Re:Ask HN: How do you use AI for software engineering?
by BarryMilo on Saturday March 16, 2024 @01:02PM
(#39727540)
This is indeed well-known, in recent years I've seen it referred to as Gell-Mann Amnesia: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
Re:Ask HN: How do you use AI for software engineering?
by im_down_w_otp on Saturday March 16, 2024 @02:04PM
(#39728048)
If I had to really try and pinpoint where my discomfort for this latest hypecycle is coming from, it's probably that I have this sense that the dynamic behind Gell-Mann Amnesia is being cynically exploited by the interests overselling these new products.
Kind of in the same vein as the strategies around gamification, where some identified frailty of the human psyche is being leaned on for cash.
It's not quite a con because the technology is useful and certainly worth something, but it's not non-exploitive either.
This is a common phenomenon with humans, FWIW. The same sort of thing happens with traditional information sources. For example, when a media outlet reports on things we don't know much about personally, we believe them. Then they cover something where we have direct domain expertise and find all manner of misunderstandings and errors trivially, but instead of suspecting that they're likely just as wrong about a lot of other things as well, we assume it's a special case where they just got our special knowledge domain wrong.
In any case, to answer the OP... I use these new AI tools to generate content where the details don't matter and the cost of being wrong is near zero. Such as, graphics for slides, market/product/pitch blurb pablum, etc.
I use them to compensate for my limited artistic/graphic design skills and to overcome my propensity to tediously labor over copy despite that copy being basically throwaway.