JWcph, Radicalized By DecencyFeb 22

RE: https://mstdn.ca/@drikanis/116107120926277506

I'd like to comment on the common "AI is just a tool" thing: I'm a woodworker by training & that means a lot of machines - but almost every craftsperson knows how to do their job with hand tools, or "lesser" machines.

Similarly, a writer can write without a text editor - just as well, only slower.

If loss of a tool = loss of your skill & knowledge, then that tool isn't an asset, it's a liability. You're signing over your ability to do business to whoever sells & maintains that tool.

#AI

Show threadArtemisFeb 22
@jwcph Funnily enough I wanted to kind of challenge you with saying that it's unlikely a programmer would be able to write a complex program "by hand" (using assembly) but... a sufficiently motivated programmer probably could. It would be an absolutely miserable experience, you'd have to invent a lot from the first principles, but in the end it's all system calls and the documentation is out there.
Show threadfedithomFeb 22

@art_codesmith

The point was, that vibe coders can't "code" at all without AI. And pre-AI, people already wrote software. So ... What was your point again?

@jwcph

Show threadArtemisFeb 22
@fedithom @jwcph My point is that you can apply similar logic to compilers and programming languages. If you’re proficient at making web apps in Python, you maybe *could* make one in assembly, but it would take a lot of time and effort and, as I said, would probably not be a good experience.
Show threadDavid J. Atkinson

@art_codesmith @jwcph @fedithom
1. I think it is safe to say that competent #software engineers know their tools and an early step in any non-trivial project is to gather tools or write new ones if needed. But we don’t (and cannot) write all of them from scratch because it is too much to keep in our heads AND there are smarter people out there who’ve already done the work. We can do what we do only by leveraging the work of others.

2. A tool created by automatic programming is just as useful as one created by a human. If you trust it to work in your use case then an AI-created tool is no different.

3. The question to be answered is the same for any software tool: Why do I trust it? If you are super-rigorous then you will want to use a formal logic-checking tool to prove the software is correct. That’s really hard and computationally intractable for non-trivial software.

4. ALL software contains residual errors, but our ways of justifying trust in software are incomplete and involve some kind of inductive leap that in the best case leaves you with a quantifiable idea of the risk of failure.

#AI is just software. Do with it what you do with any other software.

Feb 22 at 6:23pmWeb