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by archagon
1 day ago
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> AI is good enough now that you can't claim that you aren't using it because you're upholding some higher standard of quality. It is simply a matter of it offending your sensibilities. AI is also great at the mechanics of writing. Should people stop writing? Obviously not. Is there value to coding other than compiling without errors and producing a plausible program as output? Obviously yes. LLMs can’t think and the decisions they make are stochastic. Ignoring this basic fact means you’re probably not cut out for engineering to begin with — much like content creators churning out LLM blogspam are not cut out for writing. It’s a dead version of the discipline. Perhaps some form of the world will pass us by. I’m not sure I want to be part of that world. |
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The job of writing is to be read. The job of code is not to be read: it merely helps the humans who write the code. If the code is no longer read by humans, then it no longer needs to be well composed.
We want human writers because humans have a better grasp on the ideas and stories that can best move us, and are just better at crafting writing that engages with us. Machines will likely struggle with that for some time, though they can certainly augment and help human writers improve their prose.
I get the sadness. I was the one decades ago comparing beautiful code to poetry, and I think that's still true. But also, this type of beauty is craftsmanship that only the craftsman can actually see and appreciate. The reality is that the code just needs to work, and AI can (largely) make it work.
Also: the above is assuming that the models continue to improve to human performance, which is of course an open question. I'm not taking a stance here as to whether that will come to pass, merely arguing that it is fundamentally different from writing.