Slightly off-topic but: does it concern you that you're letting atrophy a very important skill for human communication (organising your thoughts and ideas, and then clearly communicating them to others)?
Tbh, I never have been a good writer. A college professor once told me I am a terrible writer. I've tried to get better (I read a lot, I write a lot, I've taken multiple college level writing course). I even started a blog (https://kcoleman.me).
I kinda view myself as a wheelchair user. I'm bad at walking so I use at wheelchair so I can at least have a semblance of decent communication. I don't think my ideas are not worth sharing, but I'm just bad at writing them in an engaging way.
The scarier thing for me is coding. I am good at coding. But I don't even read a single line of code any more.
As someone who's still learning English, this is one thing I'd never use AI for, at least not in the near future, simply because thinking and structuring my thoughts before typing is the same as it is before speaking and actually talking to other people can't be outsourced to AI.
But I imagine if I'd been a native speaker I wouldn't mind using AI like OC does since it's a convenience. Same way I use a calculator for two digit multiplications in real life but spent years learning to do it manually in school.
You're probably further into english than I am into vietnamese, but I really like using AI to help me improve my vocabulary and understanding of the language.
I avoid using AI as a direct translation tool, but its super useful for me to translate complex english ideas to vietnamese.
As a native English Speaker I can tell you that I would have some trouble talking out an email. I like the back and forth in my head of editing as I go. Text messaging may be fine but email is more difficult for me to just talk through.
I am loving the conversation here though of how people are using speech to talk to LLMs or not though, it is something that no one talks about much
This worries me tremendously. In fact, it is one of the major points of value that i deliver as an engineer. Organizing and iteration on thoughts is not trivial or easy, but it is very important!
> Organizing and iteration on thoughts is not trivial or easy, but it is very important!
Two of the silliest things that helped me in my career:
* I worked at fast food restaurants in high school. This instills a near pavlovian response to client requests; if at the age of sixteen you can deal with someone who's mad because there isn't enough cheese on their pizza, it goes a long way in the real world.
* My first I.T. job was in an office where the vast majority of the people who worked there had never used a computer at all. Just to stay employed, I had to resist the urge to explain things in a complex way. When I'm trying to sell an idea to a group of people, I do my best NOT to ignore the people in the room who may not understand that idea well. I think that engineers often have a bad habit of getting into engineering arguments with management in the room, where they take things to a level of complexity where management may not understand what's being talked about. Bringing things back down a few levels goes a long way towards getting management to sign off IMHO. Unfortunately, it's a double edged sword, and it can fall flat when management is especially well informed. Classic information asymmetry.
I kinda view myself as a wheelchair user. I'm bad at walking so I use at wheelchair so I can at least have a semblance of decent communication. I don't think my ideas are not worth sharing, but I'm just bad at writing them in an engaging way.
The scarier thing for me is coding. I am good at coding. But I don't even read a single line of code any more.