I enjoyed this read and I think it sums up my thoughts about AI: if you don’t do the grunt work you can understand what you are doing. If you can’t understand it, then you can’t check it, and you...
I enjoyed this read and I think it sums up my thoughts about AI: if you don’t do the grunt work you can understand what you are doing. If you can’t understand it, then you can’t check it, and you lose half the reason of doing it in the first place (that deep understanding).
I tend to avoid LLMs in the same way I avoid using NG th car for trips I can walk- I don’t want those muscles to atrophy, and learning to struggle sometimes makes you strong and competent.
Thanks for sharing. This is exactly my biggest issue with AI. I'm grumpy about all sorts of other issues that it brings, but this is the one that can't really be "fixed" in my mind. I'm in an...
Thanks for sharing. This is exactly my biggest issue with AI. I'm grumpy about all sorts of other issues that it brings, but this is the one that can't really be "fixed" in my mind. I'm in an interesting position that I'm somewhat new to my field but not new to learning technical skills. The balance of doing grunt work to strengthen my chops and just getting things done or avoiding annoying work is ongoing. I don't have answers, but more and more I've been doing the grunt work. One, because I've found some flagship models less useful lately, not sure if they've been detuned or just tuned away from how I like to us them. And two because I've found that using AI is more friction over the long term than doing the work to memorize or master the boring or annoying thing. There's joy for me in knowing things and as the article points out: you can't nod along with an answer and call it knowledge gained.
I guess the problem is that there is a very specious rebuttal that says that plato objected to writing, people flipped out about calculator usage, and computers etc and we are all fine. But we...
I guess the problem is that there is a very specious rebuttal that says that plato objected to writing, people flipped out about calculator usage, and computers etc and we are all fine.
But we aren't fine. I am deeply embedded in high tech stuff and it makes me exceptionally uncomfortable how specialized our thinking has become and how disconnected we are from almost everything we use. LLMs are the next rung on the ladder of delegation, and instead of saying "it's fine, look at all the runs we've already climbed, this the natural progression of things" I feel like we should be saying "we should maybe descend a little?" It is nuts how many things your average Joe interacts with that they have zero understanding of, and it's allowing for all kinds of nasty consequences (algorithmic feeds, dynamic black box pricing with real consequences, i.e. insurance). AI labs can't really explain why models do what they do, and while they are chipping away at the problem, we are sprinting towards using them everywhere.
I feel for the young'uns. I have no idea how they will navigate this without the grace and generosity that was afforded to me when I was a teen to make mistakes without something ubiquitous and available and way smarter than me whispering answers in my ear.
I enjoyed this read and I think it sums up my thoughts about AI: if you don’t do the grunt work you can understand what you are doing. If you can’t understand it, then you can’t check it, and you lose half the reason of doing it in the first place (that deep understanding).
I tend to avoid LLMs in the same way I avoid using NG th car for trips I can walk- I don’t want those muscles to atrophy, and learning to struggle sometimes makes you strong and competent.
Thanks for sharing. This is exactly my biggest issue with AI. I'm grumpy about all sorts of other issues that it brings, but this is the one that can't really be "fixed" in my mind. I'm in an interesting position that I'm somewhat new to my field but not new to learning technical skills. The balance of doing grunt work to strengthen my chops and just getting things done or avoiding annoying work is ongoing. I don't have answers, but more and more I've been doing the grunt work. One, because I've found some flagship models less useful lately, not sure if they've been detuned or just tuned away from how I like to us them. And two because I've found that using AI is more friction over the long term than doing the work to memorize or master the boring or annoying thing. There's joy for me in knowing things and as the article points out: you can't nod along with an answer and call it knowledge gained.
I guess the problem is that there is a very specious rebuttal that says that plato objected to writing, people flipped out about calculator usage, and computers etc and we are all fine.
But we aren't fine. I am deeply embedded in high tech stuff and it makes me exceptionally uncomfortable how specialized our thinking has become and how disconnected we are from almost everything we use. LLMs are the next rung on the ladder of delegation, and instead of saying "it's fine, look at all the runs we've already climbed, this the natural progression of things" I feel like we should be saying "we should maybe descend a little?" It is nuts how many things your average Joe interacts with that they have zero understanding of, and it's allowing for all kinds of nasty consequences (algorithmic feeds, dynamic black box pricing with real consequences, i.e. insurance). AI labs can't really explain why models do what they do, and while they are chipping away at the problem, we are sprinting towards using them everywhere.
I feel for the young'uns. I have no idea how they will navigate this without the grace and generosity that was afforded to me when I was a teen to make mistakes without something ubiquitous and available and way smarter than me whispering answers in my ear.