Comment by reasonableklout
1 hour ago
But what does the human researcher do in this future?
If they are not needed to understand the result, then what's their role? Asking the right questions? But how will they know what questions to ask if they don't have a deep understanding of the domain earned by sweating the details themselves?
And how long will they be needed to ask the right questions, how long until AI can do that too?
> Software has always progressed this way
These platforms took on the order of a decade to mature, during which people had plenty of time to learn what's next. With LLMs we went from one-shotting functions in 2025 to entire projects just over a year later.
What do you think you will be working on in a decade?
I think it will be like how a lot of people know how to code in python but have zero understanding of assembly or how a cpu works. As a researcher you'll accept there's this low level stuff that if you want you can dig into but isn't worth your time, like looking at the generated ASM isn't.
You're exaggerating the LLM progress a bit but yeah progress has been crazy. Yet not much has changed right? We mostly have the same jobs, just code wayyyy more than before because things that wouldn't be worth it now are worth it.
10 years from now I have no fucking idea. But I'm sure in the meantime those who leverage AI will do better than those who yell at a cloud.