Short Thoughts

Quoting Jessica Kerr, Austin Parker, Ken Rimple and Dr. Cat Hicks from AI/LLM in Software Teams: What’s Working and What’s Next

Empathy

People will do things for AI that they won’t do for each other. They’ll check the outcomes. They’ll make things explicit. They’ll document things. They’ll add tests.… And all of these things help people, but we weren’t willing to help the people. It’s almost like we have more empathy for that robot than for each other… we can imagine that the AI really doesn’t know this stuff and really needs this information. And at some level, we can’t actually imagine a human that doesn’t know what we do.

This comparison creates a visceral blow, because I feel it describes me. I consider myself a fairly empathic person, but I’m slow to create this information for other humans, yet find myself more willing to do so for AI.

Why do we behave this way? Here are some theories. Different expectation levels, ex: AI doesn’t have this background knowledge, but humans should, or at least can figure it out. Comparison and competition between ourselves and others. The impact is immediate when working with the AI, but unknown and in the future for humans. More self-serving when providing these to the AI, at least in the near term again.

Even with these plausible explanations, I can’t quite get myself off the hook. This nagging self-awareness, however, doesn’t diminish my fear that my behavior will remain unchanged.

Participation

Another topic of this interview deserves mention:

…have a training data problems, right? And we can question what we use it for, but it’s very difficult to do that if you sit outside of it. If you set yourself apart, you have to participate.

I do think that is incumbent upon us to grapple with, you know, the reality we’re faced with… We have the universal function approximator finally and there’s no putting that toothpaste back in the tube, so we can figure out how to build empathetic systems of people and technology that are humanistic in nature, or we can let the people whose moral compass orients slightly towards their bank account make those decisions, and I know which side of it I’m on.

AI is here and it will change a lot of things. It’s understandable to be worried about the negative impact of AI, but letting that prevent you from engaging is a way of sitting on the sidelines. Instead, we have a duty to participate and shape its future.