The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus'
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Re: The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus'
#2> Search enginers offer a good choice between Exploration (crawl through the list and pages of results) and Exploitation (click on the top result).
LLMs, however, do not give this choice.
I've actually found that LLMs are great at exploration for me. I'd argue, even better than exploitation. I've solved many a complex problem by using an LLM as a thought partner. I've refined many ideas by getting the LLM to brainstorm with me. There's this awesome feedback loop you can create with the LLM when you're in exploration mode that is impossible to replicate on your own, and still somewhat difficult even with a human thought partner.
Re: The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus'
#3the Exploitation and exploration got me thinking, what if LLM generate, say, 5 results at a time and let user choose the best
Re: The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus'
#4I'm definitely gonna get hate for saying this but: the rise of coding with LLM assistants is going to worsen an issue our industry is already struggling with: we have tons of developers out there who do not know their fundamentals in programming, who are utterly rudderless without heaps upon heaps of framework code doing lots of work for them, who are now being further enabled by machines that write even that code for them with some tweaking afterwards.
I have interacted with software developers at conferences who cannot do basic things with computers, like navigate file systems, or make changes to the Windows registry, where to get and how to use environment variables, how to diagnose and fix PC issues... Like in a perfect world your IT department sorts this stuff for you but I struggle to take seriously someone who claims to create software who seemingly lacks basic computer literacy in a number of areas.
And I'm sorry, "it compiles and runs" is the bare fucking minimum for software quality. We have machines these days that would run circles around my first PC in the late 90's, but despite that, everything is slower and runs worse. My desktop messaging apps are each currently sucking up over 600 MB of RAM apiece, which is nearly 3 times what my original PC had total. Everything is some bloated shite that requires internet access now at all times or it utterly crashes and dies, and I'm sorry but I cannot separate in my mind the fact that we have seemingly a large contingent of software developers out there that can't bloody use computers to thank for this. And cheap-ass management, to be clear, but I think these are nested problems.
Re: The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus'
#5Losing focus as a skill is something I see with every batch of new students. It’s not just LLMs, almost every app and startup is competing for the same limited attention from every user.
What LLMs have done for most of my students is remove all the barriers to an answer they once had to work for. It’s easy to get hooked on fast answers and forget to ask why something works. That said, I think LLMs can support exploration—often beyond what Googling ever did—if we approach them the right way.
I’ve seen moments where students pushed back on a first answer and uncovered deeper insights, but only because they chose to dig. The real danger isn’t the tool, it’s forgetting how to use it thoughtfully.
Re: The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus'
#6People will need AI just to communicate in a polite manner! What is todays politically correct language? Who is current approved celebrity? What if you quoted something, that is somehow offensive today?!
No, skill for future is using AI to carve out safe space for yourself, so you can focus without distractions!
Re: The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus'
#7> This idea summarizes why I disagree with those who equate the LLM revolution to the rise of search engines, like Google in the 90s. Search enginers offer a good choice between Exploration (crawl through the list and pages of results) and Exploitation (click on the top result).
> LLMs, however, do not give this choice, and tend to encourage immediate exploitation instead. Users may explore if the first solution does not work, but the first choice is always to exploit.
Well said, and an interesting idea, but most of my LLM usage (besides copilot autocomplete) is actually very search-engine-esque. I ask it to explain existing design decisions, or to search for a library that fits my needs, or come up with related queries so I can learn more.
Once I've chosen a library or an approach for the task, I'll have the LLM write out some code. For anything significantly more substantive code than copilot completions, I almost always do some exploring before I exploit.
Re: The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus'
#8the Exploitation and exploration got me thinking, what if LLM generate, say, 5 results at a time and let user choose the best
I have that experience plenty with gpt and gemini
Re: The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus'
#9> This idea summarizes why I disagree with those who equate the LLM revolution to the rise of search engines, like Google in the 90s. Search enginers offer a good choice between Exploration (crawl through the list and pages of results) and Exploitation (click on the top result). > LLMs, however, do not give this choice, and tend to encourage immediate exploitation instead. Users may explore if the first solution does…
I’m finding the same usage of LLMs in terms of what actually I use them for day to day. When I need to look up arcane information, an LLM generally does better than a Google search.
Re: The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus'
#10I'm definitely gonna get hate for saying this but: the rise of coding with LLM assistants is going to worsen an issue our industry is already struggling with: we have tons of developers out there who do not know their fundamentals in programming, who are utterly rudderless without heaps upon heaps of framework code doing lots of work for them, who are now being further enabled by machines that write even that code fo…
> It compiles and runs
…and rapidly becomes deprecated not due to quality but because the requirements for operation or development changed substantially. This second order effects make the “compile and run” focus paradoxically efficient and correct use of resources. Engineers, especially academically experienced ones, prematurely optimize for correctness and arbitrary dimensions of quality because they are disconnected from and motivated by interests orthogonal to their users.