It holds up in some cases, not in others, and calculating an average muddles that.

Personally, I use AI coding assists for two purposes quite successfully: a) more intelligent auto-complete and b) writing a piece of code using a common, well understood algorithm (i.e. lots of sources the AI could learn from) in the specific programming language or setup that I need.

It turns out that it is much faster and almost as reliable to have the AI do that then finding a few examples on github and stackoverflow, checking which ones are actually decent, and translating them myself.

Anything more complex than that and it starts being a coin toss. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a waste of time. So I've stopped doing that because coding it myself is faster and the result better than babysitting an AI.

And when you need to optimize for a specific parameter - speed, memory, etc. - you can just about forget AI.

I would argue that it may be impossible to produce many more of those, as it requires a specific mind-set, specific skills and specific motivations. Obviously, treating the existing ones badly does make the problem worse.

Exactly. Homework is simple because you need to be able to learn from it. Fail on the homework (or use an LLM) and you will not get anywhere.

Hey, industry, I've got an idea: If you need specific, recent, skills (especially in the framework-of-the-month class), how about you train people in them?

That used to be the norm. Companies would hire apprentices, train them in the exact skills needed, then at the end hire them as proper employees. These days, though, the training part is outsourced to the education system. And that's just dumb in so many ways.

Universities should not train the flavour of the moment. Because by the time people graduate, that may have already shifted elsewhere. Universities train the basics and the thinking needed to grow into nearby fields. Yes, thinking is a skill that can be trained.

Case in point: When I was in university, there was one short course on cybersecurity. And yet that's been my profession for over two decades now. There were zero courses on AI. And yet there are whitepapers on AI with me as a co-author. And of the seven programming languages I learnt in university, I haven't used even one of them ever professionally and only one privately (C, of course. You can never go wrong learning C. If you have a university diploma in computer science and they didn't teach you C, demand your money back). Ok, if you count SQL as a programming language, it's eight and I did use that professionally a few times. But I consider none of them a waste of time. Ok, Haskell maybe. The actual skill acquired was "programming", not a particular language.

Should universities teach about AI? Yes, I think so. Should they teach how to prompt engineer for ChatGPT 4? Totally not. That'll be obsolete before they even graduate.

So if your company needs people who have a specific AI-related skill (like prompt engineering) and know a specific AI tool or model - find them or train them. Don't demand that other people train them for you.

FFS, we complain about freeloaders everywhere, but the industry has become a cesspool of freeloaders these days.

Indeed. Almost like people do not even know anymore that you do not have to be part of every hype.

At the same time, Azure probably got completely compromised. Again. And they do not even know who got in and did what, as they have no logs. Maybe invest some real money into IT security? But no, empty promised of "Security is our highest priority" is the extend of what they do about that. But Billions go into AI. As extending the fragile house of cards even more was a sane idea.

The number of people isn't the problem here.

The "started every" is.

How did they not catch that during development and found a solution? I mean, the meme's where a TV ad starts Alexa and orders 10 large pizzas are a decade old now.

well don't be so harsh, I'm very happy about the hardware that is now available for my numerical recipes.

would not have it without the "AI", and with the appropriate algorithms it does make a difference.

Why deny the truth, it is out there.

Then the Moon isn't a moon either. It orbits the Sun, the Earth only causing a small wobble in its orbit.

Who needs research when the Department of Cleanest Pollution will guarantee your safety?

Why should you waste time selecting equipment and learning how to use it properly to measure something, when the "AI" can give you an answer right now and for a much, much lower price*?

-
* per measurement at hospital prices, excluding the initial purchase cost, with accuracy limits as described in the small print, if in doubt see your doctor, any and all liability declined.

remember that 10c goes toward funding a fascist regime.

Measuring blood pressure properly is kind of hard.

It could be you measuring it incorrectly, the doctor measuring it incorrectly, or both.

So not really surprising that you get widely diverging measurements.

Yes. These days anything at all is AI and will continue to be until this meaningless cliche stops to sell.

You demonstrated you ignorance already, no need do double-down. The very definition of a "free market" is a market where only current supply and demand determine price and output.