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Understanding is the new bottleneck

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Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#201

Post by andsoitis »

js8 wrote: post #196
jfyi wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, both of those are skills. Neither are skills that a large portion of users of those services pursue to any meaningful extent, I'll grant you that. They also certainly are not synonymous with the term "soft skills" as I know it. So I think I am on your side of the fence on that part any way.

I feel like if they were skills under a reasonable definition, you should be able to name an expert in these skills, and how do we know they are an expert. But I think you can't. It seems to me, instead, one is better at googling/prompting the better they are in a particular domain, but it only applies in that domain. Like knowing a jargon is not a skill, knowing the domain is.

Soft skills include: handling change under ambiguity, critical thinking under pressure, self-awareness, prioritizing, motivating and guiding others without relying on authority, navigating disagreement constructively.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#202

Post by jfyi »

js8 wrote: post #196
jfyi wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, both of those are skills. Neither are skills that a large portion of users of those services pursue to any meaningful extent, I'll grant you that. They also certainly are not synonymous with the term "soft skills" as I know it. So I think I am on your side of the fence on that part any way.

I feel like if they were skills under a reasonable definition, you should be able to name an expert in these skills, and how do we know they are an expert. But I think you can't. It seems to me, instead, one is better at googling/prompting the better they are in a particular domain, but it only applies in that domain. Like knowing a jargon is not a skill, knowing the domain is.

Johnny Long is the godfather of google dorking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo1BR9itwOY

https://blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-05/bh-us-05-long.p...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_Security

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#203

Post by _dark_matter_ »

simonw wrote: post #99
champagnepapi wrote: post #62

How does everyone feel about the “don’t read the code” stuff that folks are saying? I certainly do not support it but I’m curious to hear what other folks thoughts are

It's fascinating. On the one hand, if you really want to unlock the potential of coding agents you can get a whole lot more value from them if you don't force yourself to read every line of code they produce for you. On the other hand, that's clearly a terrible idea! These machines make mistakes. Unreviewed code is the most obvious form of technical debt - sure, you'll get a boost in the short term but how much will…

I agree with this. I am also starting to get a "feeling" of when I can trust an agent and when I can't. Recently I had it throw together a dashboard that displayed some basic linear models based on knobs on the dash, and I didn't really worry about it getting those wrong (I did spot check and it seemed good). But I also had to update a pretty complex flink app with state management changes that it totally borked.

The first task was more self constrained and less production impacting. The latter was detail oriented and required understanding complex distributed systems and state.

I would like to be able to formalize these kinds of tasks. I believe there are lots of confounding variables:

- Access to MCPs

- quality of documentation

- strong existing practices

- examples of similar code nearby

And then we can more easily determine what can be totally handed off and what can't be. I think that last one is most important, but similarly:

- how much this type of algo appears in the training set

Which is maybe part of the "feeling" that we have about what it will do well.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#204

Post by intrasight »

Shorel wrote: post #182
intrasight wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people I know believe that AI has already passed the Turing test. What's weird is that a lot of them are managers and should understand that never getting an "I don't know" means something ain't right.

Because managers themselves can't pass the test xD

LOL

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#205

Post by chasd00 »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #164
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't change the fact that those soft skills are necessary to use LLMs effectively. You need a mixture of hard and soft skills. Engineers who have avoided learning the soft skills are going to have a harder time adjusting.

But if you are managing AI agents you dont' need "soft skills" do you? You don't need to be especially nice to the AI, or symphatize with it, or have fun with it to build trust, I would imagine that managing a team of AI-agents is totally different from managing a team of people.

> But if you are managing AI agents you dont' need "soft skills" do you?

“Soft skills” in management just means figuring out how to get what you want from the people you have available to you. In that respect those skills translate to using an LLM.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#206

Post by intrasight »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #132
intrasight wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people I know believe that AI has already passed the Turing test. What's weird is that a lot of them are managers and should understand that never getting an "I don't know" means something ain't right.

There is no single or standard turing test. You could say it's been continually passing more of them over the decades. These days, I find it difficult to believe there's a human who couldn't be fooled with the right prompt.

