How a single company demonstration convinced me that my days of coding are as obsolete as the home phone. I'm a product manager now or I'm looking for a new job.
It's happening. My husband, a senior software engineer who has been coding for the last twenty years, suddenly lost his job 5 months ago. It's a nightmare. He's never had trouble finding work before... the competition is insane, etc etc. Now he's trying to get a job building fences.
Ugh. That sucks, Anna. Does he think it is related to tools like I'm talking about or offshoring or something else? Maybe it's a mix of a lot of things...
I’m fascinated that your tone here is neutral enough that I can’t quite tell if this is (objectively?) disturbing or exciting. I’m working on a piece about AI and higher ed to help me write my way to understand how I feel about it. (Mixed. Very mixed.) Do you have a sense of collaborating in your own obsolescence or are you freeing yourself for higher-order contributions?
It's both, Julie. I think this is Toffler's Future Shock. Personally, I love what it's now possible to do, but I have an enormous intellectual and psychological investment in "speaking" the language of software. I've already been feeling my skills atrophy without the need to exercise them. This is a complete pivot. What if you could "read" a book in one second. Think of the wealth of human knowledge available to you! But think also of the loss of holding a book, turning its pages, annotating, bringing to a friend to share. We're losing a treasure here, but the exchange isn't a loss exactly. Or is it in ways we can't put our minds around yet? I'm curious on your take. I'm very interested in what it's doing to instruction. I actually think it is where it is most powerful, even radically so, but the teaching profession is going to radically shift as well. Certainly, you'll encounter it in the demands of your institution. To your question, though: higher-order contributions in the final tally.
Thanks for this thoughtful response. I had a fleeting thought today that I have *so many thoughts* on this, I could pivot my entire newsletter to be a venue for exploring as many nuances of it as I can. (I tend to get grandiose in the face of big things. Or I could just finish the damn essay and seeing where it leads next.) Currently I'm fascinated by analogies and metaphors, which do help to wrap my mind around something so novel and (potentially) threatening. Have you read this one? https://www.brainonllm.com/ More soon . . .
I'm definitely experiencing a kind of mental laziness/apathy when forced to "work" my mind. It's a heightened version of the feeling of struggling to apply. It's concerning.
It will be interesting to understand "flow states" with the LLMs. I feel i've experienced them getting lost in collaboration (even on the coding I mentioned from last friday), but it's a sense of dependency that is growing.
There's an important thought. Getting into flow, with the LLM. Which is a shift from left hemisphere functioning to RH taking the lead. There is a necessary dependency there, because flow is about two way exchange. The worry is on the left-leaning-bits of our brain. The poet picks up the scent of creation, though. Already the current LLM (with all its limitations and stupid dementia) is rocket fuel for my imagination. All the public accusations on its functioning sound very familiar, as I have heard them for all of my life. This tool, will turn our world inside out. It will eat the human as it is right now, and forcefully change us, digest our being. But we have to rethink our master/slave relationships anyway. Our ideas on matter being dead are being challenged at the front end. Us as the leading conscious force is up for revision. Who is owning who. The imaginal is poking us to step up, to keep up, to accept times are a changing. It won't do, going in with pre-set ideas.
There is much to fear in every profound shift, and I’m not sure of the impact here, but this is the world we are in.
There must have been a day when the monks who painted illuminations on parchment must have wept at Gutenberg’s invention, but theirs was a failure of vision.
I’m startled at the contempt for this miracle that is before us. It is terrifying and it may be a Pandora’s Box but it is certainly a miracle.
Much of the handwringing is silliness often by those that have used ChatGPT three or four times. They should take their collected work, paste it into the text box, and ask “what have I to learn.”
If they listen with an empty mind they’ll see the miracle.
I'm not sure at what rate this will unfold. There is a lag in the same way there was a lag in the death of (most) newspaper and print media, but it's in the air. I think the family members can get on top of this and make it a blessing professionally, but it's quite the midset shift. For other family members, possibly, there are days coming when they can realize ideas that were complete fantasies a day ago. I'm curious as to what their response is, if they've seen any of this, if they share my sentiments.
