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It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a
by cm2187 2y ago
It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a source document themselves. Not even just about coding, about any other knowledge.
- RGamma 2y agoBecoming the single point of failure for every societal function is the goal of VC. It's working brilliantly thus far.
- dagw 2y agoApparently from what I've read, universities are already starting to see this. More and more students are incapable of acquiring knowledge from books. Once they reach a point where the information they need cannot be found in ChatGPT or YouTube videos they're stuck.
- roygbiv2 2y agoIf AI can't find it, how do we?
- zekica 2y agoBy using your brain and a web search engine / searchable book index in your library / time or even asking a question somewhere public?
- roygbiv2 2y agoIf it's been indexed by a Web search engine surely it's in a training dataset. The most popular Web search engines are the least efficient way of finding answers these days.
- wongarsu 2y agoBut just because it's in the training set doesn't mean the model retains the knowledge. It acquires information that is frequently mentioned and random tidbits of everything else. The rest can be compensated with the 20 web searches models more get. That's great when you want a react dropdown, but for that detail that's mentioned in one Russian-speaking forum and can otherwise only be reduced by analysing the leaked Windows XP source code AI will continue to struggle for a bit. Of course AI is incredibly useful both for reading foreign language forums and for analysing complex code bases for original research. AI is great for supercharging traditional research
- pif 2y agoThe actual intelligence in artificial intelligence is zero. Even idiots can do better than AI, if they want. Lazy idiots, on the other end...
- TeMPOraL 2y ago"if they want" and "lazy" are the load-bearing phrases in your response. If we take them at face value, then it follows that: 1) There are no idiots who want to do better than AI, and/or 2) All idiots are lazy idiots. The reason we're even discussing LLMs so much in the first place, is AI can and does things better than "idiots"; hell, it does things better than most people, period. Not everything in every context, but a lot of things in a lot of contexts. Like run-of-the-mill short-form writing, for example. Letters, notices, copywriting, etc. And yes, it even codes better than general population.
- immibis 2y agoWe don't know what intelligence is, so we don't know that.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoWe need to optimise for lazy though — lazy programmers are the best! Idiots, though, less so.
- harvey9 2y agoInteresting if that's literally true since you have to _search_ YouTube, unless maybe people ask chatgpt what search terms to use.
- nerdponx 2y agoIt's about putting together individual pieces of information to come up with an idea about something. You could get 5 books from the library and spend an afternoon skimming them, putting sticky notes on things that look interesting/relevant, or you could hope that some guy on Youtube has already done that for you and has a 7 minute video summarizing whatever it is you were supposed to be looking up.
- thinkingemote 2y agoI wonder if Google Gemini is trained on all the millions of books that were scanned and that Google were not able to be used for their original purposes? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books As other AI companies argue, copyright doesn't apply when training, it should give Google a huge advantage to be able to use all the worlds books they scanned.
- buckyfuller 2y agoHow does this make sense when you can put any book inside of an LLM?
- ljm 2y agoLearning isn't just about rote memorisation of information but the continuous process of building your inquisitive skills. An LLM isn't a mind reader so if you never learn how to seek the answers you're looking for, never curious enough to dig deeper, how would you ever break through the first wall you hit? In that way the LLM is no different than searching Google back when it was good, or even going to a library.
- dagw 2y agoJust because you can put information into an LLM, doesn't mean you can get it out again.
- buckyfuller 2y agoretarded
- Inviz 2y agoI am unable to acquire knowledge from the books since 35 years ago. Had to get by with self-directed learning. The result is patchy understanding, but lot of faith in myself
- arrowsmith 2y agoShould we call them the “AI generation generation”?
- adammacleod 2y agoI vote for GenAI
- mcny 2y agoIs GenAI after gen alpha? I think it depends on whether agents become a thing. Assuming agents become a thing before the end of this decade, we could see a divide between people born before we had ai agents and after.
