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Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

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Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#291

Post by jjav »

davidcelis wrote: post #195
u8 wrote: post #184

We were so spoiled. We got fat salaries to sit in air conditioned Herman Millers all day learning about computers. Now we discover a way to synthesis intelligence and the only thing we can think to do with it is ruin the most fun career most of us could have ever hoped for. Sure, we're all more productive now, but how much of that is because we leverage AI on top of the intelligence we gained from all of that manual…

> Sure, we're all more productive now, but… I’ve been trying to ask people a different question: sure, we’re more productive now but to me, the AI era is only serving to plunge us deeper than ever into producing more, more, more, faster, faster, faster. And for what? What’s it all for? I became a software engineer because I have a lot of fun writing code, thinking through and solving complicated problems, and experie…

> producing more, more, more, faster, faster, faster. And for what? What’s it all for?

If you wanted a literal answer, it is to accelerate revenue as much as possible to make the very rich people who own most of the company even unfathomably richer. No benefit to you for making more faster. Other than the burnout, that's all for you to enjoy.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#292

Post by jjav »

oulu2006 wrote: post #142
lelanthran wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Im learning new things at a pace I never imagined at 40 years old. You aren't learning anything. Learning involves doing . We've known this for ages: simply reading a maths book without drilling on the problems will not get a student to pass. Best case scenario, you're reading stuff. For users of coding agents, they're not even doing that.

I'm learning by doing things. For example: AI has helped me get into restoring retro tech, specifically resoldering leaky caps on retro Macintosh logic boards. Before AI, I didn't know how to use a multimeter (I knew theoretically how it worked), I didn't know how to use flux, solder wick, heat gun. I also didn't understand how bromine radicals yellowed plastic and how to reverse it by using blue light similar to wha…

> So AI unlocked doing for me.

I don't quite follow how AI unlocked any of that?

The best way to learn these things (well, second to a human coach who has the expertise and has time to guide you) is from youtube videos, not AI.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#293

Post by oulu2006 »

jjav wrote: post #292
oulu2006 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm learning by doing things. For example: AI has helped me get into restoring retro tech, specifically resoldering leaky caps on retro Macintosh logic boards. Before AI, I didn't know how to use a multimeter (I knew theoretically how it worked), I didn't know how to use flux, solder wick, heat gun. I also didn't understand how bromine radicals yellowed plastic and how to reverse it by using blue light similar to wha…

> So AI unlocked doing for me. I don't quite follow how AI unlocked any of that? The best way to learn these things (well, second to a human coach who has the expertise and has time to guide you) is from youtube videos, not AI.

See my later post in this thread, I go into more detail about how I use AI in the restorative process.

In addition, I literally had AI build a complete list of parts to order from Amazon down to the caps for each system I wanted to rebuild -- it was close to 20 different items, I would have probably given up if I had to try and assemble this list from different YouTube videos.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#294

Post by dorgo »

maplethorpe wrote: post #254
davidcelis wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, we're all more productive now, but… I’ve been trying to ask people a different question: sure, we’re more productive now but to me, the AI era is only serving to plunge us deeper than ever into producing more, more, more, faster, faster, faster. And for what? What’s it all for? I became a software engineer because I have a lot of fun writing code, thinking through and solving complicated problems, and experie…

> I’ve been trying to ask people a different question: sure, we’re more productive now but to me, the AI era is only serving to plunge us deeper than ever into producing more, more, more, faster, faster, faster. And for what? What’s it all for? Many devs here have stated that the fun part for them is seeing the end product, not the act of creating it. Using AI is an act of need satisfaction. Unfortunately, cloning a…

> AI's greatest feature is that it obfuscates provenance.

maybe because people see AI not just as a clever packet manager, but also, to some degree, as a problem solving engine. Similar to humans.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#295

Post by thedevilslawyer »

timmytokyo wrote: post #278
nilirl wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument has many, many leaps but I infer your point. The lack of attention does reduce the overall correctness of the system. But, and unfortunately, in most situations the loss of correctness is more than made up for by the speed gains. Unless you're building software that could kill someone, it's hard to reject the improved speed. The cost of delay is usually more damaging than the cost of incorrectness.

>But, and unfortunately, in most situations the loss of correctness is more than made up for by the speed gains. Welcome to the future, where we can create buggy, broken software at a higher velocity than ever before!