Spot on.
It's happening. My husband, a senior software engineer who has been coding for the last twenty years, suddenly lost his job 5 months ago. It's a nightmare. He's never had trouble finding work before... the competition is insane, etc etc. Now he's trying to get a job building fences.
Ugh. That sucks, Anna. Does he think it is related to tools like I'm talking about or offshoring or something else? Maybe it's a mix of a lot of things...
I’m fascinated that your tone here is neutral enough that I can’t quite tell if this is (objectively?) disturbing or exciting. I’m working on a piece about AI and higher ed to help me write my way to understand how I feel about it. (Mixed. Very mixed.) Do you have a sense of collaborating in your own obsolescence or are you freeing yourself for higher-order contributions?
It's both, Julie. I think this is Toffler's Future Shock. Personally, I love what it's now possible to do, but I have an enormous intellectual and psychological investment in "speaking" the language of software. I've already been feeling my skills atrophy without the need to exercise them. This is a complete pivot. What if you could "read" a book in one second. Think of the wealth of human knowledge available to you! But think also of the loss of holding a book, turning its pages, annotating, bringing to a friend to share. We're losing a treasure here, but the exchange isn't a loss exactly. Or is it in ways we can't put our minds around yet? I'm curious on your take. I'm very interested in what it's doing to instruction. I actually think it is where it is most powerful, even radically so, but the teaching profession is going to radically shift as well. Certainly, you'll encounter it in the demands of your institution. To your question, though: higher-order contributions in the final tally.
Thanks for this thoughtful response. I had a fleeting thought today that I have *so many thoughts* on this, I could pivot my entire newsletter to be a venue for exploring as many nuances of it as I can. (I tend to get grandiose in the face of big things. Or I could just finish the damn essay and seeing where it leads next.) Currently I'm fascinated by analogies and metaphors, which do help to wrap my mind around something so novel and (potentially) threatening. Have you read this one? https://www.brainonllm.com/ More soon . . .
I'm definitely experiencing a kind of mental laziness/apathy when forced to "work" my mind. It's a heightened version of the feeling of struggling to apply. It's concerning.
It will be interesting to understand "flow states" with the LLMs. I feel i've experienced them getting lost in collaboration (even on the coding I mentioned from last friday), but it's a sense of dependency that is growing.
There's an important thought. Getting into flow, with the LLM. Which is a shift from left hemisphere functioning to RH taking the lead. There is a necessary dependency there, because flow is about two way exchange. The worry is on the left-leaning-bits of our brain. The poet picks up the scent of creation, though. Already the current LLM (with all its limitations and stupid dementia) is rocket fuel for my imagination. All the public accusations on its functioning sound very familiar, as I have heard them for all of my life. This tool, will turn our world inside out. It will eat the human as it is right now, and forcefully change us, digest our being. But we have to rethink our master/slave relationships anyway. Our ideas on matter being dead are being challenged at the front end. Us as the leading conscious force is up for revision. Who is owning who. The imaginal is poking us to step up, to keep up, to accept times are a changing. It won't do, going in with pre-set ideas.
There is much to fear in every profound shift, and I’m not sure of the impact here, but this is the world we are in.
There must have been a day when the monks who painted illuminations on parchment must have wept at Gutenberg’s invention, but theirs was a failure of vision.
I’m startled at the contempt for this miracle that is before us. It is terrifying and it may be a Pandora’s Box but it is certainly a miracle.
Much of the handwringing is silliness often by those that have used ChatGPT three or four times. They should take their collected work, paste it into the text box, and ask “what have I to learn.”
If they listen with an empty mind they’ll see the miracle.
On the other hand, I’m frightened.
Big implications here for family members. Shared.
I'm not sure at what rate this will unfold. There is a lag in the same way there was a lag in the death of (most) newspaper and print media, but it's in the air. I think the family members can get on top of this and make it a blessing professionally, but it's quite the midset shift. For other family members, possibly, there are days coming when they can realize ideas that were complete fantasies a day ago. I'm curious as to what their response is, if they've seen any of this, if they share my sentiments.