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Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

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Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#51

Post by JimDabell »

harimau777 wrote: post #50
JimDabell wrote: post #27

If AI can do the easiest 50% of our tasks, then it means we will end up spending all of our time on what we previously considered to be the most difficult 50% of tasks. This has a lot of implications, but it does generally result in the job being more interesting overall.

In my experience, the 50% most difficult part of a problem is often the most boring. E.g. writing tests, tracking down obscure bugs, trying to understand API or library documentation, etc. It's often stuff that is very difficult but doesn't take all that much creativity.

I disagree with all of those. Tracking down obscure bugs is interesting, and all the other examples are easy.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#52

Post by towledev »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #45
voxelghost wrote: post #10

I don't have LLM/AI write or generate any code or document for me. Partly because the quality is not good enough, and partly I worry about copyright/licensing/academic rigor, partly because I worry about losing my own edge. But I do use LLM/AI, as a rubber duck that talks back, as a google on steroids - but one who needs his work double checked. And as domain discovery tool when quickly trying to get a grasp of a new…

In the new world that's emerging, you are losing your edge by not learning how to master and leverage AI agents. Quality not good enough? Instruct them in how you want them to code, and make sure a sufficient quantity of the codebase is loaded into their context so they can see examples of what you consider good enough.

>Instruct them in how you want them to code

They don't always listen.

Writing SQL, I'll give ChatGPT the schema for 5 different tables. It habitually generates solutions with columns that don't exist. So, naturally, I append, "By the way, TableA has no column FieldB." Then it just imagines a different one. Or, I'll say, "Do not generate a solution with any table-col pair not provided above." It doesn't listen to that at all.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#53

Post by zeroto100 »

keiferski wrote: post #49

I have gotten much more value out of AI tools by focusing on the process and not the product. By this I mean that I treat it as a loosely-defined brainstorming tool that expands my “zone of knowledge”, and not as a way to create some particular thing. In this way, I am infinitely more tolerant of minor problems in the output, because I’m not using the tool to create a specific output, I’m using it to enhance the thin…

Agree - I tend to think of it as offloading thinking time. Delegating work to an agent just becomes more work for me, with the quality I've seen. But conversations where I control the context are both fun and generally insightful, even if I decide the initial idea isn't a good one.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#54

Post by CuriouslyC »

towledev wrote: post #52
CuriouslyC wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the new world that's emerging, you are losing your edge by not learning how to master and leverage AI agents. Quality not good enough? Instruct them in how you want them to code, and make sure a sufficient quantity of the codebase is loaded into their context so they can see examples of what you consider good enough.

>Instruct them in how you want them to code They don't always listen. Writing SQL, I'll give ChatGPT the schema for 5 different tables. It habitually generates solutions with columns that don't exist. So, naturally, I append, "By the way, TableA has no column FieldB." Then it just imagines a different one. Or, I'll say, "Do not generate a solution with any table-col pair not provided above." It doesn't listen to that…

I haven't had that problem with Gemini 2.5 pro or O3, are you on the free tier of ChatGPT?

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#55

Post by paulcole »

Thesis: Using the word “thesis” is a great way to disguise a whiny op-ed as the writings of a learned soul

> interesting work (i.e., work worth doing)

Let me guess, the work you do is interesting work (i.e., work worth doing) and the work other people do is uninteresting work (i.e., work not worth doing).

Funny how that always happens!

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#56

Post by keiferski »

zeroto100 wrote: post #53
keiferski wrote: post #49

I have gotten much more value out of AI tools by focusing on the process and not the product. By this I mean that I treat it as a loosely-defined brainstorming tool that expands my “zone of knowledge”, and not as a way to create some particular thing. In this way, I am infinitely more tolerant of minor problems in the output, because I’m not using the tool to create a specific output, I’m using it to enhance the thin…

Agree - I tend to think of it as offloading thinking time. Delegating work to an agent just becomes more work for me, with the quality I've seen. But conversations where I control the context are both fun and generally insightful, even if I decide the initial idea isn't a good one.

That is a good metaphor. I frequently use ChatGPT in a way that basically boils down to: I could spend an hour thinking about and researching X basic thing I know little about, or I could have the AI write me a summary that is 95% good enough but only takes a few seconds of my time.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#58

Post by pickledoyster »

satisfice wrote: post #31
janaagaard wrote: post #12

A Danish audio newspaper host / podcaster had the exact apposite conclusion when he used ChatGPT to write the manuscript for one his episodes. He ended up spending as much time as he usually does because he had to fact check everything that the LLM came up with. Spoiler: It made up a lot of stuff despite it being very clear in the prompt, that it should not do so. To him, it was the most fun part, that is writing the…

As a writer I find his take appalling and incomprehensible. So, apparently not all writers agree that writing with AI is fun. To me, it’s a sickening violation of integrity.

Yeah, if I were their reader, I'd most likely never read anything from them again, since nothing's stopping them from doing away with integrity altogether and just stitching together a bunch of scripts ('agents') into an LLM slop pipeline.

It's so weird how people use LLMs to automate the most important and rewarding parts of the creative process. I get that companies have no clue how to market the things, but it really shows a lack of imagination and self-awareness when a 'creative' repackages slop for their audience and calls it 'fun'.

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#59

Post by pickledoyster »

JimDabell wrote: post #27

If AI can do the easiest 50% of our tasks, then it means we will end up spending all of our time on what we previously considered to be the most difficult 50% of tasks. This has a lot of implications, but it does generally result in the job being more interesting overall.

Or, alternatively, the difficult 50% are difficult because they're uninteresting, like trying to find an obscure workaround for an unfixed bug in excel, or re-authing for the n-th time today, or updating a Jira ticket, or getting the only person with access to a database to send you a dataset when they never as much as reply to your emails...

Re: Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI

#60

Post by briandw »

I feel much more confident that I can take on a project in a domain that im not very familiar with. Ive been digging into llvm ir and I had not prior experience with it. ChatGPT is a much better guide to getting started than the documentation, which is very low quality.
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