My calculator can do math for me, but I need to know how to use the calculator, the operations, rules in math, and basically, well, know math. My calculator is a good tool.
“IA” can “craft” a magic result without you needing to known anything about what the tool is helping you to accomplish. In a perfect world IA can be used to automate the most tedious part of any job (scaffolding, auto generated code for APIs, color grading, laso tool, etc) but in this world people use it as an excuse to not learn what they are trying to do. “IA” is a bad tool. Is not helping you, is doing it for you.
Never in human kind has existed a “tool” that does things for you without the need of any input or knowledge of the tool itself. “Engineer” comes from “who operates the machine”, “IA” operates itself. I don’t think there exist a real comparison with that “IA” does, but it’s effects are clear, and are not good.
I can think of plenty of tools that will do something for you even if you understand nothing about the tool, how it works, or the domains it is helfpul with.
I can plug a drill in a socket, put a random bit on and drill a hole without any knowledge of how a drill is supposed to work. But my hole won’t be straight, will be too deep ir too shallow, too large or too small, and I might have drilled straight into a pipe. I don’t understand how drilling works, I still drilled, but the outcome is shit.
I can mix a bunch of flour, eggs, sugar and chocolate in a bowl, then put it in an oven at max temperature on a random heat method and wait half a day. I’ll have a bunch of coal, not a cake. I used an oven without any idra how an oven works, it did something for me. It’s shit, but it did something for me.
Anyone can put the key in a car and start pressing random pedals to figure out how it works. Eventually anyone will get it… If you’re not dead before then or you didn’t total your car. Without understanding anything about a car, I did manage to move it and go somewhere. But I damaged some things in the way.
I could go on and on with as many tools as you want. But I doubt you’ll keep reading.
LLMs in software development are the same: If you understand how to steer it, if you understand software engineering, it will have fantastic results. If you don’t, it will have shit results. The only difference is that it is much harder to understand the insides of how an LLM model works, as that is another specialty. But just like you don’t need to understand how an oven actually works to use it, you don’t need to understand how an LLM actually works to use it.
Edit: Another great example is a camera. Anyone can take a picture, but without a good understanding of photography, most people’s pictures will be shit. And the vast majority of users do not understand and do not hace the knowledge to understand how a camera works.
30 years ago when I was in school, cheating was rampant. There’s going to be about 15-20% of people who understand when they are cheating themselves, and the rest won’t and never have.
AI is just a tool, the user of a tool should be competent enough to use it properly
My calculator can do math for me, but I need to know how to use the calculator, the operations, rules in math, and basically, well, know math. My calculator is a good tool.
“IA” can “craft” a magic result without you needing to known anything about what the tool is helping you to accomplish. In a perfect world IA can be used to automate the most tedious part of any job (scaffolding, auto generated code for APIs, color grading, laso tool, etc) but in this world people use it as an excuse to not learn what they are trying to do. “IA” is a bad tool. Is not helping you, is doing it for you.
Never in human kind has existed a “tool” that does things for you without the need of any input or knowledge of the tool itself. “Engineer” comes from “who operates the machine”, “IA” operates itself. I don’t think there exist a real comparison with that “IA” does, but it’s effects are clear, and are not good.
I can think of plenty of tools that will do something for you even if you understand nothing about the tool, how it works, or the domains it is helfpul with.
I can plug a drill in a socket, put a random bit on and drill a hole without any knowledge of how a drill is supposed to work. But my hole won’t be straight, will be too deep ir too shallow, too large or too small, and I might have drilled straight into a pipe. I don’t understand how drilling works, I still drilled, but the outcome is shit.
I can mix a bunch of flour, eggs, sugar and chocolate in a bowl, then put it in an oven at max temperature on a random heat method and wait half a day. I’ll have a bunch of coal, not a cake. I used an oven without any idra how an oven works, it did something for me. It’s shit, but it did something for me.
Anyone can put the key in a car and start pressing random pedals to figure out how it works. Eventually anyone will get it… If you’re not dead before then or you didn’t total your car. Without understanding anything about a car, I did manage to move it and go somewhere. But I damaged some things in the way.
I could go on and on with as many tools as you want. But I doubt you’ll keep reading.
LLMs in software development are the same: If you understand how to steer it, if you understand software engineering, it will have fantastic results. If you don’t, it will have shit results. The only difference is that it is much harder to understand the insides of how an LLM model works, as that is another specialty. But just like you don’t need to understand how an oven actually works to use it, you don’t need to understand how an LLM actually works to use it.
Edit: Another great example is a camera. Anyone can take a picture, but without a good understanding of photography, most people’s pictures will be shit. And the vast majority of users do not understand and do not hace the knowledge to understand how a camera works.
People taking shortcuts is not new.
30 years ago when I was in school, cheating was rampant. There’s going to be about 15-20% of people who understand when they are cheating themselves, and the rest won’t and never have.