Comment by jacobgkau
6 days ago
> We should embrace technological changes that render expertise economically irrelevant with open arms.
To use your example, is using AI to file your taxes actually "rendering [tax] expertise economically irrelevant?" Or is it just papering over the over-complicated tax system?
From the perspective of someone with access to the AI tool, you've somewhat eased the burden. But you haven't actually solved the underlying problem (with the actual solution obviously being a simpler tax code). You have, on the other hand, added an extra dependency on top of an already over-complicated system.
In addition, a substantial portion of the complexity in software is essential complexity, not just accidental complexity that could be done away with.
This. And most of the time the code isn't that complex either. The complexity of a software product often isn't in the code, it's in the solution as a whole, the why's of each decision, not the how.
However whenever I've faced actual hard tasks, things that require going off the beaten path the AI trains on, I've found it severely lacking, no matter how much or little context I give it, no matter how many new chats I make, it just won't veer into truly new territory.
I never said anything about using AI to do your taxes.
I was drawing an analogy. We would probably be better off with a tax system that wasn't so complicated it creates its own specialized workforce. Similarly we would be better off with programming tools that make the task so simple that professional computer programmers feel like a 20th century anachronism. It might not be what we personally want as people who work in the field, but it's for the best.
> I never said anything about using AI to do your taxes. I was drawing an analogy.
Yeah, I was using your analogy.
> It might not be what we personally want as people who work in the field, but it's for the best.
You're inventing a narrative and borderline making a strawman argument. I said nothing about what people who work in the field "personally want." I'm talking about complexity.
> Similarly we would be better off with programming tools that make the task so simple that professional computer programmers feel like a 20th century anachronism.
My point is that if the "tools that make the task simple" don't actually simplify what's happening in the background, but rather paper over it with additional complexity, then no, we would not "be better off" with that situation. An individual with access to an AI tool might feel that he's better off; anyone without access to those tools (now or in the future) would be screwed, and the underlying complexity may still create other (possibly unforeseen) problems as that ecosystem grows.