Hard work is a virtue

When I was an undergraduate student, I discovered symbolic algebra. It was great! Instead of solving for a variable by hand, I could just put all the equations in the machine and get the result.

I soon found that symbolic algebra did not turn me into a genius mathematician. It could do the boring work, but I often found myself “getting stuck.” I would start from a problem, throw it at the machine and get back a mess that did not get me closer to the solution.

Over time, I realized that these tools had an undesirable effect on me. You see, human beings are lazy by nature. If you can avoid having to think hard about an issue, you will.

And I fear that much of the same is happening with large language models. Why think it through? Why read the documentation? Let us just have the machine try and try again until it succeeds.

It works. Symbolic algebra can solve lots of interesting mathematical problems. Large language models can solve even more problems.

But if you just sit there and mindlessly babysit a large language model, where are your new skills going to come from? Where are your deep insights going to come from?

I am not being a Luddite. I encourage you to embrace new tools when you can. But you should not dispense with doing the hard work.

Generated by RSStT. The copyright belongs to the original author.

Source