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(In many countries, the word "engineer" is regulated -- you can't call yourself an engineer without professional qualifications and oversight.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_...
But that it’s a bit further down the line. Today, like previous hype cycles, opportunistic types will cash out on the money train. And tomorrow you will do whiteboard interviews for them (just like the last cycles..)
So the relevant question for the thoughtful geek isn’t “Is crafting prompts engineering?”. No. The Q is “should I sit out this hype cycle and then end up doing leet code monkey dance for the opportunistic types who made it big by riding the hype cycle, yet again?”
It's okay; software engineering isn't real either. (In many countries, the word "engineer" is regulated -- you can't call yourself an engineer without professional qualifications and oversight.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_...
It's okay; software engineering isn't real either. (In many countries, the word "engineer" is regulated -- you can't call yourself an engineer without professional qualifications and oversight.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_...
But in software you can simulate and test all you want before connecting it to the real world
Anyway, if you're trying things iteratively it becomes more a science. Engineering is more like designing stuff and building them without trying lots of things first.
Is prompt engineering 'real' engineering? It seems easy enough to test whether knowledgeable, self-proclaimed prompt engineers can outperform a random person with only moderate experience requesting information from an AI in a reproducible way.
If they can't, then there is probably no engineering involved in prompt engineering, at least at present.
If they can, then it seems like they're probably not doing it with magic, so there is some set of reproducible techniques involved. At that point, would it be fair to call it engineering?
It's okay; software engineering isn't real either. (In many countries, the word "engineer" is regulated -- you can't call yourself an engineer without professional qualifications and oversight.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_...
The engineers working on aviation software and other low-level, real-time, performance critical systems probably need to use quite a bit of maths and are closest to doing what we traditionally consider engineering.
All those teams working on web apps and advertising...yeah not really. This isn't to say what they do isn't complicated or difficult, but it's not really engineering in the classical sense insofar as it doesn't (typically) require the use of continuous mathematics and deep systems theory. If you're primarily writing systems design docs and performing calculations, you're probably doing some kind of engineering. If you're mostly writing code to spec you're just programming. It's sort of akin to a carpenter calling themselves an engineer.
But hey, this is all symptomatic of a general trend here in the states of the trivialization and devaluing of expertise; people think it's fair to identify as whatever their heart desires regardless of qualification, knowledge, or experience. A world in which people regularly accept advice from total randos on social media is not one that has any strong sense of value around knowledge or critical capacity.