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The Rise of the AI Engineer

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Re: The Rise of the AI Engineer

#121

Post by gkvtqcvmcs »

senko wrote: post #89
charles_f wrote: post #66

There's a bit of snake oil in all of that. By any means ML is a very specialized subfield, where you need solid math basis and a deep understanding of the science behind it all. But I struggle to see the same thing for AI. If by "AI engineers" you mean someone who builds an LLM*, then it's very much just ML. If you mean someone who integrates with the LLM someone else built, then it's very much just backend work. Sur…

If you have React engineers, why couldn't you have AI engineers? I think the post is right to try to delineate the roles of "builds LLMs or other ML models" and "uses those models", as (as you noted) the skills required are very different (vs. "creates a JS framework" vs "uses a JS framework" are the same skills, just on another level). "AI engineer" is, as you say, inaccurate, but as swyx says, it's least cringy of…

Yea i agree, maybe calling them LLM Engineers as against AI Engineers would go down better with folks though? ML enables LLM's that enable AI, So its definitely semantics

Re: The Rise of the AI Engineer

#122

Post by petercooper »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #8

If you are someone who was working in LLMs/Generative AI before it got "cool", The market has fundamentally changed and changed extremely in your favor. Talent is extremely scarce and expensive right now in this space. Ask for well above FAANG compensation. Try to shop around for offers. I had 4 offers and a bidding war for my talent (with no leetcode - but I have an extensive github and publications about LLMs), whe…

It turns out that most people are terrible at using the tools, and there's even research about this right now

Thanks – this was a surprisingly fun paper to read. The authors are all CS researchers (and good ones – Björn Hartmann does a lot of great work in this area in particular) but I'd love to see some behavioral scientists tackle it at some point too.

I haven't got a citation but the concept initially reminded me of some studies from ~20 years ago where academics were wondering if the public would ever be able to use search engines effectively and how people's mental models could adapt to do so. All these years later, I'm not entirely sure if the public ever really did adapt, or if it was just the search engines that did..

Re: The Rise of the AI Engineer

#123

Post by somewhat_drunk »

rufius wrote: post #20

AI/ML Engineers will be our modern day variant of the Mystic. They'll whisper sweet nothings into the ears of their models, looking at the goat entrails of what their models output and tell us of their predictions. It's going to be a shit show.

Hilarious!

Re: The Rise of the AI Engineer

#124

Post by gaogao »

chefandy wrote: post #37
cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #7

I'm a natural skeptic, and I believe we're still on the rising edge of the "AI" hype cycle. Five years ago, it was "blockchain", and everyone was trying to ram blockchain into everything, attracting lots of VC and media attention, etc. It seems that blockchain is beyond the honeymoon phase: I haven't seen an NFT or even a Bitcoin headline in HN for a while. So I'm trying to wrap my head around what an "AI Engineer" i…

> Where where these experts hiding five years ago? I'll bet that many of them were trying to ram blockchain into everything! Personally, I'm curiously watching emerging prompt pen testing scene. It brings a tear of cyberpunk joy to my eye to consider that we've built important, powerful systems advanced enough to be vulnerable to social engineering attacks... and pretty dumb ones, too.

On the cyberpunk side, the LLM demoscene is also incredibly fascinating. We folks beating out the megacorps on model hacks like NKT and hecking crazy model names like TheBloke/WizardLM-Uncensored-SuperCOT-StoryTelling-30B-SuperHOT-8K-GGML

Re: The Rise of the AI Engineer

#125

Post by Uptrenda »

Tl; dr: a bunch of know-nothing plumbers swerve their digital cars from last years buzzword (blockchain) towards AI, narrowly missing a collision with a crowd of VCs. Upon arriving at the AI convention they switch hats to AI where they list themselves as experts (they can use the Chat-GPT API.) How any of this works or what problems may arise are a job for the cleanup crew (paid less, they aren't calling themselves experts.)

Re: The Rise of the AI Engineer

#126

Post by themanmaran »

oblio wrote: post #108
mschuster91 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add these use cases: 5. automated processing of unstructured paperwork and ingestion into ERP systems. Basically, upload any kind of bill and get all of the information into the system, not just "find out the total amount". That can save so much in accounting it's not even funny any more. 6. related to this, something that sorts incoming emails. Classify stuff into "look into it now " vs "look into it later" vs "…

My problem with this is that AI at the moment is a kind of 80% thing. And you want to plug that into ERPs and accounting?!? We don't even really understand its failure modes.

Yea but humans manually retyping things is also a 80% thing.

Re: The Rise of the AI Engineer

#127

Post by staticman2 »

moffkalast wrote: post #61
richardw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been thinking the leading edge is already in the trough of disillusionment! At least on HN etc. We see lots of reports of limitations on HN. Those in the know don’t trust it nearly as much as the public and all the CEO’s of businesses drooling to install AI and have the money go up. Going to have to dig our way through those issues to get real value.

Well you have to consider the inherent bias on HN, in that the trough of disillusionment is HN's default state of mind regarding literally every topic. It's really rare to see a thread where most of the comments aren't negative.

Ha, when GPT 4 launched the default HN post seemed to be saying LLM's were about to exceed human intelligence and the singularity was upon us.

The disillusionment seemed to happen pretty fast.

Re: The Rise of the AI Engineer

#128

Post by skwirl »

charles_f wrote: post #66

There's a bit of snake oil in all of that. By any means ML is a very specialized subfield, where you need solid math basis and a deep understanding of the science behind it all. But I struggle to see the same thing for AI. If by "AI engineers" you mean someone who builds an LLM*, then it's very much just ML. If you mean someone who integrates with the LLM someone else built, then it's very much just backend work. Sur…

You could have just read the article to see what the author meant by AI Engineers. You also would have seen that the entire article was addressing a point you tried to make, and you could have responded to the arguments made in the article instead of, ya know, just sounding off based on having read nothing but the headline

Re: The Rise of the AI Engineer

#129

Post by lispisok »

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #7

I'm a natural skeptic, and I believe we're still on the rising edge of the "AI" hype cycle. Five years ago, it was "blockchain", and everyone was trying to ram blockchain into everything, attracting lots of VC and media attention, etc. It seems that blockchain is beyond the honeymoon phase: I haven't seen an NFT or even a Bitcoin headline in HN for a while. So I'm trying to wrap my head around what an "AI Engineer" i…

A lot of people trying to refute you claiming the latest AI hype has actual value. The new models people are raving about do have value way above what blockchain had but I'd argue the AI hype is also way higher. Overall I'd say the gap between AI hype and AI value is bigger than blockchain despite blockchain value basically being zero if you dont count transactions for illicit goods.

Re: The Rise of the AI Engineer

#130

Post by jackphilson »

bedobi wrote: post #110
ignoramous wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have React engineers, why couldn't you have AI engineers? We most definitely could. That's one way to prop up a cottage industry, stay relevant, command hefty salaries, and maintain that charade of importance through complexity by creating Frankenstein features in search of problems and promotions.

like the canned messages that are increasingly finding themselves into any app where you can send messages to people, be it email, whatsapp, tinder, whatever "Hey John! I see you like traveling, I love traveling too! What are some of the most memorable trips you've had?" like, who would want to receive such an obviously canned message lol? soon, it will just be the apps talking to each other, no humans required

And that's how you get black mirror - hang the DJ
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