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We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How

unmitigatedrisk.com

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Re: We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How

#11

Post by snovv_crash »

justonceokay wrote: post #8
sudonanohome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He wasn’t following a plan. He was just that kind of person. Because the article is AI slop, plain and simple.

I would write that prose. It’s very powerful to use small sentences with small words to drive a point home. Like when you are in some drawn out argument about th future with your spouse and your child comes in the room. She says quietly, “please stop fighting I’m hungry”. How do you argue with that? You can’t, it’s just true. Am I AI slop?

How many times would you use that structure in a single article?

> Am I AI slop?

This is the internet, you could be a dog for all anybody cares. If you write like AI though...

Re: We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How

#17

Post by aunderscored »

sudonanohome wrote: post #6
snovv_crash wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I think the same logic could have been applied to the structure of the article. It could have all been 2 paragraphs.

> He wasn’t following a plan. He was just that kind of person. Because the article is AI slop, plain and simple.

This one definitely does not feel like AI to me. I could be wrong. But it has too much warmth.

Re: We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How

#19

Post by bluGill »

justonceokay wrote: post #4
snovv_crash wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I think the same logic could have been applied to the structure of the article. It could have all been 2 paragraphs.

Try enjoying reading for purposes other than spending as few brain tokens as possible to acquire maximum info. It takes time to understand another persons perspective. Sophie’s Choice wouldn’t be as good a movie if you watched the 30-second TL;DR. I found it compelling throughout

To each their own, I found it tedious and annoying. I quit reading maybe 1/4 of the way in. By then already I had loud alarms going off that I need to read the comments because I'm sure many of the points are easy for a real expert to debunk - too much feels off.

Re: We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How

#20

Post by oersted »

I don’t quite understand this alarmist argument about AI making us forget how to build software.

We are software engineers, we are used to this! The whole history of computing has been about creating higher abstractions to make it easier to build software. Who has thought recently about instruction sets, memory layouts, gotos, pointers, system calls? Some still do, but not everyone has to anymore.

From day one I had the expectation that my knowledge would become obsolete and that I needed to keep learning. That new tools will constantly replace me, my knowhow for doing things manually, and that I will need embrace and learn how to take advantage of new levels of automations.

Frankly my experience of AI hasn’t been much different from when React, Spark, Elasticsearch, AWS or Rust came in for instance, some random examples. You just keep learning and embracing the new technologies. Yes they automate some of what you were good at doing and that part of you is no longer needed, that’s the whole point.

I think we will be totally fine as software engineers, not because we are not being replaced, but because replacing ourselves and adapting to it is the core of what we do!

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