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Some people are promoting the title "AI Engineer", which I think a sensible title... kind of like "full stack developer", not defined by a single technology, bu
by ianbicking 3y ago
Some people are promoting the title "AI Engineer", which I think a sensible title... kind of like "full stack developer", not defined by a single technology, but requires knowing a number of technologies (LLMs especially) and being able to put those together into a working product.
Having worked with LLMs a lot I would NOT agree with people who call them "just another tool". Some people are experts working with cryptography, or creating scalable distributed systems, or working on network protocols, etc... these are real and specialized skills. Working with LLMs is similar. Starting from a foundation of "can get stuff working" (full stack) is awfully important, and I don't think LLMs reward narrow specialization.
Also prompt engineering is real, and I don't think it's going anywhere. Working in collaboration with domain experts to do that prompting is essential, but a lot of output issues benefit from a combination of both prompting and changes to pipeline, text processing, and other code-based approaches. There's real benefit to being good with words, a close reader, able to get in the head of the LLM, learning its fixations and misconceptions, templating thought processes, etc. Ideas that prompt engineering will disappear with better models and fine tuning are, IMHO, naive and misunderstand the interplay of prompt and LLM. If you want to get something from an LLM you will still need to know how to ask!
- __loam 3y agoI'm very skeptical about the possibility of building an application using LLMs that meaningfully adds to the utility of the base model and isn't piss easy to copy. If your product is just a system prompt you are adding very little value.
- emmender2 3y agoi see many startups deeply understanding end-customer-workflows and usecases, and then experimenting with how LLM may improve that. customer-service, code-assist, call-center are a few areas which show early promise wherein customers are willing to pay for the added value. outside of these areas, i am yet to see breakthrough applications for which people are willing to pay. let me know if this is mistaken.
- ianbicking 3y agoSure, a system prompt alone isn't much of a product and is only the barest of what you can do with LLMs. But there's _so_ much more you can do with an LLM. Developing something more complex is what the position should be about. Integrating it into workflows is the most obvious example, and the only way to do that is just a bunch of integration work, like software engineers do.
- __loam 3y agoI'd be pretty concerned about integrating a tool like LLMs that are known to be flakey into a more complex product. Seems like we're asking for trouble there.
- ianbicking 3y agoPeople make mistakes and "workflows" typically involve people, so both the LLM and human output often needs review. Which is complicated and involves a lot of UI. More engineering work!