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Expertise in the age of AI

moderndescartes.com

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Re: Expertise in the age of AI

#111

Post by vivzkestrel »

- a calculator does not have opinions, it gives facts

- also a calculator does not offload your critical thinking ability

- fun fact, i have stopped using calculators since the last 3 months or so as an experiment and guess what? I can subtract and add six digit numbers effortlessly now

- also a calculator is not subject to bias which the AI frontier model companies can most certainly push in your direction if they wanted to.

- So when I see people comparing AI with the dawn of calculators, i really sit and wonder how such a comparison even makes sense

Re: Expertise in the age of AI

#112

Post by recursivedoubts »

b3kart wrote: post #103
recursivedoubts wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off I don’t like the tone most people use when they say “trade school”. Most cs students go to a job out of school. Of the roughly 10% who go on to grad school, 10% will pursue a PhD. So 99/100 students in undergrad will not be pursuing higher computer science. We should acknowledge that and the new circumstances where writing code by hand is harder to do in corporations who use AI. Universities can provide a p…

“education” is not the same as “job training”. there’s more to education than learning skills you can apply at your job. it’s learning how to think critically, study literature, problem solve, collaborate with others, etc. etc. skills that I believe all humans could benefit from, irrespective of their job. yes, trade schools are more immediately valuable in the strict capitalist sense, but I wish we lived in a world…

Learning to code is not job training. It is learning to think. Learning to code is a prerequisite for learning deeper computer science concepts.

As far as the liberal arts go I agree that it would be nice if people had time to study them. Unfortunately, the universities abandoned them long ago.

Re: Expertise in the age of AI

#113

Post by shokhrukh_karim »

petra wrote: post #85
LurkandComment wrote: post #8

AI is cheap right now. Let's re-ask this question when it's priced to recover profit and ROI.

The hardware will improve in a big way, a lot of money is going into that direction. Llm costs will go down significantly.

[flagged]

Re: Expertise in the age of AI

#114

Post by Abstract_Typist »

btilly wrote: post #81
xp84 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some will probably dismiss your comment as partisan but it is very hard to (honestly) argue that this isn’t the case. “Think critically…” but only about the cliché punching bags of academia: capitalism, Western culture, American foreign policy, The Patriarchy, etc. I didn’t witness any college classes that encouraged us to think critically about socialism, or think critically about Islam, or think critically about no…

Thank you for getting it. The essay https://www.paulgraham.com/say.html captures the problem perfectly. I think that Paul Graham was completely correct when he said: "I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them." Those on the left have…

"Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle"

Re: Expertise in the age of AI

#115

Post by r_lee »

pbgcp2026 wrote: post #109
peab wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is the most important, impactful and disruptive technology of today. It makes sense to be talking about it.

... and so was the Big Data! (Remember 3xVs of it? I do – but most people who made a serial promos out of it don't. AI will have its winter. Again. Another one. Soon.)

let's be real. this AI wave is nothing like "big data"

Re: Expertise in the age of AI

#116

Post by r_lee »

otus0x00 wrote: post #37

I don't understand why so many people think that true expertise would become less valuable in the age of AI. How would a non-technical person, who doesn't know the difference between HTTP and HTTPS, have what it takes to build anything serious? I mean, how would you even know to ask the AI for everything that your system needs to be doing, without understanding the concepts?

yeah, I think this is one of the major reasons as to why we're maybe not doomed?

I'm pretty sure we as a society have gone through periods before where we think oh what if we just get cheap laymen to do it!?

but then in the end, if you're able to get an expert vs. a non expert, and you still profit from the work they do, do you really want to gamble?

its like, we look at Google reviews and credentials for a reason, we want trust

Re: Expertise in the age of AI

#117

Post by pjmlp »

pbgcp2026 wrote: post #109
peab wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is the most important, impactful and disruptive technology of today. It makes sense to be talking about it.

... and so was the Big Data! (Remember 3xVs of it? I do – but most people who made a serial promos out of it don't. AI will have its winter. Again. Another one. Soon.)

Nah, that you could ignore it, I did.

There were no mandatory trainings and KPIs to measure how well we were using a tool that ultimately will replace us.

If anything it feels like forced offshoring and doing competence transfer to the team that is going to take your job, I have been there a few times.

Re: Expertise in the age of AI

#118

Post by cassianoleal »

talkingtab wrote: post #46

Here is the fundamental issue. We use the word "intelligence" for different things. Can you follow a recipe for making sour dough bread? Pretty easy. Can you make sour dough bread? Not so easy. Does following a recipe require "intelligence"? Yes. If something can follow a recipe can it also make bread? Not necessarily. And another question, perhaps the most important. Can you determine that a recipe is flawed? In imm…

> Can you follow a recipe for making sour dough bread? Pretty easy.

Me? Unlikely. Ever.

> Can you make sour dough bread? Not so easy.

After a couple tries, probably.

> Does following a recipe require “intelligence”?

I don’t think so. A computer program is not too different from a recipe. A recipe is an algorithm. Cooking recipes tend to be badly specified ones in natural language, but algorithms just the same.

See, I’m absolutely incapable of “following recipes”, especially cooking ones. I can much more easily learn the principles behind sour dough making and then apply them. I think that requires intelligence, much more than following the algorithm.

Re: Expertise in the age of AI

#119

Post by zahlman »

j_w wrote: post #77

In the section "Everyone should learn some coding": > I would say that the major unlocks are at: 1-2 weeks: Basic understanding of what the field is about and what general words to use when asking the AI to do something. 1-2 months: Basic understanding of how and when to ask the AI something. 4-6 months: Ability to check the output for correctness (using external sources as needed). 1-2 weeks for enough of an underst…

> 1-2 weeks for enough of an understanding to appropriately use terms? No way. Using Harvard CS50 as a reference, it takes until week 2 to learn about arrays.

In my experience trying to teach, appropriate use of terms can lag way behind basic understanding of the concepts. (And it seems to inhibit getting beyond a "basic" level of understanding...)

Re: Expertise in the age of AI

#120

Post by bzmrgonz »

We should be able to train an agent to mentor junior devs and have senior devs allocate one session a week for progress report from the mentor. The hardest part is to keep them away from ai. Ironically we may have to build guardrails against Jr talent using AI, to ensure their natural coding growth and skills development. Even if we have to place them in coding enclaves.
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