“I tried, a few times, to alleviate this sense of ignorance by taking Python classes on Udemy, but I found the work too boring and tedious to gain any real traction.”
Anyone who isn’t a coder and tried to learn can relate to this.
Another trait that will gain traction in the AI-led future— authenticity.
There’s so much AI slop out there already, something’s authentic personality will help people stand out even more as AI gets better.
As a retired programmer after 30 years on the line, I see the facts you see from "the other side". When knowledge is commoditized, not only does it allow people to do and try things in a much larger domain, with more freedom, but that also means increased job competition. Until the human world improves to the point where object duplicators can duplicate whatever you have and resolve all material needs and wants, a job is a necessary mechanism for one to exchange one's ability and time for financial assets to exchange for other needed/wanted materials in life. AI also covers up mediocrity, much like diplomas have. The hiring managers have to be more competent than ever lest they hire someone who can talk a good talk but not do the good work.
There might be a day when AI can make programming not only easy but also efficient. But that will take some time. Compilers have beaten human brains in assembly programming in quality of code only in the last ten years or so, no more than 20 (RISC is easier, VLIW more difficult). Compiled C code still runs at 2x or more of the speed of python code. The raw speed of hardware can compensate somewhat, but not always. When people depend on STEM and quantitative science for a living are diminished further due to increased competition, what are people to count on to earn a living? I suspect people who can talk and master human psychology will reach even more dominant positions in society than they already are today.
Think about it : "the only things that really matter are curiosity, creativity, and agency" .... Almost in any age, from stone to broze to iron to silicon.... sharp observers of human condition would have almost noted the exact same. A stone age philosopher, sharing on clay tablets or something, might go like this : "oh (stone) tools are already invented, no one has to run like wild animals now to catch game. We can shoot from a distance. The only thing left to get food on the table is curiosity (for the terrain), creativity, and agency !!!" This was true yesterday. This is only truer today, and this would only be yet more truer tomorrow.
Dont see this ? How about this line : " If you were sufficiently curious, creative and driven, you would go and acquire any knowledge you wanted". Yes, the barrier to that acquisition has been lowered indeed. The amount of people that can participate has exploded, indeed. But will the top top 1% not build another moat, another hierarchy, another barrier. They most certainly will.
When the internet democratized information, did the fee to attend Harvard go down ? We now know it shot 5x from that time ! Now it no longer sells information and knowledge. But access, signalling, voice, and other im-imeasurables. It will continue to be the case. As is noted elsewhere, living beings have followed laws of hierarchy, since they were crabs at the bottom of the sea, millions and millions of years ago. Heirarchy would still follow, through rules of curiosity, creativity, and agency !!
In a bureaucracy, your statements about knowledge are true.
Specialists win when rules are opaque, especially the intersection of those rules.
Specialized knowledge allows specialists to easily and quickly negotiate a bureaucracy which is valuable to outsiders.
You are correct that AI is eroding specialized knowledge. But, AI cannot create new knowledge. By definition, it can only aggregate or re-combine existing knowledge.
“Knowledge has, for years, been a moat. If you simply knew more about a particular thing than your peers, and if you had more experience, then your advantage was nearly insurmountable. But knowledge is now commoditized, and its moat is shrinking. When knowledge (or the ability to quickly acquire it) is table stakes, the only things that really matter are curiosity, creativity, and agency. Are you interested in doing the thing, can you think of the thing to do, and will you do the thing?”
I am a virtual assistant, and one of the many things I sell my time and skills for is Data Entry, which I am sure Email scraping can replace. Reading this piece today reiterated my need to use AI to learn to code again. Just like you, I cannot code to save my life.
Production code is a lot more complex than a stick game. I think it is a great tool for doing the tedious and repetitive stuff but thinking it will produce code that is worth “shipping” is not realistic at all. Also that email scraper is cool but in my experience ai writes code that looks like it would work but is incorrect so I’d be careful with that. Billions are being invested but the point of diminishing returns is here and that is good for us humans
I've been thinking a lot about this quote, and wondering whether it will continue to apply:
"We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance."
- In ~2002, i expect a lot of smart people had similar thoughts to yours, with the advent of Google and growth of the web. Information at your fingertips --> commoditized knowledge --> the main thing that matters is creativity / agency
- From my perspective, it turned out that yes, creativity and agency mattered a LOT following the rise of the internet, it turned up the knob on what any one human could accomplish, but also the frontiers of our collective knowledge grew so much that new knowledge kept being created that was not commoditized (a somewhat trivial example being SEO -- people had to figure that out, and it is ever-evolving)
- So i'm wondering whether LLMs will have a similar effect where the "edges" of our knowledge grow so quickly that there will always be new non-commoditized knowledge at the frontier. Or, whether the generalized reasoning really makes them different in kind than the internet and they can just do all the learning for us
“I tried, a few times, to alleviate this sense of ignorance by taking Python classes on Udemy, but I found the work too boring and tedious to gain any real traction.”
Anyone who isn’t a coder and tried to learn can relate to this.
Another trait that will gain traction in the AI-led future— authenticity.
