| ▲ | msdz 2 hours ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
If you liked this phrasing as much as I did, here’s an article that might resonate a lot with you: In particular, footnote eight: > This is not a claim about the future. Perhaps almost all or perhaps even all of the software skills I have will become irrelevant in the near future. But we're not there yet. At the moment, programming skills seem higher leverage than ever before. > There's something a bit funny about the current moment, where it seems like having the skills that models are replacing makes one much more effective than people who are trying to use models without having those skills. I like Max Bittker's framing that models are very good at counterfeiting and the level of expertise it takes to distinguish a counterfeit from the real thing has been increasing as models improve. As well as this section fairly at the start: > As far as I can tell, these problems are problems because people are implicitly carrying around a pre-agentic cost model. Ten years ago, the kind of person who implemented a new compiler because their compiler was slow was the kind of person who started programming a new 3d game engine when they wanted to make an indie game, i.e., the kind of person who never ships anything. Most productive programmers I know still have an aversion to this kind of thing, even though it is now actually reasonable to implement this kind of thing now. Of course, at the moment everything’s still a bit very much difficult to tell, but “productivity”, at least in applicable areas of work, might really come down to who can let go of the most understanding the easiest? Incredibly thought-provoking stuff. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | michaelchisari an hour ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| the level of expertise it takes to distinguish a counterfeit from the real thing has been increasing as models improve This is Bainbridge's 1982 paper Ironies of Automation restated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironies_of_Automation https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | bmitc an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> Of course, at the moment everything’s still a bit very much difficult to tell, but “productivity”, at least in applicable areas of work, might really come down to who can let go of the most understanding the easiest? Incredibly thought-provoking stuff. I cannot see it being a good thing to "let go" of understanding. If you don't understanding anything, then why would anyone keep you around? An example hypothetical situation is, if I have a colleague that outputs a bunch of productive things, but they don't understand it, and I do, then of what use are they? I have LLMs too and also have the understanding. It isn't clear to me why people are so comfortable with letting go of understanding. And it's a bit bizarre because it always seems to be framed as "you're going to get left behind if you care about understanding". I also never hear or read anyone who has any real and deep experience say these things. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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