Comment by fasterik
2 days ago
I think you're overestimating how much the average person knows about how technology operates today, or 30 years ago, or 1000. In some sense, we have been living with magic and tech priests since the Romans built the aqueducts. I wouldn't be surprised if widespread, cheap AI makes it easier for the average person to learn how things around them work, if they are so inclined.
I meet kids today who haven’t heard of Microsoft, who regularly play GTA and hand in assignments made in Powerpoint. 20 years ago I discovered that a friend didn’t know Xbox and Word were both from Microsoft. It’s really hard to understand what is common knowledge in different parts of society.
Those are just products who cares?
I think the GP is alluding to understanding the fundamental way a thing works.
Kids today don’t even know where the files are stored or anything about partitions, drives, directory structure or even how much disk space is available.
They have some files, synced to OneDrive and do everything else fully online (Canva, etc.)
Most of them have never seen a computer with a drive other than C:
My son has never seen a C: drive before. Heck, we got him a Macbook Neo a few weeks ago and I don’t think he has left more than a few coding apps since then. Thankfully he isn’t using AI yet.
Kids today don't even know the most basic x86 assembly instructions! A whole class of third graders, and not one of them could tell me the difference between MOV and LEA!!!! Can you believe it?!?!
2 replies →
Indeed. You'd be shocked how few people on Hacker News even know the difference between cross stitch and blackwork.
https://xkcd.com/2501/
I'm always shocked by the amount of people that have been looking and using refrigerators their whole life.... And have zero idea how it works.
It looks to me that the far more common use case will be to manipulate technology rather than understand it.
The example with the synth is excellent. Today that kind of work demands somebody knowledgeable operate the AI harness. In short order, the AI may very well come up with the solution of looking online for example programs to decompile without the user even understanding what that means.
The point is, eventually not even experts will understand what it's doing