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> The AI has no idea how this particular case differs from the sample code it was trained on It can eventually figure a lot of things out if you provide the co

> The AI has no idea how this particular case differs from the sample code it was trained on It can eventually figure a lot of things out if you provide the correct requirements and examples. However, the caveat with all of this is that you already have to be a good programmer to: - know what is needed - know what the solution should more or less look like - spot bugs in the AI's solution - describe the problem, examples etc in a way that the AI can work with If you're already a good programmer, the time spent wrangling the AI could be spent writing the solution yourself. My feeling is that the most value from AIs will come from when you get hopelessly stuck on a problem. An AI could provide some initial steps or ideas that can get you unstuck, effectively working as a rubber ducky. You're unlikely to copy the AI's solution, but it could provide some random insight that helps you take a step forward.

lamontcg 4y ago
> My feeling is that the most value from AIs will come from when you get hopelessly stuck on a problem. This sounds about right. It may also help you to find related areas to study. I was throwing rocket optimization problems at ChatGPT and it was horrible, but I think it was finding some related code from vehicle navigation optimization problems which I found interesting. It does reasonably well at simple kinds of symbol manipulation and might be able to replace matlab/mathematica at some point, but the problem is that you always have to double-check the results. I'm not sure it is really that much better than just knowing your way around wikipedia (which has its own accuracy issues, but for straightforward things it is usually pretty good).
jlarocco 4y ago
I hadn't considered the "hopelessly stuck" aspect, and that does seem promising. I fully agree on your other points, though. Communicating the requirements to the AI in a non-ambiguous way is more-or-less equivalent to just writing the code. I can't even get firm requirements from my coworkers, and we all presumably have "real" intelligence.

lamontcg 4y ago

> My feeling is that the most value from AIs will come from when you get hopelessly stuck on a problem. This sounds about right. It may also help you to find related areas to study. I was throwing rocket optimization problems at ChatGPT and it was horrible, but I think it was finding some related code from vehicle navigation optimization problems which I found interesting. It does reasonably well at simple kinds of symbol manipulation and might be able to replace matlab/mathematica at some point, but the problem is that you always have to double-check the results. I'm not sure it is really that much better than just knowing your way around wikipedia (which has its own accuracy issues, but for straightforward things it is usually pretty good).

jlarocco 4y ago

I hadn't considered the "hopelessly stuck" aspect, and that does seem promising. I fully agree on your other points, though. Communicating the requirements to the AI in a non-ambiguous way is more-or-less equivalent to just writing the code. I can't even get firm requirements from my coworkers, and we all presumably have "real" intelligence.