I knew I wasn’t interested in A.I. for a while now, but I think I can finally put it into words.
A.I. is supposed to be useful for things I’m not skilled at or knowledgeable about. But since I’m not skilled at or knowledgeable about the thing I’m having A.I. do for me, I have no way of knowing how well A.I. accomplished it for me.
If I want to know that, I have to become skilled at or knowledgeable about the thing I need to do. At this point, why would I have A.I. do it since I know I can trust I’m doing it right?
I don’t have a problem delegating hiring people who are more skilled at or more knowledgeable about something than me because I can hold them accountable if they are faking.
With A.I., it’s on me if I’m duped. What’s the use in that?
If you are skilled at task or knowledgeable in a field, you are better able to provide a nuanced prompt that will be more likely to give a reasonable result, and you can also judge that result appropriately. It becomes an AI-assisted task, rather than an AI-accomplished one. Then you trade your brainpower and time that you would have spent doing that task for a bit of free time and a scorched planet to live on.
That said, once you realize how often a “good” prompt in a field you are knowledgeable in still yields shit results, it becomes pretty clear that the mediocre prompts you’ll write for tasks you don’t know how to do are probably going to give back slop (so your instinct is spot on). I think AI evangelist users are succumbing to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.