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Autocomplete allows one to see what strings others have written, typed, or dictated. That can be useful, no doubt. For one, it saves time typing those strings oneself. But claiming those strings as one's own is a bridge too far. Of course one might want to avoid inadvertently creating strings that others have already created. Autocomplete can prevent that. But people will inevitably need to create new strings that no one else has created before. There is no substitute for the thinking behind the creation of new strings. Recombining old strings is not a substitute. "AI" is being marketed as a substitute. Recombination of past work is not, by itself, new work or new thinking. As with autocomplete, there are limits to its usefulness. For software developers who hate "intellectual property" and like to take ideas from others, this may be 100% acceptable. But for non-software developers who seek originality, it might fall short. When the people invested in "AI", e.g., Silicon Valley wonks, start throwing around terms like "intelligence" to describe a new type of autocomplete, when they fake demos to mislead people about its limits, then some people are going to lose interest. Software developers betting on "AI" may not be among them. The irony is that software development is already so rife with economically justified mindless copying and unoriginality that software quality is in a free fall. "AI" is only going to supercharge the race to the bottom. Like it or not, the market wants "bad code". It loves mindless copying. It has no notion of "code quality". It demands minimisation of "developer time". Perhaps "AI" will deliver. |