Comment by varjag
3 days ago
Imagine it's 2006, there's no LLM in sight and you're arguing on an Internet forum that growing rice is a better highlight of intelligence than computer programming or writing.
Also it absolutely is not education, as repeated failure to educate programmers without aptitude or drill essay-writing into general population has shown.
Then you'll also says that a printer is more intelligent than most of humanity because it can replicate a drawing better than any painter. Or that the ipod is a better musician, etc,...
I can't be amazed at tools. I only applaud the minds that create them. Someone that find a way to grow rice where everyone thought was impossible is way more worthy than whatever opus produced. Just like someone winning the Tour de France is more remarkable than the latest AI benchmark or whatever.
There's likely about a billion cyclists and most of them stand no chance at winning Tour de France ever in their life. And it's funny how we moved from growing rice towards inventing the agriculture.
And look I don't know how to grow rice but I grew other staple foods before. I also wrote substantial texts and programmed computers for decades. Saying that farming is more intellectually challenging than writing or programming is plain ridiculous and counterproductive to whatever argument you were trying to make.
> Saying that farming is more intellectually challenging than writing or programming is plain ridiculous and counterproductive to whatever argument you were trying to make.
I’m not saying that. You invented it on your own.
What I’ve been saying is that writing and programming are not the sole indicators of intelligence. There are plenty of other skills that highlight the intelligence of people.
I don’t say that my compiler is intelligent because it can take my C89 code and optimize it to run on the latest architecture. I also don’t know the latest optimizations techniques. But I would credit the people that are working on GCC and the fact that they know more than me on the subject.
Saying that LLM are better than most humans at programming is like saying that calculators are better at math than most humans, or that a car is faster than humans. It’s a tool, and tools are created. The ones that are creating it are the ones deserving the praise, not the tool.
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