Mastodawn

Simon Brooke 1d ago

"We have built an entire evaluation system around counting things that can be counted, and it turns out that what actually matters is the one thing that can't be"

You thought this was about intelligence quotients, didn't you? It isn't. It's about another familiar usage of the word "intelligence". I think it exhumes a curious paradox about the word: we all think we know what it means, but when we pin it down, it vanishes.

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

Simon Brooke 1d ago

Also, from the same essay:
"The department needs papers, because papers justify funding, and funding justifies the department. The student is the means of production. Whether that student walks out the door five years later as an independent thinker or a competent prompt engineer is, institutionally speaking, irrelevant. The incentive structure doesn't just fail to distinguish between Alice and Bob. It has no reason to try." — Minas Karamanis

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.

And again, from this excellent essay:
"The results, in a strict practical sense, don't matter. What matters is the process of getting them: the development and application of methods, the training of minds, the creation of people who know how to think about hard problems. If you hand that process to a machine, you haven't accelerated science. You've removed the only part of it that anyone actually needed." — Minas Karamanis

#Science
#HigherEd
#StochasticParrots
#AI

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.

Simon Brooke 1d ago

And once again, from this lambent essay, which I strongly urge you to read for yourself in its entirety:

"Serendipity doesn't come from efficiency. It comes from spending time in the space where the problem lives, getting your hands dirty, making mistakes that nobody asked you to make and learning things nobody assigned you to learn." — Minas Karamanis

(And this is precisely why I am currently trying to write a compiler for #Lisp 1.5)

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.

Khleedril 1d ago

@simon_brooke TL(30 min read);DR: you won't learn anything if you use AI and academia will collapse.

Simon Brooke 1d ago

@khleedril very clear that you didn't read.

Khleedril 1d ago

@simon_brooke I did. The thing which struck me most, at the end, is that it might have been Bob, relying on AI, who became the professor, and Alice, who learned the real astrophysics skills, might have gone to work for a bank.

I understand why you are writing a lisp compiler. That is an education unto itself.

Simon Brooke 1d ago

@khleedril it might. In which case the next generation of astrophysicists would learn no astrophysics.

Indeed, that's likely, since Bob, with his methodology (and supervision) can produce publishable papers much more rapidly than Alice.

Khleedril 1d ago

@simon_brooke ... and academia collapses.

Simon Brooke 1d ago

@khleedril no, academia carries on. Learning and understanding collapse, but it has been a long time since learning and understanding have been the raison d'être of academia.

Simon Brooke 1d ago

@khleedril the institutions of academia are not what's important here.

With the rise of rationalism in the seventeenth century, the institutions and professions of astrology and alchemy collapsed. We don't now mourn their loss. The valuable knowledge and understanding that they had developed over more than five thousand years transmuted into astronomy and chemistry respectively.

What new frameworks of learning will emerge from our current revolution?

Khleedril 1d ago

@simon_brooke That is a great quote you pulled out.

Simon Brooke 1d ago

@khleedril the whole essay is a sequence of great quotes: good thinking, clearly expressed, about a real and current problem. Do read it!

Khleedril 1d ago

@simon_brooke ``this lambent essay''

That's a great description!

eslam94🇵🇸🍉1d ago

@simon_brooke Whoever possesses intellect can control all aspects of life.

Schrammy 1d ago

„What he actually demonstrated, if you read carefully, is that the supervision *is* the physics.“

Same holds for software development, or even more so for what we call DevOps. The job is to understand and design complex dynamical systems, not so much to write code. And Claude Caude needs careful supervision by someone who does understand.