In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
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In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
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Re: In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
#2I propose the complete opposite.
Just surrender and enjoy the freedom.
Of course you can always choose, just like you can choose to remember people’s phone numbers and driving directions. But you don’t need it.
Re: In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
#3Much like the evolving layers of abstraction in technology, the necessity for individuals to master the intricate, underlying layers wanes as time progresses. The article brings to mind the analogy of Assembly programming; while there are undoubtedly experts in this domain whose contributions are indispensable, the majority of programmers can comfortably rely on higher-level abstractions without delving into the complexities of Assembly. As AI continues to advance, general-purpose programming appears to be following a similar trajectory. Individuals have the choice to either become one of the few specialists at that level or to embrace and harness the emerging abstractions, thereby unlocking greater efficiency and innovation in their endeavors. It is crucial to strike a balance, recognizing the importance of both mastery and leveraging AI to optimize our creative potential.
Re: In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
#4from the post: What I’ve realized is that there are tasks I’m willing to let AI handle, as this enables me to take on more ambitious projects.
I've started doing this, getting some boilerplate or even throwaway code from ChatGPT helps me validate ideas quicker than if I wasn't using it.
Re: In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
#5Much like the evolving layers of abstraction in technology, the necessity for individuals to master the intricate, underlying layers wanes as time progresses. The article brings to mind the analogy of Assembly programming; while there are undoubtedly experts in this domain whose contributions are indispensable, the majority of programmers can comfortably rely on higher-level abstractions without delving into the comp…
> while there are undoubtedly experts in this domain whose contributions are indispensable, the majority of programmers can comfortably rely on higher-level abstractions without delving into the complexities of Assembly.
True. You don't need to be an assembly expert to be a great programmer, but I do think you need to have a solid understanding of how computers work all the way down to the CPU level in order to be a great programmer. And once you have that knowledge, assembly isn't a big hurdle anyway.
Re: In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
#6I am an existentialist: I am perfectly comfortable in a world with no inherent meaning. Sheer existence and action brings me joy. I spend hours of my day tinkering with computers not because of utility, but for the pleasure it brings.
I think if we could elicit this persons thoughts thoroughly we would find "meaning" underlying their perceived joy.
Re: In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
#7Much like the evolving layers of abstraction in technology, the necessity for individuals to master the intricate, underlying layers wanes as time progresses. The article brings to mind the analogy of Assembly programming; while there are undoubtedly experts in this domain whose contributions are indispensable, the majority of programmers can comfortably rely on higher-level abstractions without delving into the comp…
> while there are undoubtedly experts in this domain whose contributions are indispensable, the majority of programmers can comfortably rely on higher-level abstractions without delving into the complexities of Assembly. True. You don't need to be an assembly expert to be a great programmer, but I do think you need to have a solid understanding of how computers work all the way down to the CPU level in order to be a…
I don't think any individual needs to be an assembly expert, but as a community developers still need some people to be assembly experts.
Our systems will rot without people to maintain them, the AI aren't infallable yet.
The greater worry isn't that the general user will let mostly defunct skills rot, it's that we need a path to raise the next generation of experts in these niche skills.
Re: In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
#8I am an existentialist: I am perfectly comfortable in a world with no inherent meaning. Sheer existence and action brings me joy. I spend hours of my day tinkering with computers not because of utility, but for the pleasure it brings. I think if we could elicit this persons thoughts thoroughly we would find "meaning" underlying their perceived joy.
You can elicit my thoughts to your heart’s content. Of course there’s meaning. That’s different from inherent meaning (imbued into our world via a god or something).
Re: In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
#9I propose the complete opposite. Just surrender and enjoy the freedom. Of course you can always choose, just like you can choose to remember people’s phone numbers and driving directions. But you don’t need it.
Freedom? You've got a weird definition of "freedom" if you think surrendering your autonomy to whoever happens to be running the services you rely on is "freedom."
The problem is that long term, you won't have any idea if what it's spitting out is reasonable or not. We already have more than enough problems with systems being too complex to understand. Solving that with "more complexity we can't understand" doesn't seem a great solution, personally.
Re: In the age of AI, don't let your skills atrophy
#10I feel the same way I think. These days, I am happy when I am able to use GPT4 to complete a task faster or easier, but am also happy when I write some code "by myself".
However, as far as the conclusion of the article. This "age" started only a few months ago. If you are going to call it an age, then the conclusion doesn't hold up. In the long term, programming "by hand" is likely to be similar to wood carving today. It will be an artistic rather than utilitarian pursuit.
There are already multiple services and tools being built with the purpose of writing, deploying, and maintaining software in a 100% automated way using GPT3.5 and GPT4 and natural language specifications. I am building one of them.
We can't assume that these recent efforts to freeze the progress of AI will be successful. So we should anticipate very significant improvements in performance over the next few years.
Very shortly, everyone will realize that it is quite a huge waste of time and money to wait for a person to write code.