> tech that approaches new change with curiosity rather than pseudo-religious turning away will win out because of the type of people who are building the former
Why not
tech that approaches new change with religious recklessness rather than critical thinking will lose out because of users that are tired of regressions and breakages.
Well, not that one, because that one is incorrect.
Adoption of coding agents is motivated by understanding and productivity. That's not traditionally a religious aspiration.
In software engineering, and in so many other settings too, LLMs can act as a strong catalyst, or strong damper for curiosity and critical thinking. The same way that when you used to find a thread on StackOverflow about the exact problem you were facing, you could either copy/paste the solution and forge ahead, or else use those breadcrumbs to research and more deeply understand the problem and its prospective solutions -- you can drive the model to the same effect.
If you are looking to think critically, it can be an absolutely fantastic partner in that endeavor. If you are looking to slap together a solution for a problem you don't care to understand, it can do that too. How you want to use it is up to you. And how other people use it can and will be everywhere across that spectrum.
> If you are looking to think critically, it can be an absolutely fantastic partner in that endeavor.
Joining “thinking critically” and a tool that has no truth basis is concerning. You may as well put numbers inside a raffle box and just take one out instead of using a calculator.
There’s no definition of correct that LLM tooling enforces, so how can it be a partner in thinking?
That’s the main issue with slop coding. It would be way more useful to send pseudocode out if you can. Logical semantic is always independent of programming syntax. No need to generate code.
> Joining “thinking critically” and a tool that has no truth basis is concerning. You may as well put numbers inside a raffle box and just take one out instead of using a calculator.
LLMs can have as much truth basis as humans have. We humans have fallible memory, all manner of cognitive biases, varying degrees of deceptive tendencies, misunderstandings, heartfelt beliefs in things we cannot prove...
And nonetheless, looking at art, reading books, talking to children, interacting with nature -- can all prompt us to question our previous assumptions and productively challenge ideas we might have otherwise thought settled. Seeing these different perspectives, however grounded or not they may be in truth and physics, is part of critical thinking.
A calculator will only get you so far. If you're looking for LLMs to tell you the "correct" answer, then you may be disappointed. But if you want leads to follow, ideas to consider, pointers to existing research, experiments to run, then it can be very helpful, similarly to talking to a very knowledgeable colleague. In the end, so far at least, it's still up to the human to make good decisions, based on evidence.
Wait, so by pseudo-religious you are not referring to the people that worship AI like a panacea that will solve all our problems and can't see what's wrong with it? that's odd
[1]: https://d2lang.com/