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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2919 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 27, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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AI may invert the common wisdom that studying English is worthless and studying computer science is the wise decision. If AI takes off as anticipated, employers will look for word people who are trained in analyzing prompt replies, using specified and nuanced language, and consuming hundreds of pages of written text per day. English and history students would be great at this.

AI may invert the common wisdom that studying English is worthless and studying computer science is the wise decision. If AI takes off as anticipated, employers will look for word people who are trained in analyzing prompt replies

Look I'm one of the most strident defenders of the value of the humanities on TheMotte, but I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

If AI is actually generally intelligent then you won't need to "analyze" its replies. You won't need to do prompt engineering, you won't need to do any of that. You'll just tell it to do something and it'll do it. Like any ordinary human. STEM professionals aren't all walking around in an autistic haze where they're unable to have basic interactions with other people. They're quite capable of telling subordinates what to do and verifying that the task was completed, using natural language. Hell, if it really came down to it, you could get the AI to analyze its own replies and do prompt engineering for you! That's what general intelligence entails.

And to the extent that AI falls short of general intelligence, it will likely continue as it does today as essentially a tool for domain experts. In which case, the most important factor for a human will still be their domain expertise and their ability to actually do the job at hand, rather than their AI whispering skills.

Of course there is something to be said for the skill of people management in general, being able to motivate people and keep them on task, playing office politics, things like that - those are real skills that not everyone possesses. But if we're at the point where we have to wrangle our AIs because they're too moody/lazy/rebellious to fulfill your request, that's a bigger problem - one that is more appropriate for the engineers (or the military) to solve, not English majors.

You'll just tell it to do something and it'll do it. Like any ordinary human.

Have you ever actually worked with humans? :-)

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