”I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, build a car, build a toaster, design a transistor, make an ASIC, or write an OS. I do know how to write a web site.”
Sure. But somebody has to know these things. For many jobs, knowing these things isn’t beneficial, but for others it is.
Sure, you might be able to get a job slinging AI code to produce CRUD apps or whatever. But since that’s the easy thing, you’re going to have a hard time standing out from the pack. Yet we will still need people who understand the concepts at a deeper level, to fix the AI messes or to build the complex systems AI can’t, or the systems that are too critical to rely on AI, or the ones that are too regulated. Being able to do those thing, or to just better understand what the AI is doing to get better more effective results, that will be more valuable than just blindly leaning on AI, and it will remain valuable for a while yet.
Maybe some day the AI can do everything, including ASICs and growing crops, but it’s got a long way to go still.
> Sure. But somebody has to know these things. For many jobs, knowing these things isn’t beneficial, but for others it is.
I think you're missing the point of my comment. I'm not saying that human knowledge is useless. I'm specifically arguing against the case that:
> The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains furnished by for-profit companies who are all too eager to rake you over the coals to fulfill basic cognitive functions.
My logic being that we are already irreversibly dependent on supply chains.
You’re absolutely right. But my point still stands, too, which is that despite being irreversibly dependent on supply chains, doesn’t mean we are redundant. We still need people at all levels of the supply chain.
Maybe it’s fewer people, yes, but it’ll take quite a leap forward in AI ability to replace all the specialists we will continue to require, especially as the less-able AI makes messes that need to be cleaned up.
Sure. But somebody has to know these things. For many jobs, knowing these things isn’t beneficial, but for others it is.
Sure, you might be able to get a job slinging AI code to produce CRUD apps or whatever. But since that’s the easy thing, you’re going to have a hard time standing out from the pack. Yet we will still need people who understand the concepts at a deeper level, to fix the AI messes or to build the complex systems AI can’t, or the systems that are too critical to rely on AI, or the ones that are too regulated. Being able to do those thing, or to just better understand what the AI is doing to get better more effective results, that will be more valuable than just blindly leaning on AI, and it will remain valuable for a while yet.
Maybe some day the AI can do everything, including ASICs and growing crops, but it’s got a long way to go still.