Of course AI increases inequality. It's automated ladder pulling technology.
To become good at something you have to work through the lower rungs and acquire skill. AI does all those lower level jobs, puts the people who need those jobs for experience on the street, and robs us of future experts.
The people who benefit the most are those who are already up on top of the ladder investing billions to make the ladder raise faster and faster.
AI has been extremely useful at teaching me things. Granted I needed to already know how to learn and work through the math myself, but when I get stuck it is more helpful than any other resource on the internet.
> To become good at something you have to work through the lower rungs and acquire skill. AI does all those lower level jobs, puts the people who need those jobs for experience on the street, and robs us of future experts.
You can still do that with AI, you give yourself assignments and then use the AI as a resource when you get stuck. As you get better you ask the AI less and less. The fact that the AI is wrong sometimes is like test that allows you to evaluate if you are internalizing the skills or just trusting the AI.
If we ever have AIs which don't hallucinate, I'd want that added back in as a feature.
Not everyone have the privelege of learning for free or the time, many needs that lower level job that makes it possible to get paid and learn at the same time.
This is basically the sequential pipeline for any career development.
You get X*5 years of experience doing the job, you know how to do it much better without mistakes. If you can't get experience because AI has blocked that lower run, you basically have a 10 year countdown to deflationary spiral in that factor market; that's a problem for next quarter though.
Yep but this time is different because it's going to completely displace what is left of the middle class and this time the people being fucked have six figures of college debt.
Definitely. I think it's worse than that too. I have a feeling it's going to expose some people higher up that ladder who really shouldn't be. So it won't just be junior people who struggle but also "senior" people as well. I think that only deepens the inequality.
Honestly not sure it is easier to learn coding today than before. In theory maybe but in reality 99% of people will use AI as a crutch - half or learning is when you have to struggle a bit with something. If all the answers are always in front of you it will be harder to learn. I know it would be hard for me to learn if I could just ask for the code all the time.
I've been coding for decades already, but if I need to put something together in an unfamiliar language? I can just ask AI about any stupid noob mistake I make.
It knows every single stupid noob mistake, it knows every "how do I sort an array", and it explains well, with examples. Like StackOverflow on steroids.
The caveat is that you need to WANT to learn. If you don't, then not learning is easier than ever too.
> I've been coding for decades already, but if I need to put something together in an unfamiliar language? I can just ask AI about any stupid noob mistake I make.
So you aren’t still learning foundational concepts or how to think about problems, you are using it as a translation tool. Very different, in my opinion.
I agree with you - I learned to program because I found it fascinating, and wanted to know how my computer worked, not because it was the only option available to me at the time...
There are always people willing to take shortcuts at long-term expense. Frankly I'm fine with the selection pressure changing in our industry. Those who want to learn will still find a way to do it.
To become good at something you have to work through the lower rungs and acquire skill. AI does all those lower level jobs, puts the people who need those jobs for experience on the street, and robs us of future experts.
The people who benefit the most are those who are already up on top of the ladder investing billions to make the ladder raise faster and faster.