There’s so much AI slop out there already, something’s authentic personality will help people stand out even more as AI gets better.
As a retired programmer after 30 years on the line, I see the facts you see from "the other side". When knowledge is commoditized, not only does it allow people to do and try things in a much larger domain, with more freedom, but that also means increased job competition. Until the human world improves to the point where object duplicators can duplicate whatever you have and resolve all material needs and wants, a job is a necessary mechanism for one to exchange one's ability and time for financial assets to exchange for other needed/wanted materials in life. AI also covers up mediocrity, much like diplomas have. The hiring managers have to be more competent than ever lest they hire someone who can talk a good talk but not do the good work.
There might be a day when AI can make programming not only easy but also efficient. But that will take some time. Compilers have beaten human brains in assembly programming in quality of code only in the last ten years or so, no more than 20 (RISC is easier, VLIW more difficult). Compiled C code still runs at 2x or more of the speed of python code. The raw speed of hardware can compensate somewhat, but not always. When people depend on STEM and quantitative science for a living are diminished further due to increased competition, what are people to count on to earn a living? I suspect people who can talk and master human psychology will reach even more dominant positions in society than they already are today.
How can 19 + 2.5 be less than 21?
Because it's 19 + 1.5 at that time.
i couldn't agree more. as a result, i think the most valuable asset a person can have would be "passion"
If knowledge is becoming a commodity, what is the value to the keepers of odd knowledge?
Think about it : "the only things that really matter are curiosity, creativity, and agency" .... Almost in any age, from stone to broze to iron to silicon.... sharp observers of human condition would have almost noted the exact same. A stone age philosopher, sharing on clay tablets or something, might go like this : "oh (stone) tools are already invented, no one has to run like wild animals now to catch game. We can shoot from a distance. The only thing left to get food on the table is curiosity (for the terrain), creativity, and agency !!!" This was true yesterday. This is only truer today, and this would only be yet more truer tomorrow.
Dont see this ? How about this line : " If you were sufficiently curious, creative and driven, you would go and acquire any knowledge you wanted". Yes, the barrier to that acquisition has been lowered indeed. The amount of people that can participate has exploded, indeed. But will the top top 1% not build another moat, another hierarchy, another barrier. They most certainly will.
When the internet democratized information, did the fee to attend Harvard go down ? We now know it shot 5x from that time ! Now it no longer sells information and knowledge. But access, signalling, voice, and other im-imeasurables. It will continue to be the case. As is noted elsewhere, living beings have followed laws of hierarchy, since they were crabs at the bottom of the sea, millions and millions of years ago. Heirarchy would still follow, through rules of curiosity, creativity, and agency !!
In a bureaucracy, your statements about knowledge are true.
Specialists win when rules are opaque, especially the intersection of those rules.
Specialized knowledge allows specialists to easily and quickly negotiate a bureaucracy which is valuable to outsiders.
You are correct that AI is eroding specialized knowledge. But, AI cannot create new knowledge. By definition, it can only aggregate or re-combine existing knowledge.
“Knowledge has, for years, been a moat. If you simply knew more about a particular thing than your peers, and if you had more experience, then your advantage was nearly insurmountable. But knowledge is now commoditized, and its moat is shrinking. When knowledge (or the ability to quickly acquire it) is table stakes, the only things that really matter are curiosity, creativity, and agency. Are you interested in doing the thing, can you think of the thing to do, and will you do the thing?”
wild times
I am a virtual assistant, and one of the many things I sell my time and skills for is Data Entry, which I am sure Email scraping can replace. Reading this piece today reiterated my need to use AI to learn to code again. Just like you, I cannot code to save my life.
The most incredible stat I've found when it comes to the impact of AI comes from a VC who has found a 13x productivity increase for startups.
Before AI, it took 1 year for a team of 6-7 to reach $1m ARR. Now, it takes < 3 months for 2 founders.
https://substack.com/@inverteum/note/c-94803171
It’s nuts.
Production code is a lot more complex than a stick game. I think it is a great tool for doing the tedious and repetitive stuff but thinking it will produce code that is worth “shipping” is not realistic at all. Also that email scraper is cool but in my experience ai writes code that looks like it would work but is incorrect so I’d be careful with that. Billions are being invested but the point of diminishing returns is here and that is good for us humans
Thanks for the thoughts!
I've been thinking a lot about this quote, and wondering whether it will continue to apply:
"We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance."
- In ~2002, i expect a lot of smart people had similar thoughts to yours, with the advent of Google and growth of the web. Information at your fingertips --> commoditized knowledge --> the main thing that matters is creativity / agency
- From my perspective, it turned out that yes, creativity and agency mattered a LOT following the rise of the internet, it turned up the knob on what any one human could accomplish, but also the frontiers of our collective knowledge grew so much that new knowledge kept being created that was not commoditized (a somewhat trivial example being SEO -- people had to figure that out, and it is ever-evolving)
- So i'm wondering whether LLMs will have a similar effect where the "edges" of our knowledge grow so quickly that there will always be new non-commoditized knowledge at the frontier. Or, whether the generalized reasoning really makes them different in kind than the internet and they can just do all the learning for us