- motorest 2y ago> It's going to be interesting to see the AI generation arriving in the workplace, ie kids who grew up with ChatGPT, and have never learned to find something in a source document themselves. I am from the generation whose only options on the table were RTFM and/or read the source code. Your blend of comment was also directed at the likes of Google and StackOverflow. Apparently SO is not a problem anymore, but chatbots are. I welcome chatbots. They greatly simplify research tasks. We are no longer bound to stake/poorly written docs. I think we have a lot of old timers ramping up on their version of "I walked 10 miles to school uphill both ways". Not a good look. We old timers need to do better.
- megadata 2y agoSO was never a problem. Low effort questions were. "This doesn't work, why?" followed by 300 lines of code.
- opan 2y agoThe issues I see are that private chats are information blackholes whereas public stuff like SO can show up in a search and help more than just the original asker (can also be easily referenced / shared). Also the fact that these chatbots are wrong / make stuff up a lot.
- andyferris 2y agoI had never thought about that - I guess the privacy cuts both ways.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoThat's not really a problem with LLMs, which are trained on material that is, or was, otherwise accessible on the Internet, and they themselves remain accessible. No, the problem is created and perpetuated by people defaulting to building communities around Discord servers or closed WhatsApp groups. Those are true information black holes. And yes, privacy and commons are in opposition. There is a balance to be had. IMHO, in the past few years, we've overcorrected way too much in the privacy direction.
- solumunus 2y agoPlease elaborate on what you think the issues will be? Why read documentation when you can simply ask questions and get better contextualised answers faster? Whatever edge issues manifest they will be eclipsed by greater productivity.
- stavros 2y agoBecause back in my day, we convinced ourselves that the effort was the goal, not the result.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoIt was also fun, though. Unfortunately, taking up programming as a career is a quick way to become disillusioned about what matters (or at least what you're being paid for).
- indeyets 2y agoBecause learning improves your internal LLM which allows you to creatively solve tasks without using external ones. Additionally it is possible to fine tune your internal LLM for the tasks useful for your specific interests, the fun stuff. And external llms are too generalised
- solumunus 2y agoI ask questions to AI and learn exactly what I need to learn. Perplexity gives me sources to verify or expand upon the answers. I’m getting better information and I’m getting it faster, what am I losing? I’ve experienced it both ways and I’m telling you without doubt that AI is enhancing my productivity significantly. It’s hard for me to believe that I’m an edge case.
- aa-jv 2y agoThe issue is, glib understanding replaces actual application. Its one thing to have the AI work through the materials and explain it. Its another thing to have lost a lot of the background information required to sustain that explanation. Greater productivity, is of course, a subjective measure. If that's all that matters, then being glib is perfectly acceptable. But, the value of that productivity may change in a different context - for example, I find it very difficult to go back to AI-generated code some months later, and understand it - unless I already took the time earlier to discern the details.
- Beretta_Vexee 2y agoI recently interviewed a candidate with a degree in computer science. He was unable to explain to me how he would have implemented the Fibonacci sequence without chatGPT. We never got to the question of recursive or iterative methods. The most worrying thing is that the LLM were not very useful three years ago when he started university. So the situation is not going to improve.
- dherikb 2y agoWell, I found these candidates long before ChatGPT
- iddan 2y agoI’m 10 years in software and was never bothered to remember how to implement it the efficient way and I know many programmers who don’t know even the inefficient way but kick ass. I once got that question in an interview for a small startup and told the interviewer: with all due respect what does that have to do with the job I’m going to do and we moved on to the next question (still passed).
- dijksterhuis 2y agoi’m around 10 years as well and i can’t even remember how the fibonacci sequence progress off hand. I’d have to wikipedia it to even get started.
- lupusreal 2y agoThere's nothing wrong with that. But once the interviewer tells you that the next number is the sum of the previous two, starting with 0 and 1, any programmer with a pulse should be good to go.
- sarchertech 2y agoYou don’t need to memorize how to compute a Fibonacci number. If you are a barely competent programmer, you should be capable of figuring it out once someone tells you the definition. If someone tells you not to do it recursively, you should be able to figure that out too. Interview nerves might get in your way, but it’s not a trick question you need to memorize.