I agree and disagree.

When I run the Turing test, it's me testing the computer. I don't care if anyone else isn't able to discriminate. Of course there is no "standard Turing test" as that would imply that it's an some kind of bot testing another AI and obviously that fraud with issues.

The Turing test is a human testing the computer and that human is me.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#207

Post by dspillett »

js8 wrote: post #186
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't change the fact that those soft skills are necessary to use LLMs effectively. You need a mixture of hard and soft skills. Engineers who have avoided learning the soft skills are going to have a harder time adjusting.

Talking to an LLM is not a skill, just like using Google is not a skill. Why? One, the companies like Google or Anthropic or OpenAI are working hard for it not to be a skill. That's the whole point. Second, these system are opaque, so there is no understanding to happen, only superstition, which might be wrong or change tomorrow.

> just like using Google is not a skill

I beg to differ. It is a simple skill that a great many have, but that doesn't make it “not a skill” - there are certainly many that don't have it, or don't want to practise it. Though I wouldn't name it specifically for Google, it is the more general “finding information online” skill which feels more specific because for many people these days it doesn't extend much beyond using Google or whatever their browser's default search service is.

People without the skill are quite evident: many of the closed duplicates on SO and similar sites are due to people lacking the skill to find information in old answers and effectively just asking others to look things up for them, the same for this week's 20th+ “my first layer has these bumps and gaps, what is going on?” question on any 3D printing forum (facebook groups etc.) that could be answered by scrolling down a few posts, and I'm sure the equivalent happens in groups serving any other plaything/hobby/skill/whatever.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#208

Post by jfyi »

js8 wrote: post #196
jfyi wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, both of those are skills. Neither are skills that a large portion of users of those services pursue to any meaningful extent, I'll grant you that. They also certainly are not synonymous with the term "soft skills" as I know it. So I think I am on your side of the fence on that part any way.

I feel like if they were skills under a reasonable definition, you should be able to name an expert in these skills, and how do we know they are an expert. But I think you can't. It seems to me, instead, one is better at googling/prompting the better they are in a particular domain, but it only applies in that domain. Like knowing a jargon is not a skill, knowing the domain is.

Jason Wei's chain-of-thought prompting techniques literally revolutionized llms themselves.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#209

Post by dspillett »

js8 wrote: post #196
jfyi wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, both of those are skills. Neither are skills that a large portion of users of those services pursue to any meaningful extent, I'll grant you that. They also certainly are not synonymous with the term "soft skills" as I know it. So I think I am on your side of the fence on that part any way.

I feel like if they were skills under a reasonable definition, you should be able to name an expert in these skills, and how do we know they are an expert. But I think you can't. It seems to me, instead, one is better at googling/prompting the better they are in a particular domain, but it only applies in that domain. Like knowing a jargon is not a skill, knowing the domain is.

> you should be able to name an expert in these skills

There are certainly local “finding information online” experts in many families and social groups.

> and how do we know they are an expert

They are the ones who get mentioned a lot in conversations in the manner “I'll have to ask [name]” with the implication that [name] will look up the information or know it from previous occasions people (possibly this specific person and [name] is getting sick of them asking and not remembering simple answers!) have asked.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#210

Post by derangedHorse »

t_mahmood wrote: post #170
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't change the fact that those soft skills are necessary to use LLMs effectively. You need a mixture of hard and soft skills. Engineers who have avoided learning the soft skills are going to have a harder time adjusting.

LLM doesn't need soft skills, but just knowing how to write a prompt to get the correct percentage values in a RAG and get the result close to your expectations out. Well it might be different based on the training data, which ai company, and how much you're paying. People are different, they will be sometime affected by their emotional situation, surrounding, no matter how much they're being paid, You need to unders…

Ironically, the same applies to AI. We seem to get demonstrably better results when speaking to models encouragingly [1]. It's a lot easier to re-establish goodwill when you can clear the memory and context of a program vs. a human though.

[1] https://x.com/MTSlive/status/2086884672106299878

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