Why do I need to learn A.I.?
Is it an expert tool or a replacement for software engineers?
I see the hyping, the boosting, the peer pressure, I feel the FOMO. If I’m not using it, I’ll soon be obsolete. But it’s not just using it, I have to master it, all the tools, the latest tricks and techniques, of which there is a nearly endless supply, and they are constantly changing. I’m mostly talking about coding assistants, because that’s where my job and career intersect with A.I., but I imagine it’s the same for GenAI more broadly.
If I’m not ten times more productive and haven’t been able to do and learn things never before possible, it’s because I’m not using it right. Go back to step one. I need better prompting techniques, or I have the wrong combination of tools and models.
But if it’s as powerful as the hype, why do I need to spend so much time learning how to use it and adapting to its peculiarities? The question is three-fold:
Shouldn’t it mostly just work? Shouldn’t I be more less able to give it instructions and it do the right thing? Shouldn’t it ask for clarification? Shouldn’t it know and automatically configure whatever tools and dependencies it needs, and know what the latest tricks and techniques are best? Isn’t all this learning and adapting to the tools a drag on productivity?
How is it possible to be left behind? Maybe it’s not “there yet” but is getting better all the time. Can’t I just wait until it “mostly just works”, and wouldn’t I immediately catch up? How do I fall behind in a race to democratize programming and obsolesce software engineers?
Why do I need to learn a job it knows how to do better than me, so that I can better instruct it to do what I want?
In some sense you’d have to doubt the hype if you’re spending time mastering it. Whatever advantage you’d gain, by your own admission, would be fleeting. If you spend all your time mastering this generation of tools, and I just wait for the next one, won’t I just leapfrog you in an instant? I’d be eleven times more productive! On the other hand, if it’s an expert tool (like a mass spectrometer) only mastered by those in the field, and its somewhat plateaued in capabilities, then it makes sense to master it. But then isn’t it more like a programming language, framework or IDE, reserved and mastered by software engineers, an incremental improvement but not revolutionary?