I’m convinced people who can’t tell when a chat bot is hallucinating are also bad at telling whether something else they’re reading is true or not. What online are you reading that you’re not fact checking anyway? If you’re writing a report you don’t pull the first fact you find and call it good, you need to find a couple citations for it. If you’re writing code, you don’t just write the program and assume it’s correct, you test it. It’s just a tool and I think most people are coping because they’re bad at using it
Yeah. GPT models are in a good place for coding tbh, I use it every day to support my usual practice, it definitely speeds things up. It’s particularly good for things like identifying niche python packages & providing example use cases so I don’t have to learn shit loads of syntax that I’ll never use again.
The usefulness of Stack Overflow or a GPT model completely depends on who is using it and how.
It also depends on who or what is answering the question, and I can’t tell you how many times someone new to SO has been scolded or castigated for needing/wanting help understanding something another user thinks is simple. For all of the faults of GPT models, at least they aren’t outright abusive to novices trying to learn something new for themselves.
I know how to write a tree traversal, but I don’t need to because there’s a python module that does it. This was already the case before LLMs. Now, I hardly ever need to do a tree traversal, honestly, and I don’t particularly want to go to the trouble of learning how this particular python module needs me to format the input or whatever for the one time this year I’ve needed to do one. I’d rather just have something made for me so I can move on to my primary focus, which is not tree traversals. It’s not about avoiding understanding, it’s about avoiding unnecessary extra work. And I’m not talking about saving the years of work it takes to learn how to code, I’m talking about the 30 minutes of work it would take for me to learn how to use a module I might never use again. If I do, or if there’s a problem I’ll probably do it properly the second time, but why do it now if there’s a tool that can do it for me with minimum fuss?
I’m convinced people who can’t tell when a chat bot is hallucinating are also bad at telling whether something else they’re reading is true or not. What online are you reading that you’re not fact checking anyway? If you’re writing a report you don’t pull the first fact you find and call it good, you need to find a couple citations for it. If you’re writing code, you don’t just write the program and assume it’s correct, you test it. It’s just a tool and I think most people are coping because they’re bad at using it
Yeah. GPT models are in a good place for coding tbh, I use it every day to support my usual practice, it definitely speeds things up. It’s particularly good for things like identifying niche python packages & providing example use cases so I don’t have to learn shit loads of syntax that I’ll never use again.
In other words, it’s the new version of copying code from Stack Overflow without going to the trouble of properly understanding what it does.
The usefulness of Stack Overflow or a GPT model completely depends on who is using it and how.
It also depends on who or what is answering the question, and I can’t tell you how many times someone new to SO has been scolded or castigated for needing/wanting help understanding something another user thinks is simple. For all of the faults of GPT models, at least they aren’t outright abusive to novices trying to learn something new for themselves.
I know how to write a tree traversal, but I don’t need to because there’s a python module that does it. This was already the case before LLMs. Now, I hardly ever need to do a tree traversal, honestly, and I don’t particularly want to go to the trouble of learning how this particular python module needs me to format the input or whatever for the one time this year I’ve needed to do one. I’d rather just have something made for me so I can move on to my primary focus, which is not tree traversals. It’s not about avoiding understanding, it’s about avoiding unnecessary extra work. And I’m not talking about saving the years of work it takes to learn how to code, I’m talking about the 30 minutes of work it would take for me to learn how to use a module I might never use again. If I do, or if there’s a problem I’ll probably do it properly the second time, but why do it now if there’s a tool that can do it for me with minimum fuss?