it’s getting to the point where I notice people say it a lot, especially IRL now for whatever reason recently.
And for clarity I’m not in research or anything, so these people just mean ‘LLM/image gen’, not utilities like OCR or (usually not) transcription.
Some have argued it’s just more efficient (which I can kind of get), while others think you’re actively hindering your intelligence somehow.
On the first point:
I’ve tried it occasionally to see how it compares to my own skill, and while it produces a functional result, it’s always very derivative work to the point where you can find things with the exact same names of other ‘public’ (but not libre) works, and often isn’t the ideal solution to what it targets. So I can see how you can get things out of it, but it never felt really that profound to me.
But for the second… isn’t this supposed to be the tool for people to do things they aren’t experienced in? If anything, you probably need to be able to understand how to write pertaining to the task so the token probabilities are biased toward writing from that area.
And even then, if all you end up doing is prompting AI, then wouldn’t you ultimately serve no purpose outside of being glorified QA?
I guess I’m trying to figure out what exactly non-users would be ‘falling behind’ in that affects them more than those who use AI?
The thing is that it’s apparently expected that everyone use AI.
With StackOverflow it was less than the full complement of developers who went there for help, so there was always someone to provide answers.
AI will kill StackOverflow and places like it. AI will create a dearth of new developers, and those that still choose the profession will be AI rotted and unable to move up or advance. They won’t post anywhere on the Internet, and even if they do, what they know was derived from StackOverflow before it stopped being updated. That’s not even a complete cover of tech now, let alone several years down the line when tech has moved on.
This whole thing is cashing in an investment and in 20 years we’re going to be confused about why that investment is no longer accruing interest.