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AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

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Re: AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

#171

Post by Iolaum »

pmg101 wrote: post #170
_carbyau_ wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether ladder raising is benefitting people now or later or by how much - I don't know. But I share your concerns that: AI doing the lesser tasks of [whatever] -> less(no?) humans will do those tasks -> less(no?) experienced humans to further the state of the art -> automation-but-stagnation. But tragedy of the commons says I have to teach my kid to use AI!

You could just teach them to be gardeners or carpenters

They would still need to use AI to run their work with higher profit margin ;)

Re: AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

#172

Post by guappa »

pharrington wrote: post #116
DougBTX wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the chess example is interesting. The best specialised AIs for chess are all clearly better than humans, but our best general AIs are barely able to play legal moves. The ceiling for AI is clearly much higher than current LLMs.

Large Language Models aren't general AIs. Its in the name.

They are being marketed as such…

Re: AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

#173

Post by skhameneh »

majormajor wrote: post #163
skhameneh wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The later remarks are very strong assumptions underestimating the power AI tools offer. AI tools are great at unblocking and helping their users explore beyond their own understanding. The tokens in are limited to the users' comprehension, but the tokens out are generated from a vast collection of greater comprehension. For the novice, it's great at unblocking and expanding capabilities. "Good enough" results from no…

> For large and complex codebases, unfortunately the effects of tech debt (read: objectively subpar practices) translate into context rot at development time. A properly architected and documented codebase that adheres to common well structured patterns can easily be broken down into small easily digestible contexts. i.e. a fragmented codebase does not scale well with LLMs, because the fragmentation is seeding the co…

I'm stating that a lack of codebase hygiene introduces context rot and substantially reduces the efficacy of working with an LLM.

Too wide of surface area in one context also causes efficiency issues. Lack of definition in context and you'll get less lower quality results.

Do keep in mind the code being read and written is intrinsically added to context.

Re: AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

#174

Post by musicale »

bane wrote: post #147
gruez wrote: post #50

The blog post has a bunch of charts, which gives it a veneer of objectivity and rigor, but in reality it's just all vibes and conjecture. Meanwhile recent empirical studies actually point in the opposite direction, showing that AI use increases inequality, not decrease it. https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20250215_FNC... https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/02/13/h...

Of course AI increases inequality. It's automated ladder pulling technology. To become good at something you have to work through the lower rungs and acquire skill. AI does all those lower level jobs, puts the people who need those jobs for experience on the street, and robs us of future experts. The people who benefit the most are those who are already up on top of the ladder investing billions to make the ladder ra…

It's the trajectory of automation for the past few decades. Automate many jobs out of existence, and add a much smaller set of higher-skill jobs.

Re: AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

#175

Post by __mharrison__ »

Syzygies wrote: post #145
gruez wrote: post #50

The blog post has a bunch of charts, which gives it a veneer of objectivity and rigor, but in reality it's just all vibes and conjecture. Meanwhile recent empirical studies actually point in the opposite direction, showing that AI use increases inequality, not decrease it. https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20250215_FNC... https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/02/13/h...

Yup. As a retired mathematician who craves the productivity of an obsessed 28 year old, I've been all in on AI in 2025. I'm now on Claude's $200/month Max plan in order to use Claude Code Opus 4 without restraint. I still hit limits, usually when I run parallel sessions to review a 57 file legacy code base. For a time I refused to talk with anybody or read anything about AI, because it was all noise that didn't match…

Can you explain your finger analogy a little more? What do the fingers represent?

Re: AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

#176

Post by charcircuit »

bane wrote: post #147
gruez wrote: post #50

The blog post has a bunch of charts, which gives it a veneer of objectivity and rigor, but in reality it's just all vibes and conjecture. Meanwhile recent empirical studies actually point in the opposite direction, showing that AI use increases inequality, not decrease it. https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20250215_FNC... https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/02/13/h...

Of course AI increases inequality. It's automated ladder pulling technology. To become good at something you have to work through the lower rungs and acquire skill. AI does all those lower level jobs, puts the people who need those jobs for experience on the street, and robs us of future experts. The people who benefit the most are those who are already up on top of the ladder investing billions to make the ladder ra…

AI can teach you the lower rungs more effectively than what existed before.

Re: AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

#177

Post by per1Peteia »

godelski wrote: post #150

I think a good way to see it is "AI is good for prototyping. AI is not good for engineering" To clarify, I mean that the AI tools can help you get things done really fast but they lack both breadth and depth. You can move fast with them to generate proofs of concept (even around subproblems to large problems), but without breadth they lack the big picture context and without depth they lack the insights that any grey…

I was reading some stuff by Michael A. Jackson (Problem Frames Approach) and T.S.E Maibaum (Mathematical Foundations on Software Engineering) because I also had the impression that too much talk around LLM-assisted programming focuses on program text and annotations / documentation. Thinkers like Donald Schön thought about tacit knowledge-in-action and approached this with design philosophy. when looking at LLM-assisted programming, I call this shaded context.

as you say, software engineering is not only constructing program texts, its not even only applied math or overly scientific. at least that is my stance. I suspect AI code editors have lots of said tacit knowledge baked in (via the black box itself or its engineers) but we would be better off thinking about this explicitly.

Re: AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

#178

Post by AlecSchueler »

musicale wrote: post #174
bane wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course AI increases inequality. It's automated ladder pulling technology. To become good at something you have to work through the lower rungs and acquire skill. AI does all those lower level jobs, puts the people who need those jobs for experience on the street, and robs us of future experts. The people who benefit the most are those who are already up on top of the ladder investing billions to make the ladder ra…

It's the trajectory of automation for the past few decades. Automate many jobs out of existence, and add a much smaller set of higher-skill jobs.

Centuries, surely? "In the year of eighteen and two, peg and awl..."

Re: AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

#179

Post by PeterStuer »

Most non-trivial expertise topics are not one-dimensional. You might be at the "ceiling" in some particular sub-niche, while still on the floor on other aspects of the topic.

So even if you follow the artcles premise (I do not), it still can potentially 'raise' you wherever you were.

Key seems to be wether you have enough expertise to evaluate or test the outputs. Some others have refered to this as having a good sense of the "known/unknown" matrix for the domain.

The AI will be most helpful for you in the known-unknown / unknown-known axis, not so much in the known-known / unknown-unknown parts. The latter unfortunatly is were you see the most derailed use of the tech.

Re: AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser

#180

Post by imiric »

charcircuit wrote: post #176
bane wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course AI increases inequality. It's automated ladder pulling technology. To become good at something you have to work through the lower rungs and acquire skill. AI does all those lower level jobs, puts the people who need those jobs for experience on the street, and robs us of future experts. The people who benefit the most are those who are already up on top of the ladder investing billions to make the ladder ra…

AI can teach you the lower rungs more effectively than what existed before.

And yet it's not used that way in the vast majority of cases. Most people don't want to learn. They want to get a result quickly, and move on.
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