Tom Czarniecki

So much this. If the aim is to ship stuff, then the bots can already outship us. If the aim is to grow a next generation of thinkers then the bots don't help.

"The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding. Who know what buttons to press but not why those buttons exist. Who can get a paper through peer review but can't sit in a room with a colleague and explain, from the ground up, why the third term in their expansion has the sign that it does."

https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/

The machines are fine. I'm worried about us.

On AI agents, grunt work, and the part of science that isn't replaceable.

Apr 3 at 8:49amWeb
Show threadTom Czarniecki1d ago
If you know what you are doing then the bots can be very useful (if correctly supervised). If you do not yet know what you are doing then you will not be able to figure out any corner cases, bugs, or even think of a new approach because the basics aren't in you. They are in the bot. For an experienced person the grunt work is annoying and bots can help you stick to the real work. For someone who does not know what the difference is, the bots will not help them learn it. After all my time coaching people, helping them get to the stage where they can tell the difference has been the most important thing I could have ever done with them.
Show threadTom Czarniecki1d ago
If you none of this concerns you and you just want something done then it really doesn't matter whether it is a bot that does the work or the lowest bidder. You've outsourced your thinking and caring, but not your responsibility. This was true before the bots and it still is now.
Show threadRobert Watkins10h ago
@t0mcz was ts really easy to write code that doesn’t have to work. Of course, if you don’t care if it works, it’s even easier not to write any code and just do nothing.