AI, the end or new beginnings?

AI has made it easy for quick fixes into code. As a maintainer of several project repositories, it feels like a relief. Lots of frameworks to assist in coding. I know what I want to do and AI feels like a little helper to quickly type certain code segment that I understand. It also helps find mistakes in code quickly. Similar to what IDEs did, but with extra support. But as an educator, I also feel dangerously horrible use of AI. Students are just throwing essay titles into ChatGPT. When an assignment slightly deviates from the norm and when they cannot let AI to complete it for them, some students are feeling frustrated. Students (both local and those who participate in remote programs - so the issue is global. Not limited to Alaska) simply let AI do coding and writing for them, and when something goes wrong, they are confused. For a trivial fix that would take the code author just a couple of minutes and a couple of lines to fix, the AI ends up with drastic changes. 

Sunset in Barbados

Many student essays feel bland. They lack soul and personality. If you give the student an well-designed homework, they quickly get the answer. When the problem involves thinking on architecture beyond what AI can handle for them at this point, they are stuck. "Can you tell me what I should exactly do here?" For vaguely defined problems, they want clear step-by-step instructions which they can then easily feed into LLMs.

As educators, we should spend more time in teaching architecture and thinking. If all students want is to simply feed clear instructions into ChatGPT, if I were an employer, I would rather do that myself. Why would I pay someone when they need clear instructions, step-by-step guidelines to a software program that they can easily feed into ChatGPT or other more advanced AI coding tools?

I used to enjoy fixing student papers. Those essays had life and personalities. They read like what students wrote. They sounded like the student. Now, they all sound bland. Like an AI slop. And they are indeed detected at 50 - 100% as AI by AI detectors of tools such as Grammarly Premium. At this point, I could simply write everything on my own. That will be, starting from zero, as opposed to trying to fix AI slop, which feels like starting from -100.

Computer science undergraduates are giving up the fight to LLM even before they start. This is sad as this is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

2017

Karlstad University, Sweden

I like to consider myself as someone who is ready to move to another place rapidly. I always have prepared for that since moving out of my country 13 years ago. However, in reality, I was relatively stable in most places when I moved somewhere. 2012 - 2018, Lisboa. 2018 - 2023, Atlanta. 2023 onward Anchorage. However, 2017 is an exception. In certain sense, it also feels like the peak of craziness. In a good way. I moved between countries real rapid. Portugal -> Belgium -> Portugal (and then some back and forth between Portugal and Belgium) -> Belgium -> Saudi Arabia -> Belgium -> Portugal. A year that tested my limits and also the summit of "seek discomfort." It is also the year I traveled most. I went to 9 new countries - and 16 countries in total in that single year. Often I have thought about this year. I have even tried to intentionally overtake the record of 2017. The last time I put a serious effort was 2020. But then the pandemic hit and ruined the plans. Although I tend to believe my subsequent years 2019 and 2024 have greatly overtaken my 2017 in general, the peak of adventures, discoveries, new lands, travels, and sleepless nights (there was a 60-hours no sleep for 2 nights) of my 2017 have left 2017 sort of a peak in my life. I still think of overtaking the year at some point. But not everything can be planned. Stuff happens organically and 2017 had its magical moments.

Lonely long flights and why I love them

Drinks on the flight

I always have enjoyed long solo flights. It may be boring for many. Lonely for others. But I have loved those. When I think about why I love these flights a lot, I have an answer. These flights force me to sit and idle. Usually, I am not at complete rest, except when I fall asleep. But in flight, you give up control. I do not read books or use laptop in the flight. Sometimes I watch the entertainment system in the screen in front of me. But for most part, I just idle. That level of idling is not possible in ground transport. The ground transport gives you more control. You can stop in the middle. You have control. But the lack of control in a flight lets you relax and recall the past memories. It almost feels like time-traveling, when you completely lose yourself to your own thoughts of the past. That is a nice feeling.

Dead Internet Theory

Anchorage in Summer...

The fear of AI replacing software engineers comes a lot across our discussions. The issue I see is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Students regressing to "vibe coders" and using shortcuts, rather than getting fundamentals. Such behaviors could make them easily replaceable by AI or more likely by those who don't even have a CS degree. An enthusiastic manager may decide to "vibe code" themselves, rather than hiring a fresh CS graduate to vibe code for them.

On the other hand, if the CS graduate is very talented and knowledgeable in their fundamentals and latest technologies, they may become the ones who build the AI/LLM tools. After all, we still need CS folks to build those AI tools. Those tools don't build themselves. At least not yet.

Another argument that favors CS degrees are, at least for now, LLMs are good at individual programs - but they are not sufficiently sophisticated to configure and deploy complex systems. You can write some Python (or Java, Erlang, Go, ...) code with LLM. But it is still not possible to build a hybrid cloud architecture with load balancing and security policies configured. I can compare it with dishwashers. Dishwashers may wash the dishes - but you still need to do the initial cleaning (don't throw dishes in with huge chunks of food waste in them), loading, and unloading. These tools may have made our life easier - but did not eliminate house work completely (sadly).

