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Not everyone is using AI for everything

gabrielweinberg.com

491–500 of 565 posts

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#491
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think honesty is still probably correct - if you're struggling to figure out how to hedge. I think you'd rather have good odds at some companies and 0% at others, rather than abysmal but non-zero odds at all companies. And as an added bonus, you might get hired at a company where you're actually a good fit, rather than one you weasled your way into, and get to pay rent, food bills, and other expenses through employ…

It's pretty easy as an interviewer to spot when a candidate is hedging on a question, and it's the kind of thing that might get discussed in the post-interview debrief. "Wouldn't give a straight answer on question X" isn't an instant no-hire, but it's not a positive signal.

I mean, let's be real here. There is such a thing as too honest in an interview.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#492
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it's because he is seeking to pay rent, food bills, and other expenses through employment.

I mean maybe that is because I live in a still mostly not failed state (Germany), but I can't imagine that these things would be _so bad_ that living in fear of saying the wrong thing would be something worth considering. Plus, and leaving that aside, I have my doubts that even if you did that, that that company would stay alive for very long. Reality has the habit of eventually ripping this kind of unproductively de…

Yes, I'm sure in Germany nobody ever muffs an interview by offending the interviewer.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it's because he is seeking to pay rent, food bills, and other expenses through employment.

It's possible to work for an employer, and not have to compromise your values and or professional integrity. The attitude suggested by your response suggests you haven't lived that reality yet. Either way, I'd rather be rejected by an employer for speaking my truth, than lie to be somewhere I'd rather not be.

Everyone can decide where the line is for them, but I do feel like given the subject that's a bit of a hyperbolic repsonse.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#494

"This tracks with Microsoft's new United States AI Diffusion site, based on "anonymized, aggregated Microsoft telemetry."" Surreptitious surveillance, probably with dubious consent Is Redmond afraid to just ask users Then compare the data If no one asnwers when asked then maybe that means they don't wish to allow Microsoft collect that data "SearchLight asked about a range of technologies and to say "whether you beli…

*answers

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#495
post #52

One thing I'd personally like to see a little more discussion of (at least within my social circles) is.. what exactly does "using AI" mean? How does this connect to everyone's high level ideas/thoughts about "tech", "AI" and "morals and feels" etc. These lines can start to seem a little blurry, at least for me. For example, would we say my partner is "using AI" (for all intents and purposes), if she's frequently usi…

My understanding is that the threshold people mean are that the vampire kids would be fired for not having 1/4 million spend in tokens per quarter.

EG: That the entire conversation is juggled by the token selling shills, per usual.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#496
post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say this argument is not relevant to the specific question the article tries to answer, as AI adoption through these means is forced and may in many cases go against user preferences. Edit: The deciding factor being whether you want to figure out if people are interested in AI / find it useful, or if the question you seek answered is more akin to "X% of people consume lead in their food"

People eating lead in their food don't know it's there. People engaging with the AI built into Google results pages can see it, and assumedly Google's A/B testing showed that they engaged with it.

Bait and switch user interfaces to insert AI into places AI did not previously exist and make sure you see an AI answer before anything else is not far divorced from the "lead in food" example - especially when paired with efforts to make the 10 Blue Links become irrelevant garbage on average by ignoring most of the words you type in.

Maybe it's a better analogy to compare this to food-without-lead costing 10 times as much as food-with-lead in large part because of direct actions undertaken by lead manufacturers.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing to say when you don't know the answer probabilistically is to give the most likely correct answer.

Common sense not common

You can’t have common sense when you have no shared values.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what I'm using AI for these days, seems like it always was.

It depends on where you're using AI. If you're working on a project for yourself or in a tiny company. Then sure, writing the code probably was your bottleneck. But at mid to large companies writing code is maybe 50% of the job, and the other 50% is the process around it. All those processes are the bottle neck, no matter how fast you can write the code. And this was a bottleneck I was hitting well before AI.

I'd put it even lower than that, since there's also the "understand the problem space" portion outside of the external processes and before writing the code.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy wanted a job, didn't know what answer you wanted for the job, and you guys were being assholes. If you can accept that then you've learnt something.

It was a question of the form trying to figure out how you deal with "X", and he denied X having ever happened, despite that being a core part of his current role. He was an internal candidate, we were interviewing him to see if we could trust him with more responsibility (more X specifically), since the new role shouldn't cover up X when it happens. The role involved doing X for himself AND for other people. Similar…

I guess it's a bit different when it's an internal candidate.

I've been on the recieving end of clueless folk trying to make me feel small when I've just been looking for a job, so I might be a bit sensitive about it! Sorry for any offense given. Thankfully I'm beyond that craziness now and can just do what I want for work.

Re: Not everyone is using AI for everything

#500
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it's because he is seeking to pay rent, food bills, and other expenses through employment.

A truthful, nuanced, well reasoned answer will be well received by an employer with a culture you want to work in.

This thread is about new grads. Have you talked to anyone looking for junior positions lately? They don't get to choose employers anymore. Heck, many of them will not even get a chance to enter the field if the current junior hiring situation continues.
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