- guardian5x 2y agoPeople said that about the internet as well. These kids don't even find the right books in a library!
- globular-toast 2y agoI already consider reading to be a superpower. So few people seem capable these days. And we're talking about people born decades before ChatGPT.
- escapecharacter 2y agoThey’ll just mumble something about the context window needing to be larger.
- mihaaly 2y agoSounds like 'Daddyy! Do this for mee!' level. Otherwise I recall an old saying: 'Robots will take the job of engineers as soon as being able to figure out and make what the client needs, not what the client asks. I think we are safe'. Along this, I hope AI becomes a good tool, subordinate, or maximum a colleague. But not a father figure for big infants.
- belter 2y agoIt is truly astonishing how bad things have become, so quickly. Just the other day, I found myself debating someone about a completely fabricated AWS API call. His justification was that some AI had endorsed it as the correct method. There are already out there salaried professionals supporting such flawed logic.
- aa-jv 2y agoI think we already saw this manifestation a few decades ago, with kids who can't program without an IDE. IDE's are fantastic tools - don't get me wrong - but if you can't navigate a file system, work to understand the harness involved in your build system, or discern the nature of your artefacts and how they are loaded and interact in your target system, you're not doing yourself any favours by having the IDE do all that work for you. And now what we see is people who not only can't program without an IDE, but can't be productive without a plugin in that IDE, doing all the grep'ing and grok'ing for them. There has been a concerted effort to make computers stupider for stupid users - this has had a chilling effect in the development world, as well. Folks, if you can't navigate a filesystem with confidence and discern the contents therein, you shouldn't be touching the IDE until you can.
- kasey_junk 2y agoI worked early in my career with a developer who printed out every part of the codebase to review and learn it. He viewed text search tools, file delineations, and folder structures as crutches best avoided.
- aa-jv 2y agoYes indeed, that is a perfectly reasonable approach to take, especially in the world of computing where rigorous attention to detail is often rewarded with extraordinary results. I have very early (and somewhat fond) memories of reviewing every single index card, every single hole in the punch-tape, every single mnemonic, to ensure there were no undiscovered side-effects. However, there is a point where the directory structure is your friend, you have to trust your colleagues ability to understand the intent behind the structure, and you can leverage the structure to gain great results. Always remember: software is a social construct, and is of no value until it is in the hands of someone else - who may, or may not, respect the value of understanding it...
- silver_silver 2y agoI have (older, but that generation) colleagues who simply stop working if there’s something wrong with the build process because they don’t understand it and can’t be bothered to learn. To be fair to them, the systems in question are massively over complicated and the project definitions themselves are the result of copy-paste engineering. Unfortunately they also project their ignorance, so there’s massive pushback from more senior employees when anyone who does understand tries to untangle the mess and make it more robust. The same thing will happen with these ML tools in the future, mark my words: writing code will come to be seen as “too complex and error prone” and barely working, massively inefficient and fragile generated code bases will be revered and protected with “don’t fix what isn’t broken”
- HPsquared 2y agoConversely, it's easier than ever to read said source material.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sam_goody 2y agoKinda like the kids who only learned to drive with Waze. When they are stuck without it, they get hopelessly lost. They feel strangled, distracted, and find it hard to focus on the road. For about 3 days. Then they pretty quickly get up to speed, and kinda remember where they used to make the left turns when they had GPS, and everything is dandy. But it happens so infrequently, that it's really not worth the time thinking about it. And the truth is, I am just guessing what happens after 3 days - since anyone who grew up with GPS will never be that long without it.
- 946789987649 2y agoYou could say the same about Google, where there's an entire generation who no longer needed to trawl through encyclopedias to find relevant information. I think we're doing just fine.
- cm2187 2y agoActually I did. Saw some kids just googling an exercise question instead of googling the topic. Trying to find the answer to the question while avoiding to understand the underlying topic.