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I agree with your point that people “from” the domain aren’t automatically equipped to start AI-building software in the domain, exactly because they often lack

I agree with your point that people “from” the domain aren’t automatically equipped to start AI-building software in the domain, exactly because they often lack one of the most crucial software development skills — being able to (and having the desire to) describe a complex system with a finite set of deterministic rules. But I don’t think we should be calling these people “domain experts”. I think we should reserve that name for the other group, for the people who truly and deeply understand the domain, the whys and whats and why nots.

eloisant 5mo ago
You're doing a bit of a "true Scotsman fallacy" here.
- Toutouxc 5mo ago
  It feels like without a bit of true Scotsmanship, the term “domain expert” doesn’t really mean anything.
  - spacebacon 5mo ago
    Sure it does, it’s just a highly contested meaning that depends on a proper contemporary interpretation if to be received as intended in this context. Context that varies domain to domain. For the domain name buyer it’s quite different than the metacognitive scholar.
RussianCow 5mo ago
That ship has sailed. Anyone who works in a field is now considered a domain expert (or "SME") even if they're nothing of the sort. There should ideally be another term that's a superset, but I doubt it would ever catch on.
watwut 5mo ago
People you say are not experts are fully capable to explain whys and whats and why nots. In more details that you can absorb. They will do that on examples tho. They will recognize and explain every single exception they see - but they are not able to list all exceptions up front. Because, that is highly unusual task
xnx 5mo ago
Agree. If you can't explain it to someone else, you don't really understand it yourself. These people are practitioners not experts.
RaftPeople 5mo ago
> But I don’t think we should be calling these people “domain experts”. I think we should reserve that name for the other group, for the people who truly and deeply understand the domain, the whys and whats and why nots. I've spent a lot of time in my career extracting info from the business and I think most do understand the whys/why nots but aren't practiced at organizing all of those decades of experience into a higher level abstract model that can easily be communicated. It's typically layers and layers of information with dependencies in many directions littered with exceptions. Just like our software design+dev experience, it takes a lot of practice to try to organize all of that info into a coherent presentable model.
dapperdrake 5mo ago
Then there are almost no domain experts.
- halfcat 5mo ago
  There’s at least one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mockapetris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mockapetris

eloisant 5mo ago

You're doing a bit of a "true Scotsman fallacy" here.

Toutouxc 5mo ago
It feels like without a bit of true Scotsmanship, the term “domain expert” doesn’t really mean anything.
- spacebacon 5mo ago
  Sure it does, it’s just a highly contested meaning that depends on a proper contemporary interpretation if to be received as intended in this context. Context that varies domain to domain. For the domain name buyer it’s quite different than the metacognitive scholar.

RussianCow 5mo ago

That ship has sailed. Anyone who works in a field is now considered a domain expert (or "SME") even if they're nothing of the sort. There should ideally be another term that's a superset, but I doubt it would ever catch on.

watwut 5mo ago

People you say are not experts are fully capable to explain whys and whats and why nots. In more details that you can absorb. They will do that on examples tho. They will recognize and explain every single exception they see - but they are not able to list all exceptions up front. Because, that is highly unusual task

xnx 5mo ago

Agree. If you can't explain it to someone else, you don't really understand it yourself. These people are practitioners not experts.

RaftPeople 5mo ago

> But I don’t think we should be calling these people “domain experts”. I think we should reserve that name for the other group, for the people who truly and deeply understand the domain, the whys and whats and why nots. I've spent a lot of time in my career extracting info from the business and I think most do understand the whys/why nots but aren't practiced at organizing all of those decades of experience into a higher level abstract model that can easily be communicated. It's typically layers and layers of information with dependencies in many directions littered with exceptions. Just like our software design+dev experience, it takes a lot of practice to try to organize all of that info into a coherent presentable model.

dapperdrake 5mo ago

Then there are almost no domain experts.

halfcat 5mo ago
There’s at least one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mockapetris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mockapetris