I think this is probably true for most skilled professions. AI is best used in the hands of folks already knowledgeable in the skills/professions they are using it for.

I liken it to me googling things as a sysadmin vs. Jane from accounting doing it. The non-tech end user is far more likely to make the problem worse, or install something sketchy from the ad riddled results than I am, or one of my help desk employees are.

I wouldn't trust myself to draft an important legal document using AI without the advice of a lawyer, much like I wouldn't really want to rely on my lawyer to use AI to write code for me.

▲ godelski 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

  > I think this is probably true for most skilled professions.

I agree, BUT I also find that it's easy for experts to atrophy quickly. When the AI is right 80/90% of the time it lulls you into over confidence.

I find those that are best and make the greatest use are the ones who remain skeptical but also use the tool. The same people who were already nuanced and picky before AI. The same people who already doubted and questioned their own work, and used that suspicion to help prevent them from having over confidence in their own work. If you weren't willing to just "lgtm" with your own code, it's difficult to do that with AI.

(To be clear, I'm not saying perfectionists. Some might call them that because the picky people have higher standards, but a good expert has to also understand that perfection doesn't exist. That's often a driving force in the suspicion! This also tends to cause them to continually improve)

	▲	stult 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I would agree with this point and as I explained in a comment replying to the GP comment above, that atrophy is far more dangerous in the legal field than it is with code because legal documents do not benefit from the structural safeguards available for code, like automated testing, static typing, static analysis tools, etc. IME with legal LLMs so far, they are easily in that most dangerous valley where they can lull you into a false sense of security while still introducing extremely dangerous mistakes that are frequently difficult to detect without very careful reading. The danger of those mistakes creeping in also grows exponentially the farther a lawyer strays from their core legal expertise. There are a few statutes I know inside and out, and I can spot LLM analytical errors related to them in a split second, but once I venture out into domains where I am not an expert (but where I am nevertheless reasonably qualified to practice), it becomes much harder to spot drafting mistakes because I have not refreshed my own understanding of the law by reviewing the relevant cases or statutes as I would when drafting the analysis myself from scratch.

▲ ChrisMarshallNY 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I wouldn't really want to rely on my lawyer to use AI to write code for me.

Yet that is exactly what a lot of C-Suiters (many of whom are lawyers), are doing.

▲

xiaoyu2006 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Vice versa there is also a lot of irresponsible programmers doing stupid things with ai. Irresponsible people stay irresponsible, AI just make them more productive at being irresponsible.

	▲	consp 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The problem is the low levels have no influence whatsoever. The higher ups force crap down and none ever comes back.

▲ zuzululu 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

im not so sure

i think devs overestimate their own role and underestimate others

i am seeing lawyers and doctors roll out their own software with AI

but we dont have their training and experience

	▲	thatcat 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So a software engineer could diagnose an illness with ai, even if they happen to be right that doesn't really prove much about how bad of an idea it could be in a long tail scenario.

▲ stackghost 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's like that in engineering, for sure. My background is in aerospace and there are lots of things that a reasonably technically-inclined random can probably do passably. It takes an engineer to know which tasks those are, though.

I would imagine it's similar in law, in that it takes a lawyer or judge to know where the foot guns lie.