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"ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

#31

Post by paulcole »

lrvick wrote: post #23

I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…

> If this pisses you off, ask yourself why.

Why would it piss me off that you’re so closed minded about an incredible technology?

Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

#32

Post by markfeathers »

lrvick wrote: post #23

I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…

I do not use books for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no writer has seen before.

If anyone gives me an opinion from a book, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evolving from that point, and are unlikely to have a future in this industry as they are so easily replaceable.

If this pisses you off, ask yourself why.

(You can replace AI with any resource and it sounds just as silly :P)

Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

#33

Post by bgwalter »

markfeathers wrote: post #32
lrvick wrote: post #23

I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…

I do not use books for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no writer has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from a book, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning…

What is this new breed of interactive books that give you half baked opinions and incorrect facts in response to a prompt?

Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

#34

Post by lrvick »

paulcole wrote: post #31
lrvick wrote: post #23

I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…

> If this pisses you off, ask yourself why. Why would it piss me off that you’re so closed minded about an incredible technology?

Using an AI to think for me would be like going to a gym and paying a robot to lift weights for me.

Like sure that is cool that is possible, but if I do not do the work myself I will not get stronger.

Our brains are the same way.

I also do not use a GPS because there are literally studies with MRI scans proving it makes an entire section of our brain go dark compared to London taxi drivers required by law to navigate with their brains.

I also navigate life without a smartphone at all, and it has given me what feels like focus super powers compared to those around me, when in reality probably most people had that level of focus before smartphones were a thing.

All said AI is super interesting when doing specialized work at scale no human has time for, like identifying cancer by training on massive datasets.

All tools have uses and abuses.

Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

#35

Post by XorNot »

minimaxir wrote: post #6
einsteinx2 wrote: post #3

I’ve noticed this trend in comments across the internet. Someone will ask or say something, the someone else will reply with “I asked ChatGPT and it says…” or “According to AI…” ChatGPT is free and available to everyone, and so are a dozen other LLMs. If the person making the comment wanted to know what ChatGPT had to say, they could just ask it themselves. I guess people feel like they’re being helpful, but I just d…

The irony is that the disclosure of “I asked ChatGPT and it says…” is done as a courtesy to let the reader be informed. Given the increasing backlash against that disclosure, people will just stop disclosing which is worse for everyone. The only workaround is to just text as-is and call it out when it's wrong/bad, AI-generated or otherwise, as we've done before 2023.

Except it isn't. It's a disclosure to say "If I'm wrong, it's not my fault".

Because if they'd actually read the output, then cross-checked it and developed some confidence in the opinion, they wouldn't put what they perceive as the most important part up front ("I used ChatGPT") - they'd put the conclusion.

Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

#36

Post by stickfigure »

Counterpoint: "Chatgpt said this" is an entirely legitimate approach in many contexts and this attitude is toxic.

One example: Code reviews are inherently asymmetrical. You may have spent days building up context, experimenting, and refactoring to make a PR. Then the reviewer is expected to have meaningful insight in (generously) an hour? AI code reviews help bring balance; it may notice stuff a human wouldn't, and it's ok for the human reviewer to say "hey, chatgpt says this is an issue but I'm not sure - what do you think?"

We run all our PRs through automated (claude) reviews automatically, and it helps a LOT.

Another example: Lots of times we have several people debugging an issue and nobody has full context. Folks are looking at code, folks are running LLM prompts, folks are searching slack, etc. Sometimes the LLMs come up with good ideas but nobody is sure, because none of us have all the context we need. "Chatgpt says..." is a way of bringing it to everyone's attention.

I think this can be generalized to forum posts. "Chatgpt says" is similar to "Wikipedia says". It's not the end of the conversation, but it helps get everyone on the same page, especially when nobody is an expert.

Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

#37

Post by ninkendo »

lrvick wrote: post #23

I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…

Eh… your complaint describes every single piece of information available on the internet.

Let’s try it with other stuff:

“Looking at solutions on stack overflow outsources your brain”

“Searching arxiv for literature on a subject outsources your brain”

“Reading a tutorial on something outsources your brain”

There’s nothing that makes ChatGPT et al appreciably different from the above, other than the tendency to hallucinate.

ChatGPT is a better search engine than search engines for me, since it gives links to cite what it’s talking about and I can check those, but it pays attention to precisely what I asked about and generally doesn’t include unrelated crap.

The only complaint I have is the hallucinations, but it just means I have to check its sources, which is exactly the case already for something as mundane as Wikipedia.

Ho hum. Maybe take some time to reevaluate your conclusions here.

Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

#38

Post by rileymat2 »

lrvick wrote: post #23

I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…

For me, I am not sure it has eliminated thinking.

I have recently started to use codex on the command line. Before I put the prompt in, I get an idea in my head of what should happen.

Then I give it the instructions, sometimes clarifying my own thoughts while doing it. These are high level instructions, not "change this file". Then it bumps away for minutes at a time, after which I diff the results and consider if it matches up to what I would expect. At that point lower level instructions if appropriate.

Consider whether it was a better solution or not, then ask questions around the edges that I thought were wrong.

It turns my work from typing code in to pretty much code design and review. These are the hard tasks.

Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

#39

Post by theamk »

markfeathers wrote: post #32
lrvick wrote: post #23

I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…

I do not use books for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no writer has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from a book, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning…

Yes, if you find a book that is as bad as AI advice, you should definitely throw it away and never read it. If someone is quoting a known-bad book, you should ignore their advice (and as a courtesy, tell them their book is bad)

It's so strange that pro-AI people don't see this obvious fact and keep trying to compare AI with things that are actually correct.

Re: "ChatGPT said this" Is Lazy

#40

Post by brookst »

lrvick wrote: post #23

I do not use AI for engineering work and never will, because doing the work of thinking for myself is how I maintain the neural capacity for forming my own original thoughts and ideas no AI has seen before. If anyone gives me an opinion from an AI, they disrespect me and themselves to a point they are dead to me in an engineering capacity. Once someone outsources their brain they are unlikely to keep learning or evol…

Is it OK to outsource to engineers who are either more senior or more junior, or must one do every aspect of every project entirely oneself?
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