Technology obsoleting expertise has been the order of things for hundreds of years. The idea that you can’t make your own clothes but instead buy it from a store would shock prior generations. Or that you can’t cook or farm but instead order DoorDash.
The idea that you can’t code but can build software is the modern version of this.
@carnage4life Off the mark on this take.
First, consider the source of the claim, who has a very vested financial interest in perpetuating it.
Second, you still need expertise. A sewing machine doesn’t mean I can readily make clothes that fit well or make a leather jacket. Power tools don’t mean I can suddenly make myself a house.
Now, I *can* over time, as I learn the necessary skills to do so and….build expertise using the tools. Uh-oh!
@carnage4life Ideas are cheap.
So is AI right now, which is *heavily* subsidized and wildly unprofitable. Even as that curve goes down, and it will for some tasks, that doesn’t mean every idea will be financially viable (it still has to be good).
All of which is to say, generative AI is useful in some cases and will enable some financially unviable ideas to come more willingly to fruition. But it’s not going to kill personal expertise; it will just narrow it down a bit to when people want it.
@carnage4life Personal experience: It’s enormously useful for my field, but also making the usual overly confident suspects even more overly confident and (often) wrong, and increasing the number of them rather rapidly.
Also, seeing a lot of auto-generated content replying to other auto-generated content with almost no actual human evaluation, leading to a lot of really inane and stupid discussions. Lots of noise, low signal. YMMV.
Dare Obasanjo
Tuskie