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The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

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Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#121

Post by rurp »

Narciss wrote: post #91
dagmx wrote: post #85

Atrophy has really been an issue in my recent hiring cycles for good senior engineers. 80% of senior candidates I interview now aren’t able to do junior level tasks without GenAI helping them. We’ve had to start doing more coding tests to weed their skill set out as a result, and I try and make my coding tests as indicative of our real work as possible and the work they current do. But these people are struggling to…

I was actually thinking about this the other day while vibe coding for a side project. I am a lead engineer, but I’ve been using AI in much of my code recently. If you were to ask me to code anything manually right now, I could do it, but it would take a bit to acclimate to writing code line by line. By “a while”, I mean maybe a few days. Which means that if we were to do a coding interview without LLMs, I would prob…

Expecting senior job applicants to have regained basic coding skills seems reasonable to me. I would be skeptical of an applicant who hadn't made the level of effort you're describing before applying.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#122

Post by dagmx »

roxolotl wrote: post #112
Narciss wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually thinking about this the other day while vibe coding for a side project. I am a lead engineer, but I’ve been using AI in much of my code recently. If you were to ask me to code anything manually right now, I could do it, but it would take a bit to acclimate to writing code line by line. By “a while”, I mean maybe a few days. Which means that if we were to do a coding interview without LLMs, I would prob…

Isn’t the solution to tell the interviewee that they will have to write some code without llm support? In the case of someone like you I’d hope they’d take that as notice to spend a tiny bit of time getting back up to speed. If it really is just a day or two then it shouldn’t be an issue

Yes, I fore warn all candidates that they will do a coding test, with examples of similar tests.

They are allowed to suggest the language they’re most familiar with, they’re told they don’t need to finish and they don’t need to be correct.

It’s just about seeing how they work through something.

If someone like the person you replied to would show up that unprepared , I would really question their own judgement of their abilities.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#123

Post by 1718627440 »

zdw wrote: post #50
LPisGood wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you consider relying on navigation apps to be over dependency? Planning a route is basically an entirely useless skill for most people, and if they do need to for some odd reason, it’s pretty easy.

In my observation of others, it's not an easy skill unless you've done it before. Most people have little idea where they are and no idea what they would do next if the turn-by-turn tech failed on them. I'd argue it is useful the first time you want to take a scenic route, or optimize for things other than shortest travel time, like a loop bike route that avoids major streets. Not to say that apps aren't useful in re…

> In my observation of others, it's not an easy skill unless you've done it before.

I always feel like they aren't even trying. Like you just make a point were you are, a point were you want to do, draw a straight line, take the nearest streets, and then you can optimize ad libitum.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#124

Post by daxfohl »

jhbadger wrote: post #41
mnky9800n wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fulfills steve jobs promise that a computer is a bicycle for your mind. It is crazy to me that all these poeple think they are going to lose their ability to think. If you didn't lose your ability to think to scrolling social media then you aren't going to lose it to AI. However, I think a lot of people lost their ability to think by scrolling social media and that is problematic. What people need to realize is th…

Being a "bicycle for the mind" is a fine thing for technology to be. The problem is just as with bicycles that's too much work for a lot of people and they would prefer "cars for the mind" in which they have to do nothing.

Even cars are too much. Give me a Waymo. Or better yet just let me stay home and doom scroll while my life gets delivered to my doorstep.

Geesh, doorbell again. Last mile problem? C'mon. Whoever solves the last 30 feet problem is the real hero.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#125

Post by 1718627440 »

iisan7 wrote: post #114
watwut wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School will have to rely on homework less. It ia nkt that deep or complicated. It does not require super radical reform. Ypu can still make the tests and exams checking what students know. There will be less "generate bs at home" tasks and more "come back with a knowledge" which will likely be an improvement.

Except for one thing ... Schools tend not to fail many people. When an entire cohort has a different level of ability, standards adjust. Possibly some proctored, standardized exams might be more comparable over time. I have read that, controlling for student demographics, SAT scores (frequently used for US college entrance) were increasing until the mid 2000s and then flat since then.

Yes that's always true for the preceding school, but it really only means that the student needs to work harder or fail later on as the final job enabling exam isn't going to move.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#126

Post by athrowaway3z »

dagmx wrote: post #85

Atrophy has really been an issue in my recent hiring cycles for good senior engineers. 80% of senior candidates I interview now aren’t able to do junior level tasks without GenAI helping them. We’ve had to start doing more coding tests to weed their skill set out as a result, and I try and make my coding tests as indicative of our real work as possible and the work they current do. But these people are struggling to…

What do you consider senior?

We've seem to have had a significant title-inflation in the last 5 years, and everybody seems to be at least a senior.

With no new junior positions opening up, I'm not even sure I blame them.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#127

Post by raincole »

jncfhnb wrote: post #80

Can’t say the author’s fixation on reading long texts resonates with me. I’m sure Newton’s Principia is interesting and all but… no I’m not going to read that. Conciseness is a valuable thing. It wasn’t practical to convey knowledge in a short form previously because printing and distributing a blog post worth of info was too expensive. On some level long form content just seems… poorly written. It’s long for the sak…

Reading books is good for your brain. Even just fiction [0].

But I do think people often approach this issue wrong. Especially, as demonstrated by the OP article:

> “Daniel Shore, the chair of Georgetown’s English department, told me that his students have trouble staying focused on even a sonnet,” Horowitch wrote.

It's a wrong question to ask why people can't focus on a sonnet.

The real question is: why do the students who are not interested in literature choose to major English? What societal and economical incentives drove them to do that?

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4733342/

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#128

Post by Forgeties79 »

DrewADesign wrote: post #42
Forgeties79 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s always been the issue for me. It’s not the technology itself, it’s that virtually the entire initiative is being pushed by venture capital with a “we want to make more money than God” mission that means they call every person calling for caution a Luddite/anti-progress. That’s basically how every thing on the Internet has expanded over the last 20 years and the results have been, if I’m being insanely generous…

I also think that being a little more cautious would have yielded many, if not most of the benefits we've received while avoiding many of the downfalls. Most of these companies knew their products were negatively affecting their users-- e.g. instagram and teen girl self esteem-- but actively suppressed it because it would inhibit making dump trucks full of money off of it. People who stand to make that money will ALW…

Preach. This is exactly what I’m driving at.

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#129

Post by [deleted] »

mcny wrote: post #83
jstanley wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I am glad I learnt programming before StackOverflow! Precisely because it meant I had to learn to figure things out myself. I still use StackOverflow and LLMs, but if those things were available when I was learning I would probably not have learnt as much.

I started programming before stack overflow, was never any good (still am not to this day), but I was always scared of asking questions on stack overflow. I felt like there was a certain amount of homework expected when you ask a question and usually by the time I did enough work to post a question, it was moot because I would have solved my problem usually by stringing together two or more stack overflow questions t…

[deleted]

Re: The deadline isn't when AI outsmarts us – it's when we stop using our own minds

#130

Post by [deleted] »

jstanley wrote: post #60
password54321 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post was largely about young people who are growing up with these tools and are still at the stage of developing their habits and tendencies. Personally I am glad I learnt programming before LLMs even if it meant the tedious searches on stackoverflow because I didn't feel like I was coming up against a wave of new technology when it came to future job searches. Having done so I can understand and appreciate the i…

Personally I am glad I learnt programming before StackOverflow! Precisely because it meant I had to learn to figure things out myself. I still use StackOverflow and LLMs, but if those things were available when I was learning I would probably not have learnt as much.

[deleted]
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