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Not everyone is using AI for everything

gabrielweinberg.com

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Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#541

Post by ewzimm »

layer8 wrote: post #272
spoaceman7777 wrote: post #270

It's important to factor in just how many US adults are basically illiterate nowadays. As of 2023, 27% of American working-age adults were at a PIAAC Literacy Level of 1 or below, out of a total of 5 levels. This has gotten drastically worse in the past 10 years as, in 2013, Level 1 and below was only 17%. Full scores for 2023 are: % Level 1 or below: 27% Level 2: 29% Level 3: 31% Level 4/5: 13% For reference, Level…

I don’t think that’s it. AI mobile apps support voice conversations. And low literacy is rather a motivation for using AI to generate and summarize text.

I think we will have to develop some kind of framework for the difference between consuming AI-generated content and using AI as a tool as those use-cases will likely increasingly diverge. It's very easy to have a conversation with AI, as it will mimic your style, but I'd consider actually using AI to be something more like developing and orchestrating agents, developing frameworks for tasks and understanding, generating ideas for types of work AI can do and how the tasks can be properly split by training needed. Even though AI itself can do a lot of these tasks, people who can understand what AI can do for them and why will always have an advantage, and thinking in theses types of ways requires a high degree of literacy.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#542

Post by overfeed »

staticautomatic wrote: post #539
overfeed wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the job market lately? You call the response "cagey and evasive", but that is for an objectively a bad interview question, one wrung below "How many years experience do you have prompting Anthropic Opus? We are an Opus shop." People are not locked into their current way of using AI and it is trivial to match how one works with AI to match employers requirements. It's a question that deserves an idealize…

In what way is “How are you using AI?” an objectively bad question?

Remember the context - this is while solving a whiteboard problem. Its bad in the same way asking candidate what their birthstone is - because any answer offer little or no signal about the odds of a candidates success at the company.

I'm curious to know why you think asking about AI usage is a good interview question.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#543

Post by overfeed »

michaelsalim wrote: post #448
foxglacier wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're an AI-happy employer though. What if their truthful answer was that they never tried to use LLMs and refuse to because they waste water or because of an overconfident view of their own skills, or they don't want to help a clanker steal their job? These are all popular beliefs that can easily come from following the right crowd rather than forming their own opinion. In fact, from what I usually h…

I guess that's the point though? If their opinion only comes from common popular opinions, then that signal is quite useless to me. In this case though, I'll admit that it would be a negative signal if they never tried it even once and refuse to do so. You can't make a solid opinion on things you never try after all. It would be different if they at least gave it a shot and disliked it.

> In this case though, I'll admit that it would be a negative signal if they never tried it even once and refuse to do so

I was arguing that this is a bad question elsewhere but you provided another reason. If a candidate tells you they haven't tried using AI (without saying why), that offers no signal at how well they'll do if you hire them, and you construe it as a negative signal. If you want to know if they would be willing to use AI as part of the job ask that question instead!

> You can't make a solid opinion on things you never try after all.

What do you think about using heroin?

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#544

Post by t0mpr1c3 »

bjt wrote: post #367

Good piece, but I think there's a missing angle to it. He cites a study showing how often people say they "use AI", and a little over 50% use it less than once per week. If we're just talking about AI chat interfaces, sure. But I think the way that AI usage is going to grow isn't mostly by getting more chat engagement. It's about baking AI features into software that people already use. For example, suppose you asked…

People are not terribly well informed on the specifics. Every time Spotify queues up a song, it has been selected by AI. That's been happening for a while without people getting upset about the effect on the employment of disc jockeys.

I am guessing the threshold is when changes outgrow mere consumer convenience and start being something imposed without choice.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#545

Post by staticautomatic »

overfeed wrote: post #542
staticautomatic wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is “How are you using AI?” an objectively bad question?

Remember the context - this is while solving a whiteboard problem. Its bad in the same way asking candidate what their birthstone is - because any answer offer little or no signal about the odds of a candidates success at the company. I'm curious to know why you think asking about AI usage is a good interview question.

If you're going to have people use AI regularly, it's worth asking so that you can get a sense of their interest/willingness, experience level, and training needs. That said, more specific questions are typically more revealing. Personally I'm fond of "If you could give Claude only 1 instruction, what would it be?"

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#546

Post by NichoPaolucci »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #3

Anyone who does a Google search gets a satisfactory looking answer as the very first entry. I daresay most people don't go beyond that, not even the entries on the first page, let alone go to the next. I argue that this is at the level of everyone for everything.

It's been difficult to do, but I have recently picked up the habit of scrolling directly past the AI overview. It's not what I wanted, so it's useless to me (regardless of whether or not it's correct). I wanted search results. Sometimes that's a Wikipedia page, documentation, video results. But, web search results.

If I wanted to read an AI response to a query, I would use that tool specifically - I consider them different tools entirely.

It's definitely taken some time to get into the habit - perhaps defaulting to Google as the search engine was my first mistake.

However, most people I've seen run a quick search DO in fact just read the AI response (often with a caveat of "this is just from AI but..." which I appreciate), because for a lot of things it IS good enough or exactly what they needed.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#547

Post by staticautomatic »

onraglanroad wrote: post #386
knollimar wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just interviewed a guy and all three interviewers asked him functionally the same question. He hedged 3 times and we just wanted an honest answer...

The guy wanted a job, didn't know what answer you wanted for the job, and you guys were being assholes. If you can accept that then you've learnt something.

You can’t interview effectively by limiting yourself to questions where the applicant knows what you want them to say.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#548

Post by ezst »

inigyou wrote: post #432
malfist wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is "they" and what specific actions are they taking?

The government that runs the benefits programs. They make you jump through hoops to get any benefits. The first hoop is even knowing that a program exists that you qualify for.

But then they also pay social workers to guide you through the steps of applying and receiving this support. Sometimes the biggest hurdle is to get to know what you don't know.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#549

Post by butlike »

hypfer wrote: post #82
acc_297 wrote: post #72

On the post-grad job hunt right now - I note that most employers will ask in a technical interview or whiteboard interview "how are you using LLMs?" It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer with limited information about who they are and how they personally use these products. I've been responding with a sort of long winded answer about how 'there is…

> It's tough to answer because you want to hedge for both an AI enthused employer and an AI hesitant employer with limited information about who they are and how they personally use these products. Have you considered just answering truthfully? Would you even want to work somewhere where you need to play a role and where they flip out when you say the wrong word you should've correctly guessed through mind reading? T…

To this point, there are many advantages to answering truthfully. The job might be tailored (a little) to your expertise. Maybe the heavy AI tickets will get de-prioritized from your queue if you say you have light experience. If you say you're all in on AI, you just might find yourself becoming an AI expert out of necessity. Not because that's what the company wanted out of filling the position initially, but because that's what they got. It's expensive to have an open seat. The interviewing door swings both ways. You're looking for a fit just as they're looking for a fit. Going in every day pretending to be "a fraud" (or however else you might start to internalize it) eventually starts to weigh on the body, soul, and mind.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#550

Post by butlike »

coldtea wrote: post #384
pipes wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A truthful, nuanced, well reasoned answer will be well received by an employer with a culture you want to work in.

> A truthful, nuanced, well reasoned answer will be well received by an employer with a culture you want to work in. If you're into long shot betting AND your savings aren't running out while waiting to land a new job, that might be a good strategy

If you're outright lying to yourself to land a job to make rent, fine, but for god's sake internalize it as a temporary stepping stone and immediately start looking for a better fit.
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