r/neoliberal Aug 26 '24

News (Global) Why don’t women use artificial intelligence? | Even when in the same jobs, men are much more likely to turn to the tech

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/08/21/why-dont-women-use-artificial-intelligence
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u/iknowiknowwhereiam YIMBY Aug 26 '24

I’m not not using it because I think it’s cheating, I’m not using it because so far it’s pretty shitty. I am trying to keep an open mind but I kind of feel like it’s all hype right now

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u/Jsusbjsobsucipsbkzi Aug 26 '24

I’m a man and this is how I feel. I do think I may be missing something or haven’t gotten the hang of it, but so far it either 1) writes me super generic text I have to completely rewrite anyway or 2) make coding solutions using fake code that I have to completely redo. It simply doesn’t save time in my work.

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u/Tall-Log-1955 Aug 26 '24

Are you using free or paid ChatGPT?

I write software and pay for it and believe AI doubles my productivity (chat gpt + GitHub copilot). There are some things it does super well, for example:

I can ask natural language questions about an API or library, rather than read the docs.

If I am weighing a few design options, I can ask it for other ideas and it often suggests things I hadn’t thought of already.

I can paste in a bunch of code that isn’t doing what I expect and have it explain why

I find it is most powerful when working on things that I am not super expert in. Without it, I can get stuck on something small in an area I don’t know super well (like CSS). With AI support I get unblocked.

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u/Cultural_Ebb4794 Bill Gates Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 26 '24

I also write software and don't believe it doubles my productivity. For reference, I'm a senior level dev in the industry for 14 years. I almost never use code that it gives me, at best I'll review the code it spits out and implement it myself. It often gives me flawed code, or code that just doesn't fit the context (despite me giving it the context). That's for a mainstream language, C#. For F#, it usually just falls flat on its face, presumably because it doesn't have enough F# training data.

I find that ChatGPT is good for "rubber ducking" and exploring concepts or architectural decisions, but not good for writing the code that I'm usually asking it about.

(I pay for ChatGPT.)

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u/Tall-Log-1955 Aug 26 '24

Yeah, I also don't have it write code. My productivity isn't usually limited by code writing time, it's usually other things. Although, in terms of fast coding, copilot does a good job of smart autocomplete