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AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

koshyjohn.com

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Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#61

Post by cyclopeanutopia »

sheepscreek wrote: post #6

AI is creating problems. This isn’t one of them. Engineers are going to now think at a higher level of abstraction. No one misses coding in assembly.

> No one misses coding in assembly.

It's only your opinion that is provably false.

First, there are still people who don't like high level languages and don't use them, because they find assembly better.

Second, I personally work in a field where I need to consult the source of truth, the actual binary, and not the high level source code - precisely because the high level of abstraction is obscuring the real mechanics of software and someone needs to debug and clean up the mess done by "high level thinkers".

High level programming languages are only an illusion (albeit a good one) but good engineers remember that illusion is an illusion.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#62

Post by sumeno »

erxam wrote: post #42

Here's the question I want to posit and nobody who's against AI has managed to answer satisfactorily: what is it in for me if I were to acquire all those skills? I don't give a shit about this career. I don't give a shit about engineering. I despise every second of it. There's nothing to aim for other than being a drone that does whatever is asked of it. If AI can reduce my mental workload, why wouldn't I want to del…

Why are you employable if the AI does everything for you?

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#63

Post by miyoji »

stavros wrote: post #20

Skills you don't need, atrophy. Skills you need, don't. It's very simple, and the "you won't have the skills you used to need but don't need any more!" line of reasoning is tired and invalid.

That's not how it works, unfortunately. Skills you use stay fresh, skills you don't practice get rusty and fade away. You might need things you aren't using anymore.

If you never walk, your legs get weak, you gain weight, your aerobic system loses capacity, and you lose the ability to walk. You don't need it, you say, because you have your car and your mobility scooter and you'll always have these things. Your crutches don't make you weaker, you can still do everything the walkers can do, you say.

Good luck with the nature hike!

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#64

Post by stavros »

miyoji wrote: post #63
stavros wrote: post #20

Skills you don't need, atrophy. Skills you need, don't. It's very simple, and the "you won't have the skills you used to need but don't need any more!" line of reasoning is tired and invalid.

That's not how it works, unfortunately. Skills you use stay fresh, skills you don't practice get rusty and fade away. You might need things you aren't using anymore. If you never walk, your legs get weak, you gain weight, your aerobic system loses capacity, and you lose the ability to walk. You don't need it, you say, because you have your car and your mobility scooter and you'll always have these things. Your crutch…

Sure. What are these programming skills you never need but that you're going to need at some indeterminate time in the future?

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#65

Post by hun3 »

sheepscreek wrote: post #6

AI is creating problems. This isn’t one of them. Engineers are going to now think at a higher level of abstraction. No one misses coding in assembly.

You can write unambiguous (UB-free) code and the compiler's output will be deterministic. There will even be a spec that explains how your source maps to your program's behavior. LLM has neither.

Also, if you need to control performance, you still need to know how CPU cache and branch prediction works, both of which exists at the abstraction level of assembly.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#66

Post by staticshock »

The eloquence with which this point gets (repeatedly) made is continuing to improve each next time I read it. However, I still feel like we haven't nailed it. That is, we are not yet at the "aphorism" stage of the discourse (e.g. "the medium is the message", "you ship your org chart", "9 mothers can't make a baby in a month"), in which the most pointed version of this critique packs a punch in just a few words that resonate with the majority of people. That kind of epistemological chiseling takes years, if not decades. And AI certainly won't do it for us, because we don't know how to RL meaning-making.

Edit: 9 babies → 9 mothers

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#67

Post by orblivion »

andsoitis wrote: post #21
orblivion wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compilers are a layer of abstraction that we can ask another human about. Some human is there taking care of it. Until we get to the point where we trust AI with our survival it would be good to be able to audit the entire stack.

any human can read the code an AI produces.

Unless people can't think without the AI.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#68

Post by cyberpunk »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #43
andsoitis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any human can read the code an AI produces.

Nope, not anymore. Many already forgot how to do that and it's not a joke. And putting aside the vanishing skill, there is also an issue of volume.

So... Our jobs are safe then? I mean, assuming we don't also atrophy to the same extent as the 'many'?

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#69

Post by operatingthetan »

joe_mamba wrote: post #30
operatingthetan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle, HP, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Apple, Xerox and countless other names were internally bureaucratic and political in the 80's and 90's. Like famously so.

Every single one of those companies you mentioned was lean, agile and run by skilled motivated nerds with mullets and thick glasses in the beginning when they started in a garage. And every single major company becomes bureaucratic and political after 30+ years in the business when the original founders are long retired, and the Wall Street friendly beancounters take over, caring only about the quarterly reports.

You are changing your argument by adding this: "when they started in a garage."

'Lean agile' tech companies are by far the exception, not the rule.

Look at OpenAI and Anthropic, both fairly new companies that are excessively political already. This 'garage stage' of lacking politics is a myth, read old stories about Microsoft, when it was 15 people it was political.

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