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Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?

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Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?

#1

Post by pella_may »

I'm a software engineer with a solid full-stack background and web development. With all the noise around LLMs and AI, I’m undecided between two paths:

1. Invest time in learning the internals of AI/LLMs, maybe even switching fields and working on them

2. Continue focusing on what I’m good at, like building polished web apps and treat AI as just another tool in my toolbox

I’m mostly trying to cut through the hype. Is this another bubble that might burst or consolidate into fewer jobs long-term? Or is it a shift that’s worth betting a pivot on?

Curious how others are approaching this—especially folks who’ve made a similar decision recently.

Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?

#2

Post by mdp2021 »

Building AIs has always been there - it's a (fuzzy, continuous to its complement) way to engineer things. Now we have a boom over the development of some technologies (some next-layer NN implementations).

If you are considering whether the future will boost the demand to build AIs (i.e. for clients), we could say: probably so, given regained awareness. It may not be about LLMs - and it should not, at this stage (it can hit reputation - they can hardly be made reliable).

Follow the Classical Artificial Intelligence course, MIT 6.034, from Prof. Patrick Winston - as a first step.

Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?

#5

Post by itake »

Both are tough.

1/ There aren't many jobs in this space. There are still far more companies (and roles) that need 'full-stack development' than those focused on 'AI/LLM internals.' With low demand for AI internals and a high supply of talent—many people have earned data science certificates in AI hoping to land lucrative jobs at OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.—the bar for accessing these few roles is very high.

2/ The risk here is AI makes everyone good at full-stack. This means more competition for roles, less demand for roles (now 1 in-experienced engineer with AI, can output 1.5x the code an experience Senior engineer could do in 2020).

In the short/medium term, 2/ has the best risk/reward function. But 1/ is more future proof.

Another important question is where are you in your career? If you're 45 years old, I'd encourage you to switch into leadership roles for 2/. This wont be replaced by AI. If you're early in your career, it could make more sense to switch.

Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?

#6

Post by xiphias2 »

It's your choice, but it's definitely not ,,just another tool''.

Most of my LLMs made lots of mistakes, but Codex with $200 subscription changed my workflow totally, and now I'm having 40 pull requests/day merged.

Treat LLMs as interns, increase your test coverage with them to the point that they can't ruin your codebase and get really good at reviewing code and splitting tasks up to smaller digestible ones, and promote yourself as team leader.

Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?

#7

Post by petesergeant »

Focussing on the inner workings of them may well end up being a type of programming you don’t enjoy: endless tweaking of parameters and running experiments.

Learning to work with the outputs of them (which is what I do) can be much more rewarding. Building apps based around generative outputs, working with latency and token costs and rate limits as constraints, writing evals as much as you write tests, RAG systems and embeddings etc.

Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?

#8

Post by loveparade »

I come from a more traditional (PhD) ML/DL background. I wouldn't recommend getting into (1) because the field is incredibly saturated. We have hundreds of new, mostly low quality, papers each day. If you want to get into AI/ML on a more fundamental level now is probably the worst time in terms of competition. There are probably 100x more people in this field than there are jobs, and most of them have a stronger background than you if you are just starting out.

Re: Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?

#10

Post by Jabrov »

My recommendation would be to use them as a tool to build applications. There's much more potential there, and it will be easier to get started as an engineer.

If you want to switch fields and work on LLM internals/fundamentals in a meaningful way, you'd probably want to become a research scientist at one of the big companies. This is pretty tough because that's almost always gated by a PhD requirement.

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