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I wonder: could we as a society just run LLM-accellerated scientific programs for new battery/solar designs, CRISPR-like enzymes, cancer cures - the stuff where outcomes really matter - while also maintaining a humans-only sandbox for these people to experience the joys of the life of the mind in?

We already have this split for everything. The folks down at my local tennis court don’t think they’re about to be on the pro tour. It’s fine.

I think some people are not cognizant of what side of the split they are on. Explains some weird arguments about software and AI I have had with people who believe that software is a creative endeavor (true), and Literally Every Line Of Code Is A Sacred Expression Of Programmer Creativity (false).

"I'm not a CRUDslop generator, I'm a temporarily embarrassed Turing Award winner!"

I mean not even that, it's just. There is some amount of irreduceable mundane labor that must be done in the process of lowering our ideas into executable programs. AI can't think things out for you, but once you HAVE thought things out AI can help convert your thinking into code.

And the more you want to make the code the best possible expression of your thinking, the more effort it takes! Readable, moduler, maintainable, well-tested, easy-to-understand code that clearly lays out your thinking requires clearer thinking and MORE TYPING than a mess of spaghetti.

If you can make AI do more of the effort of writing the actual lines of code, that gives you more time to think about whether that code is the code you should be writing, and less attachment to the code if it turns out ripping it out and redoing it is the right answer.

yeah, hard agree, this is the story of so many abstractions. we let optimizing compilers turn our type-safe instructions for execution into machine code; we let query planners turn our SQL into loops and lookups; why wouldn't we let a jumble of weights and matmuls turn our specs into boilerplate

And the arguments that come back are, generally, "but if you have not written code you may not understand how to write a good spec for what you want" and "some code is very specific in how it is written so the spec is as much effort as the code."

To which my responses are 1. I never said you couldn't write code. I recently set up a Quake engine to build with buck2 on Linux and I did it all by hand because I wanted to really understand buck2. NOW that I have had that experience, I'll likely have AI write way mote of my Starlark.

and 2. Okay but even if that's actually true that code is still only a tiny fraction of what you write. And if you say "no actually, every single character in my source file is a deliberate expression of my sacred artistic intent"... I mean, I just don't BELIEVE you!

yeah, "you either hand-craft every (lexer) token or you offload it all to the linear algebra" is a screaming red false dilemma (albeit one that a lot of Software Leaders (derogatory) seem inclined to adopt)

It's a problem if Knowing Code and being Special for being Able To Produce It was something you found central to your identity. If you have a "rockstar developer" mentality, AI feels like having to share the limelight with a robo-rockstar.