Hey, only rose tinted glasses will tell you the older software was not buggy. Newer software is incredibly less buggy, and significantly more secure (ala fable/mythos passed).

If course code craftsmen will feel the pinch of this change

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#296

Post by danaris »

orbital-decay wrote: post #215
themafia wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or are AIs fundamentally different, and if so, why? Literally: the context window. With the human you have a window that possibly extends up to _years_. With your language model you have maybe a few megabytes which is always preceded by instructions from the model maker.

That's a misconception. Context window of humans is measured in seconds and limited to single-digit amount of entities. Human attention is truly ephemeral, with a ridiculously short span. What you're talking about cannot be emulated by putting everything into the context, you need models with deeper cognitive capabilities, and the longer your context the smarter it needs to be. It can be done by increasing the depth…

If there's an actual neurological attention window that you're referring to, that's as ephemeral as you say, it is not analogous to the context window of an LLM.

When I'm working on a problem, I can explicitly apply knowledge I gained decades ago to that problem. Not just "oh, it's somehow encoded in the training data"; not "oh, it's all mixed in there somewhere"; I can call up the memories, understand how to apply that knowledge to the problem at hand, and do so.

Except in certain very superficial ways, and despite many misguided LLM proponents' strident insistence to the contrary, LLMs do not work much like human brains.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#297

Post by LtWorf »

nilirl wrote: post #60

I haven't written a full function of code in over a year. That being said, I've been spending a lot more time thinking about architecture and system properties. So, yes, I do feel like I've lost some of that very low-level skill. But maybe I've also been able to spend more time on a higher level skill? Maybe the doctors got worse with the images but had more cognitive resources to think about the patient's context? N…

> I've been spending a lot more time thinking about architecture and system properties.

I've seen many bad developers become awful architects whose plans are completely impossible to put in practice. How do you know your higher level skills are actually any good?

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#298

Post by drunken_thor »

I’m watching those around me forget even the simplest command line commands for every day tasks in favour of AI. So not only are they letting hard earned skills slip away, they are paying for the privilege. Suddenly software development is a profession requiring a monthly subscription to participate in. It puts AI companies in a perfect position. This is the same business model as drug dealers. I am being told that I am going to be left behind but I’m the only one able to still be productive when Anthropic goes down. Don’t get me wrong either, I love that it writes tests and is able to do large tedious refactors for me but I also have a respect for my profession as a skill like a carpenter. It is only ever improved and maintained by active and deliberate work. Ai is killing daily practice, book clubs, community support, community development and we are all paying for the privilege.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#299

Post by nilirl »

LtWorf wrote: post #297
nilirl wrote: post #60

I haven't written a full function of code in over a year. That being said, I've been spending a lot more time thinking about architecture and system properties. So, yes, I do feel like I've lost some of that very low-level skill. But maybe I've also been able to spend more time on a higher level skill? Maybe the doctors got worse with the images but had more cognitive resources to think about the patient's context? N…

> I've been spending a lot more time thinking about architecture and system properties. I've seen many bad developers become awful architects whose plans are completely impossible to put in practice. How do you know your higher level skills are actually any good?

I don't know but I'm less wrong than I used to be.

More focused, better at reasoning about context.

Maybe good architects learn by starting as awful architects? Consider giving them more time.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#300

Post by LtWorf »

davidcelis wrote: post #195
u8 wrote: post #184

We were so spoiled. We got fat salaries to sit in air conditioned Herman Millers all day learning about computers. Now we discover a way to synthesis intelligence and the only thing we can think to do with it is ruin the most fun career most of us could have ever hoped for. Sure, we're all more productive now, but how much of that is because we leverage AI on top of the intelligence we gained from all of that manual…

> Sure, we're all more productive now, but… I’ve been trying to ask people a different question: sure, we’re more productive now but to me, the AI era is only serving to plunge us deeper than ever into producing more, more, more, faster, faster, faster. And for what? What’s it all for? I became a software engineer because I have a lot of fun writing code, thinking through and solving complicated problems, and experie…

Many developers became developers because of the paycheck, but they never particularly enjoyed the job, so if instead of working they can twiddle their thumbs waiting for the agent to make attempts at fixing their ticket, they prefer it that way.
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