Comment by hiAndrewQuinn
6 days ago
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.