at us geeks for my entire career, and watched them drool over the thought of finally getting rid of us. Hasn't happened yet. > I'd be surprised if the next st…

> I've watched management- and business-focused people sneer at us geeks for my entire career, and watched them drool over the thought of finally getting rid of us. [...] They have nothing but contempt for us "Make It Happen" folks. They treat us as if we grow on trees, and are suckers, to boot. I've met my fair share as well. Jobs copycats too! The trick is always to ask them how much they can raise, and do so assum…

> The trick is always to ask them how much they can raise, and do so assuming they raised successfully in the past and that they know VCs.

They don't need to have the ability to raise anything in a B2B setting, if they can answer the alternative question:

"How many customers have you personally signed up for previous software sales".

I'll happily partner with someone who has profitably sold B2B software - having a list of existing contacts in existing companies as well as solid experience going through the entire sales channel is, to me, just as valuable as extracting money from VCs, because I'd rather have the money from customers than money from VCs.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#795

Post by dragonelite »

iamacyborg wrote: post #114
dragonelite wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, maybe we should replace lower and middle management with AI. What i usually find is that lower and middle management is the reason shit isn't getting done. They are the messenger that don't want to get shot but want to get promoted. Why not let the people on the floor complain to a AI manager, the people on the floor know exactly what is killing their productivity. Like "yo ai manager, manually filling…

> the people on the floor know exactly what is killing their productivity The reality is that they frequently don’t.

People on the floor know exactly what is killing their productivity given they use the product for hours each day to do their data entry tasks.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#796

Post by ravagat »

carlmr wrote: post #29

Looking back we had one CS professor who in 2007 predicted we'd all be jobless in ten years, i.e. 2017. His prediction was based on the trends he was seeing at the time. But it wasn't even AI. Instead he made this prediction because he saw the rise of no-code tools replacing software developers because managers could finally cut out the pesky "translators", i.e. software developers. I said it then and I will say it n…

Well written comment!

> In essence what has happened in software development is that the level of abstraction has gone up while the machine has taken over more and more of the nitty gritty details. From punchcards, to assembly, to COBOL, C, Perl, Java, Python, Erlang, Rust.

I've had friends and peers contact me in regards to the AI, GPT, et al headlines and they're always surprised at my calmness. You've written out exactly what is happening and why there shouldn't be any worry regarding jobs. I think the worry is generally under the premise that everyone has to upskill themselves which is against human nature. Folks are feeling uncomfortable but this is another cycle.

> But the rigidity of what is needed to specify a program that really does what you want hasn't. Especially evidenced by the fact that recent programming language developments often have a specific area where they shine, but not raising the abstraction level that much.

Another great point. Like you wrote, there really is a need for "translators" for programming languages and it's not going away anytime soon. If anyone has played around or even just read/watch through folks using AI/GPT/Etc. you'll come to notice that the tech is not "stable". It's only good in limited instances.

Finally, the headlines and copywriting of most of the pieces and journalism coming out is definitely hit and miss. A mix of pessimism and optimism. It's important to remember what we are witnessing is another technological cycle and another cycle in general if you want to looking at a bigger scale but that's another discussion for another time.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#797

Post by j7ake »

admissionsguy wrote: post #601
ilyt wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ye, often the "creator", the "head" gets credited with everything a whole team come up with. Sure, picking the good and directing it to consistent whole is important but they would be nothing without people that produced that in the first place.

PhD students and postdocs are mostly fungible, though. PIs are not, if only by the virtue of their position in the system. The same reason why menial workers earn so little relative to how hard they work. It would appear that both credit and money flow to those who enable things to happen rather than those who execute.

I think the claim that PhDs and postdocs are fungible is what enables credit to be concentrated to the PI.

In top places though, it’s often the case that trainees have an idea, get shut down by PI, trainee demonstrates project can work, then PI changes mind.

Also in science, the usual progress of a project is often PI has an idea, trainees explores the idea, finds an even better idea, PI says great now write the paper.

But I agree with you in the sense that PIs act as the “quality control” or “selection process” whereby ideas get culled and refined. And their scientific taste is non fungible.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#798

Post by ravagat »

irrational wrote: post #618
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So exact in fact that they will need to specify a program in a click and drag interface, or in human language. This. I started programming in Machine Code, where the "editor" was a pad of graph paper. I've watched management- and business-focused people sneer at us geeks for my entire career, and watched them drool over the thought of finally getting rid of us. Hasn't happened yet. > I'd be surprised if the next st…

> If your managers could specify what they need in a manner that no-code tools, or now AI, can generate the code they want, they will have to be extremely exact in their language. So exact in fact that they will need to specify a program in a click and drag interface, or in human language. This is also one of the main reasons why all programming jobs were not outsourced to India.

Great point. A lot of folks forget that not all programming jobs can/should be outsourced. There's value in outsourcing but specifications and contexts change that.

Re: Build full “product skills” and you'll probably be fine

#799

Post by camgunz »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #662
camgunz wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the whole company. Uber was founded in 2009. Before that you could maybe hail a cab if you were in NYC, otherwise you had to call ahead. Someone would drive the cab to you, you'd get in it, and they'd drive you to where you wanted to go. Now we have AI. Now instead of driving to a financial advisor's office or a bank loan officer's desk or my kid's school: - I have an AI app that automatically invests my mon…

Some good points but maybe be more careful with your use of verb tense. I was thinking you were either overly-trusting or in possession of an ungodly-exotic prototype phone until you got to the part about the conditioning booth in the classroom. :-P I'm bullish on recent ML advancements but it will be a long time before I give one my Schwab login.

Hah fair, could have used more editing :))

I'm skeptical too, but I assume this will just be Darwinian: curmudgeons like us will shamble along with our 5% gains and ill-behaved children, and the bulk of society will reap greater rewards. The worst part is our judiciousness won't even save us if we turn out to be right: society will still collapse whether or not you turned your life over to AI.

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