Similarly, the AI/LLM tools may help eliminate redundant, repetitive, and boring tasks. But they won't replace the software engineers completely. But, if our undergraduates let the AI/LLM replace them, it will replace them (individually, not collectively). I emphasize in all my courses that students should see the AI/LLM tools as an extension to themselves, rather than a replacement to themselves.

Sadly, some students tend to misuse AI/LLM in places where it won't even function properly (for example, to summarize videos; ChatGPT cannot even watch a video!)

Another point is, coding is not the only job of a software engineer. It may be just 10 - 50% of the time. Rest of the time goes with attending meetings, making presentations, design decisions, testing, ... These cannot be replaced by vibe coding after all...

I also wonder... if humans stopped making content (blog posts, videos, drawings, audio recordings, ...) AI will continue to train on the slop it itself produced and keep regurgitating recycled slop. YouTube comment sections, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn comments, even YouTube videos themselves are AI slop. We are getting close to the dead Internet theory. Hopefully, it is just a minor, temporary phase.

Academia and how it distorts your perception of age

9-month academic contracts and
a little vacation in Barbados

Being a student can be fun. Yes, childhood and school days are fun. But I am not talking about that. I am referring to the university life. Especially if you do not have to earn separately for that. A lot of people, including me, lived with their parents during their undergraduates. It is very common when your university is in the same city where you already lived with your parents or family. That makes the undergraduate life more of an extension to the high school. For me, the real fun started when I went to grad school - two years after the graduation from my undergraduate program. For most grad students, one year gap between their undergraduate studies and grad school is inevitable. Because, you apply when you are done with your undergraduate program (usually in the fall semester) and that means, you are accepted for the following fall - making it a year-long wait. Some choose to apply for grad school while they are still in their final year of their undergraduate program. Works best if they already are extra-ordinary. But does not work for most. However, working a little before applying for grad school can be good idea if your grad school is going to be in a foreign country. So I worked for one year before applying for grad school. That gave me a two years of job experience in between my undergraduate program and grad school. In Sri Lanka, school years is meant to be 1 - 13. It shifts the US K-12 system by 1, with kindergarten becoming grade 1. So, there is no additional time. But our A/L exams, at the time I was a student happened in next year August (a delay incurred by 2004 tsunami) and then the university entrance was following year's August. Two extra years added! I was among the youngest in my undergraduate batch and I was among the oldest during my MSc... because of these two additional years and that I had worked for two years - compared to 0 to 1 year of the others.

Then, in Europe, compared to countries like Australia and the US, you usually must do a masters before starting a PhD. However, their BSc programs are usually 3 years compared to our 4 years. Oftentimes, in the EU, students do an integrated MSc of 5 years, where they complete their BSc coursework in 3 years and do the MSc courses in the last two years. For me though, that was a 2 years of MSc followed by a separate PhD program. In the US, MSc is often coupled with the PhD. You could start your PhD with just a BSc, and you could quit with an MSc in around two years if you have completed the necessary credits, on your way to acquire your PhD. I went on to do a PhD in Europe (Erasmus+ for the win!). I loved it. I was not in a rush. I spent five years to complete my PhD. I had scholarship after all. It allowed me to live comfortably. While US grad programs usually last up to 5 years, my MSc + PhD was 7 years. This added two more years, compared to my US peers.

I went ahead and completed a postdoc for 4 years, before moving on to my tenure-track position. In the US, a postdoc is usually considered a trainee. Or even a "student." Being referred to as a "postdoctoral student" was annoying to me. Postdocs are not very common in computer science. I did mine in biomedical informatics, as part of the school of medicine. Postdocs are more common in medicine after all. They last up to 5 years. Anyway, compared to many of my CS peers in tenure-track positions, my postdoc added 4 more years. So, I started my tenure-track position after a whole ten years, compared to someone who entirely studied in the US and then went on to their tenure-track position without spending time in a postdoc position. A decade spent extra indeed: one extra school year, one gap between school to undergrad program, two years working in middle, two extra years during MSc + PhD, and the four years of postdoc! I started my tenure-track position at 36. This is basically the early career in the academia, whereas, one in IT industry in this age will be in a mid-senior level as an engineer director or manager. The tenure-track assistant professor position lasts up to 6 years before you get tenure and get promoted to associate professor. These "early-career" years give you some benefits - such as additional training opportunities and grants targeting just you! You are young again, while you are heading towards tenure and (first) promotion in your life, in your early 40s! Fine, I just admitted I spent a whole decade with the slow academic progress due to my Sri Lanka -> Europe -> US migrations and long years spent due to these circumstances. But I tend to believe academia in general makes you feel younger since you are early career while those who went to industry are well into their mid-career. I know there are goods and bads in how this distorted perception of age. That probably is for another post.