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The Leverage Paradox in AI

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Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#51

Post by jplusequalt »

sdesol wrote: post #45
jplusequalt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel as if your ability to code is atrophying?

Not even remotely since the 5% that I need to write is usually quite complex. I do think my writing proficiency will decrease though. However my debugging and problem solving skills should increase. Having said all of that, I do believe AI will have a very negative affect on developers where the challenge is skill and not time. AI is implementing things that I can do if given enough time. I am literraly implementing…

>Not even remotely since the 5% that I need to write is usually quite complex.

Not sure I believe this. If you suddenly automate away 95% of any task, how could it be the case you retain 100% of your prior abilities?

>However my debugging and problem solving skills should increase

By "my", I assume you mean "my LLM"?

>I do think my writing proficiency will decrease though.

This alone is cause for concern. The ability for a human being to communicate without assistance is extremely important in an age where AI is outputting a significant fraction of all new content.

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#52

Post by [deleted] »

conartist6 wrote: post #49
esafak wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is an exponential return? You need to be more precise with your terms.

An investment in a person has superlinear returns: with time the human student becomes the teacher. Each person you teach might teach two more people, with the overall trend following exponential growth deriving from the value of the initial investment in a single person. LLMs promise to speed you up right now in direct proportion to the amount you pay for tokens while sacrificing your own growth potential. You'd hav…

[deleted]

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#53

Post by sdesol »

jplusequalt wrote: post #51
sdesol wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even remotely since the 5% that I need to write is usually quite complex. I do think my writing proficiency will decrease though. However my debugging and problem solving skills should increase. Having said all of that, I do believe AI will have a very negative affect on developers where the challenge is skill and not time. AI is implementing things that I can do if given enough time. I am literraly implementing…

>Not even remotely since the 5% that I need to write is usually quite complex. Not sure I believe this. If you suddenly automate away 95% of any task, how could it be the case you retain 100% of your prior abilities? >However my debugging and problem solving skills should increase By "my", I assume you mean "my LLM"? >I do think my writing proficiency will decrease though. This alone is cause for concern. The ability…

> Not sure I believe this. If you suddenly automate away 95% of any task, how could it be the case you retain 100% of your prior abilities?

I need to review like crazy now, so it is not like I am handing off my understanding of the problem. If anything, I learn new things from time to time, as the LLM will generate code in ways that I haven't thought of before.

The AI genie is out of the bottle now and I do believe in a year or two, companies are going to start asking for conversations along with the LLM generated code, which is how I guess you can determine if people are losing their skill. When my code is fully published, I will include conversations for every feature/bug fix that is introduced.

> The ability for a human being to communicate without assistance is extremely important

I agree with this, but once again, it isn't like I don't have to review everything. When LLMs get much better, I think my writing skills may decline, but as it currently stands, I do find myself having to revised what the LLM writes to make it sound more natural.

Everything is speculation at this point, but I am sure I will lose some skills but I also think will gain new ones by being exposed to something that I haven't thought of before.

I wrote my chat app because I needed a more comfortable way to read and write *long* messages. For the foreseeable future, I don't see my writing proficiency to decrease in any significant manner. I can see myself being slower to write in the future though, as I find myself being very comfortable speaking to the LLM in a manner that I would not to a human. LLMs are extremely good at inferring context, so I do a lot lazy typing now to speed things up, which may turn into a bad habit.

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#54

Post by esafak »

conartist6 wrote: post #49
esafak wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is an exponential return? You need to be more precise with your terms.

An investment in a person has superlinear returns: with time the human student becomes the teacher. Each person you teach might teach two more people, with the overall trend following exponential growth deriving from the value of the initial investment in a single person. LLMs promise to speed you up right now in direct proportion to the amount you pay for tokens while sacrificing your own growth potential. You'd hav…

Returns for who, the company or the student? Juniors are often a net negative for companies. Some stay that way because they just won't learn. You would get further by hiring seniors and learning from them.

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#55

Post by conartist6 »

esafak wrote: post #54
conartist6 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An investment in a person has superlinear returns: with time the human student becomes the teacher. Each person you teach might teach two more people, with the overall trend following exponential growth deriving from the value of the initial investment in a single person. LLMs promise to speed you up right now in direct proportion to the amount you pay for tokens while sacrificing your own growth potential. You'd hav…

Returns for who, the company or the student? Juniors are often a net negative for companies. Some stay that way because they just won't learn. You would get further by hiring seniors and learning from them .

Again that's the cynical view which assumes management but no leadership with any ability or conviction. Sadly that's commonly the reality now.

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#56

Post by chii »

pluto_modadic wrote: post #35

Ghibli images are not "cows", they're /an artists style/, and a particular shop that has expressly asked that you *not copy their work*, because it cheapens what humans do.

why should this argument work, but not the same argument for using a combine harvester which also cheapens the work of a farmer?
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