Quote: Cal Newport on AI

Cal Newport discusses two narratives on AI. - found on Hackernews

(1st narrative) "The first narrative notes that Large Language Models (LLMs) are exceptionally well-suited for coding because source code, at its core, is just very well-structured text, which is exactly what these models excel at generating."

(2nd narrative) Cal quotes a number of resources that tell us LLMs aren't that good for coding. METR released results of a randomized control trial. Simon Willison describes how quitting programming right now would be "like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw."

Cal ends the short post with a refreshing advice:

1. Tune out both the most heated and the most dismissive rhetoric.
2. Focus on tangible changes in areas that you care about that really do seem connected to AI—read widely and ask people you trust about what they’re seeing.
3. Beyond that, however, follow AI news with a large grain of salt. All of this is too new for anyone to really understand what they’re saying.

AI is important. But we don’t yet fully know why.

Posts like these calm me down when I get caught up in AI news.