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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

#301

Post by jreynar »

First, I wonder about the value of the study about endoscopies. Comparing number of adenomas found before and after potential "de-skilling" with AI assumes the rate of adenomas is constant, which doesn't necessarily seem safe. Not sure if the issue is with the study or the summary, but measuring how well the population did compared to reference analyses seems like a much better study design and would give me more confidence that there had actually been a change in skill. I also wonder if the time allotted for reading was reduced or people felt more pressure when reading scans the old fashioned way since they were probably read quickly by the AI, that's a potential confounding factor.

Second, I'm not surprised you can find measurable de-skilling due to AI. But I bet you could find de-skilling related to spell checkers and calculators back in the day, but no one I know today suggests we shouldn't use word processors and ought to count on our fingers and toes or do long division. There's always a tradeoff around what skills and knowledge is genuinely important to be a domain expert and what we can outsource to technology. We're in a transitional phase right now not only because the tech is new but because it's changing so fast. In a few years, once we're further up the adoption curve and the pace has settled down in some domains, I bet we'll land on a way to use AI for coding and doctoring (or in some domain where AI progress has stabilized) that requires a combination of knowledge and skills but that we'll have gotten comfortable with people no longer needing to know or do things that today are considered core to the job.

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

#302

Post by DrewADesign »

theturtletalks wrote: post #231
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…

2 types of people: People who use coding as a means to an end, producing a product People who enjoy process over product and coding is the enjoyable part, not the end product Company executives fall into bucket 1. Even if you love your cushy air-conditioned job, doesn’t mean the people above you don’t see you as a means to an end, a better product. Solo founders and small startups are in bucket 1 as well but that doe…

I think that’s a false dichotomy. I enjoyed coding but was more interested in the problems code could solve. Both were really important facets of the job. When I was a chef, I loved being creative with flavors and techniques, and giving people a new favorite aesthetic memory to file away. Losing one of those things would make the job not worth it to me even though I enjoyed both.

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

#303

Post by DrewADesign »

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…

> 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.

True.

> Who is to say that in 36 months you're not a worse developer over all because that systems knowledge starts to atrophy too?

I think that would be the best case scenario for a lot of developers. It’s not going to make anybody’s life easier. The labor market and job expectations are morphing to absorb any increase in productivity already, and we will all be forced to produce more and more and more to keep our jobs. Demand can’t instantly dramatically increase to meet the productivity, so it’s not like companies can just sell more— people will get laid off. More and more people will be fighting over fewer and fewer jobs, so the people who are still employed will get paid shit. It’s a basic supply and demand equation.

I wonder how many fewer people that told me “well my job isn’t going to be affected because it’s too complex/specialized/etc” in 2024 would say that today?

Companies must either double down on increasingly exorbitant per-token pricing and reduce payroll to compensate, or decide the tradeoffs aren’t worth it, and double down on human intelligence. I think the economics of the industry are going to decide for us in the coming months.

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

#304

Post by kristofferR »

aix1 wrote: post #164
kristofferR wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this describes me perfectly. I can't really program, but I'm now building a bunch of different projects and submitting PRs that people seem to appreciate. https://github.com/kristofferR One of them, a Home Assistant integration for controlling adjustable beds, would be borderline impossible to do well manually - I've vibe-reverse engineered the Bluetooth protocols of more than a 100 Android apps.

> I've vibe-reverse engineered the Bluetooth protocols of more than a 100 Android apps Impressive coverage, but how do you verify that the reverse engineering matches what the hardware expects? Do you find people who own those beds and get them to test stuff for you?

It's hard, but I try to verify it as best as possible by doing multiple independent runs, often one with GPT-5.5 and one with Opus, and then verify that they agree. When I'm as certain as possible I release it and rely on feedback when something doesn't work properly.

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

#305

Post by hodder »

jplusequalt wrote: post #228
hodder wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sifting through information to separate truth from fiction is a modern, experience-based skill that I’ve developed YES. However, your perspective on how LLMs are used might be too narrow. While no one is suggesting using an AI to find a one-shot cure for Alzheimer's, LLMs are incredibly effective tools when paired with textbooks to master subjects like undergraduate physics.

>LLMs are incredibly effective tools when paired with textbooks to master subjects like undergraduate physics I agree that they can be helpful for explaining things if you're stuck. But since you used the example of physics, the majority of hard won physics knowledge comes from working lots of problems yourself. Too many people are already used to LLMs circumventing the laborious aspects of things, so it takes a cert…

On average yes this is almost certainly true. As I said above technology is a lever and most people are incredibly lazy. However if one has drive and determination they are also incredibly powerful tools

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

#307

Post by hodder »

Jensson wrote: post #212
hodder wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once more, you are making massively blanketed biased assumptions about me. You seem to believe LLMs cannot even produce simple exams and rubrics is that right?

At most you could do multiple choice questions, or questions with a single objective answer such as "what is the capital of France". But such tests aren't very helpful to learn new things. Students cannot grade their own answers for more complex problems, they make mistakes but say they are correct since they don't understand the material, or they are correct but since it doesn't say the exact same thing as the examp…

They absolutely are good at checking work. It really depends on the level and you are grossly underestimating their ability and over generalizing their limitations. To say an LLM can’t grade pretty much any undergraduate level or under subject well is to not understand how far they’ve come.

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

#308

Post by hodder »

fzeroracer wrote: post #280
wvenable wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can I argue about such a hypothetical?!? If I ask an LLM or my mother-in-law about how to get wine out of the carpet, and I get wine out of the carpet, maybe I have done it wrong and my house will burn down! Who knows?! Your argument is meaningless; there's nothing anyone can say to that.

And if you ask an LLM about an effective cure for cancer and it spits out to drink bleach, are you going to follow it? When you ask 'who knows' that's the point of research which was my original comment here. The same goes true for some random asshole telling you to drink bleach as it does an LLM, except people seemingly have hyped themselves into believing the LLM is more right somehow instead of being trained on ev…

Your arguments are much lower quality than an LLM will generate. You are so transparently biased against them it is shocking. I’d certainly rather learn from an LLM than someone like you who is both grossly misinformed and a dick about it.

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

#310

Post by daveguy »

wolttam wrote: post #38

Humans will become individually and independently less skilled while having access to tools that allow them to do far more than even the most skilled human could, before having access to these tools. I'm not sure if we'll become less intelligent . I think our sacks of neurons are gonna keep on making associations, just across a different set of topics.

You overestimate the value of these tools to someone who couldn't already do the work or at the very least identify a good result.
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