AI can't replace programmers right now, but I've said all through my software dev career that our ultimate goal is to eliminate our jobs. Software will eventually be able to understand human language and think of all the right questions to ask to turn "Customer wants a button that does something" into an actual spec that generates fully usable code. It's just a matter of time. Mocking AI based on what it currently can't do is like mocking airplanes because of what they couldn't do in the 1920s.

[–] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I had a number of points to discuss, but they pale before this:

Software will eventually be able to understand human language

First, someone surely must have tried to code it, but I never heard of any system like that. Second and more important: anyone understands how we understand? And how the distance between understanding and communicating is covered? Someone? Anyone?

And before some smart person tries for the thousand's time this "but computers will get bettah" shit of argument: even with the whole task of putting it to code aside, we know shit about how we think, understand and speak, that's coming from me having Master's degree in linguistics

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, the main problem with developing AI is that we really don't understand how we think. Current AI doesn't understand anything, it just imitates human output by processing a vast amount of existing output. But we do know a lot more now about how we think, understand and speak than we did a hundred years ago, and as a linguist you know this work isn't standing still,. Compare it with genetics - 70 years ago we didn't even know about DNA, and now we can splice genes. The fact that there's still a lot of baseline work to do shouldn't cast doubt on the goal, should it?

[–] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh yes it should. We have spent thousands of years looking at these things, and look where we are

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

For almost all of those thousands of years, no tools existed to analyze the actual mechanics of brain function. The development of all sciences has been exponential in the last couple centuries. I'll be here if you decide you want to converse like someone with a master's degree instead of a mediocre high school student scrolling lemmy on the toilet.

[–] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago

Lol. Good luck, mister exponential science

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I just want to point out that this whole AI thing started with people not understanding how it works. I get your point although I think it's stumbling into progress rather than understanding that will be a method until we do.

[–] RumorsOfLove@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

Or like mocking Moon colonization in 1970