Re:Are coders worth it?
by sillysaurus on Thursday June 06, 2013 @06:49PM
(#5835721)
Software is design. We can't put design on any kind of assembly line / stamping process. This seems like it will remain true for a long time.
Every kind of engineering is design and can't be put on an assembly line. Engineers design assembly lines. They don't work on them.
Now, I want a T-shirt that says "Google Code is My Assembly Line" and has a link to one of my projects there.
The fact is we design and make the archetypes. These get mass-produced by computers.
Logical processes are pretty much ripe for exploiting via AI, but you're right. Lateral thinking processes - pretty much one of the hallmarks of humankind (that and absurdly good communication skills) - are going to be extremely hard to emulate. How does a computer go from examining pipes in houses, then make a parallel to half-pipes in skateboarding to understand better waterflow by the way boarders move through the pipe? Maybe through human guided modeling something like this could occur, but unforced, this is the holy grail.
That may be a silly example but that's just one avenue (wordplay) of lateral thinking, a subset of creative thought and processes.
We also can't do this with writing. Is software more like writing prose, or more like manufacturing? That's the heart of the issue as I see it, and to me it looks more like "writing."
It is possible that AI software will eventually produce better writing than human writers, but that seems unlikely without human-like AI and also seems far enough into the future to be highly speculative.