4 ms·
writers are now word engineers, artists are image engineers, and politicians are now bullshit engineers. Prompt engineering is just people putting effort into
by LegitShady 4y ago
writers are now word engineers, artists are image engineers, and politicians are now bullshit engineers.
Prompt engineering is just people putting effort into studying the behaviour of ML models and how input affects the output. They're more like ML psychologists than engineers. Calling themselves engineers just makes them feel better about being glorified prompt testers.
- H8crilA 4y agoTIL that developing something like the Google Search ranking function is not engineering.
- LegitShady 4y agopsychologists and sociologists use statistics to evaluate their results, does that make them engineers too?
- kgwgk 4y agoEngineers of the human soul: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineers_of_the_human_soul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineers_of_the_human_soul
- LegitShady 4y agoso you're taking classification advice from joseph stalin? Maybe reconsider whether thats applicable to the situation or not.
- lucubratory 4y agoThat's beautiful, I'd never heard of it before. Thank you.
- davidthewatson 4y agoNo, but it may mean that prompt engineering is a human science on the spectrum from phenomenology to scientism. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- LegitShady 4y agono it means prompt engineering is not engineering, thats just a euphemism used by those people to pretend to be doing something prestigious. They're doing engineering same way subway's sandwich assemblers do sandwich engineering - which is to say they aren't.
- davidthewatson 4y agoRight, like I said... on the spectrum... neither art nor beyond the apex of science as cult. FWIW, Bon Appetit may not be clear on sandwich engineering, but it is clear on sandwich architecture: https://www.bonappetit.com/columns/the-foodist/article/sandwich-architecture https://www.bonappetit.com/columns/the-foodist/article/sandw... I can certainly remember chefs in my city who met that standard.
- jimbokun 4y agoI love “bullshit engineer” as a job description for politician.
- klabb3 4y ago100% agree (especially the politician part). Engineer became a status signum and people apply it to all kinds of stuff, diluting the meaning of the term. Engineering isn’t the right tool for the job in a lot of cases, and there’s no shame in that. It reminds me of “physics envy” in academia where other fields are applying methods and models that aren’t appropriate just because physics has high status. OTOH, we already have social engineering and reverse engineering, which are now accepted terms, even though the engineering aspects are relatively weak. However, I must say I really still mind the term “data scientist”. Honestly it would be more appropriate with “alchemy”. It would also be quite hilarious. I wouldn’t mind being called a software alchemist.
- akiselev 4y agoI object. Please don’t take the word alchemy away from us amateur alchemists before we even figure out an economical way to transmute nuclear waste into gold. Can we hold off on the cultural dilution until there’s an extant culture to dilute? :’(
- klabb3 4y agoI humbly accept this proposition. Do you have a suggestion on what term to use instead?
- chaxor 4y agoPerhaps "prompt doctor", "prompt physician', or "medical prompt professional" is a better term since they're making prompts better. People will probably like that much better since physicians seem to have high status. It's actually significantly more appropriate as well considering the lack of understanding in cause and effect in both biology (physicians) and NNs (LLMs) compared to the better fundamental understanding from physics which influences design in engineering. TLDR: "Prompt doctor" is the preferred term.
- LegitShady 4y agosound like more copium to me. These guys aren't doctors because they don't fix anything. They just study it to use it the best way to accomplish their goal. there's no engineering or doctoring involved. They're just looking for prestigious titles to co-opt for their ultra mundane completely replaceable job.
- cosmojg 4y ago> These guys aren't doctors because they don't fix anything. They just study it to use it the best way to accomplish their goal. By that logic, most doctors aren't doctors. The primary job performed by many medical professionals is simply that of convincing the patient to leave the office happier than when they came in, actual medical practice be damned. They "just study" the superficial aesthetics of medicine to "accomplish their goal" of making money and maintaining status (and of course, less cynically, making other people happy). At the end of the day, these are all silly word games. Titles are meaningless in the search for truth. They exist only to flatter us as the infinitely fallible humans we like to be, and there isn't any point in picking fights over them.