alt Hacker NewsThis is not wrong, but the "Bob and Alice" conundrum is not simple, either.
In academia, understanding is vital. The same for research.
But in production, results are what matters.
Alice would be a better researcher, but Bob would be a better producer. He knows how to wrangle the tools.
Each has its value. Many researchers develop marvelous ideas, but struggle to commercialize them, while production-oriented engineers, struggle to come up with the ideas.
You need both.
Replies
I have to disagree that Bob will be a better producer, although I do agree that Bob will produce more. In this scenario, Bob isn't clear on which LLM output is valid and important and which is erroneous and misleading; I think that's a pretty critical distinction. It's the kind of thing that might go undetected for a long time, until a particular paper turns out to be important and it's discovered that it's also entirely wrong, wasting a lot of time and energy.
If results are what matters, why is popular software so buggy and lacking in features?
> You need both.
yea, there are multiple parts to education. 1) teach skills useful to the economy 2) teach the theories of the subject, and finally 3) tweak existing theories and create new ones. An electrician can fix problems without understanding theory of electromagnetism. These are the trades folks. A EE college graduate has presumably understood some theory, and can apply it in different useful ways. These are the engineers. Finally, there are folks who not only understand the theory of the craft, but can tweak it creatively for the future. These are the researchers.
Bob better fits as a trades-person or engineer whereas Alice fits better as a researcher.