>what's the point of "getting in early"? You're trying to make the point using BitCoin, but in the early 2000s I had just over 14,000 of them, so I can quite clearly see a point in getting in early.
The bitcoin white paper was released in 2008.
I'm OK being left behind, thanks
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Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks
#52I’m suprised nobody has mentioned that Claude is the realization of all this blockchain work - an internet computer you rent time from where the computation is measured in tokens :)
Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks
#53There are real productivity gains by using these tools right now. Instead of doing 1x your normal work, you can do 5x while still maintaining quality. This is like an accountant sticking to pen and paper because calculators are big and clunky.
> I feel the same way about the current crop of AI tools. I've tried a bunch of them. Some are good. Most are a bit shit. Few are useful to me as they are now. [...] If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours.
I think the point the author is making is not that it's all useless, but against the very overly simplistic idea the plot of Amount of AI vs Productivity in All Situations is a hockey stick chart.
Being told to be excited about something when clearly all they're saying is "it works sometimes, other times not so much. I'll keep checking and when it's good enough for me I'll get on board" is aggravating.
Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks
#54some people are not ok, some people lose their jobs and suffer because they are too complacent and it's too uncomfortable to adapt. This is the lazy guy path, is not the wise one.
People mostly lose their jobs and suffer through no failure they were positioned to avoid, and often through no fault of their own at all. Spending your career chasing fads out of fear of being abandoned to penury is at least as limiting as mere conservatism towards new technologies. The risk is real and the fear is valid but that isn't the solution, no individual action you can take is the solution.
Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks
#55Feels like a false equivalency. It's just my experience, but I've completely ignored crypto and the metaverse, and I don't get the sense I'm missing out on much. In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working implementation, which has been legitimately transformative in my software dev life. Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose…
> Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose
That's the point of the blog post. If you can't even say right now whether it's for the better, then there's no reason to rush in.
Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks
#56I actually think the opposite approach might be the most optimal one, at least from a monetary perspective. That is, be on the cutting-edge of something, but be willing to bail out at the moment its future starts seeming questionable. Or even more specifically, maximize your foothold in it while minimizing your downside.
Bitcoin is a good example: if you bought it 15 years ago and held it, you're probably quite wealthy by now. Even if you sold it 5 years ago, you would have made a ton of money. But if you quit your job and started a cryptocurrency company circa 2020, because you thought crypto would eat the entire economic system, you probably wasted a lot of time and opportunities. Too much invested, too much risked.
AI is another one. If you were using AI to create content in the months/years before it really blew up, you had a competitive advantage, and it might have really grown your business/website/etc. But if you're now starting an AI company that helps people generate content about something, you're a bit late. The cat is out of the bag, and people know what AI-speak is. The early-adopter advantage isn't there anymore.
Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks
#57There are real productivity gains by using these tools right now. Instead of doing 1x your normal work, you can do 5x while still maintaining quality. This is like an accountant sticking to pen and paper because calculators are big and clunky.
> Instead of doing 1x your normal work, you can do 5x while still maintaining quality.
Yet my pay stays the same, all my coworkers get fired, and Sam Altman gets all of their paychecks. Hrm.
Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks
#58Guy who's ok with being left behind (crypto, AI) did a MSc on the metaverse. Sounds like he tried to go with the hype once, got burned.
You're welcome to read my MSc and see if I was "going with the hype" https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.10542
The answer was quite the opposite. I wanted to see if the technology lived up to the hype. The answer, unsurprisingly was no. If only Zuck had listened to me :-)
Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks
#59I'm upvoting because it's useful to see and debate this viewpoint — shared by many engineers I know I do think it's a bad take though. Not all new trends are the same: the metaverse was an obvious flop and crypto hasn't found practical applications. AI isn't like those because it's already practically changed the way I get my job done. It takes time to learn skills, and getting started earlier will means more time to…
The way I see it is - AI still makes mistakes, and I have to know how things work at some point anyway. So I'd rather spend my time actually understanding fundamentals (in my case, CSS at the moment), than trying to keep up with the frequently changing AI tools and models.
Once the tools and models stabilize more (as well as the pricing model), there's less risk in me learning something that is no longer relevant.
Except when I choose to wait on learning how to use AI tools effectively, I get told I am going to be "left behind".
Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks
#60It's a horrifying feeling facing the possibility that the career I spent so much time and money to get into is fading away. Sure, LLMs are not there yet, and they might not ever quite get there. But will companies start hiring again? If productivity has gone up, and it seems like it has, then no. So, a decade of hanging by a thread, getting by and doubling down on CS, hoping that the job market sees an uptick? Or try…
I've worked in tech since the late 90's and recently became an apprentice potter. My work in pottery is so much more fulfilling than any tech work I've done. I wish I had started sooner.
I'm still working in tech, and likely will forever in a much reduced capacity. But pottery is my life now.