Lex Fridman: preference

Transcript context

…to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It’s a trade-off, but I think in many places in the world, many governments have leaned too far away at this time from liberty. Okay, next up I got a question on AI, which I emotionally connected with. I’ll condense it as follows. “Hello, Lex. I’m a programmer and I have a deep fear of slipping into irrelevance because I am worried that AI will soon exceed my programming skills.” Let me first say that I relate to your fear. It’s scary to have a thing that gives you a career and gives you meaning to be taken away. For me, programming is a passion, and if not for this podcast, it would probably at least in part be my profession so I get an uncomfortable feeling every time, Claude, the LLM I use for coding at this time just writes a lot of excellent approximately correct code. I think you can make a good case that it already exceeds the skill of many programmers, at least in the same way that the collective intelligence of stack overflow exceeds the skill of many individual programmers, but in many ways it still does not. But I think eventually more and more the task, the professional programming will be one of writing natural language prompts. I think the right thing to do, and what I’m at least doing is to ride the wave of the ever improving code generating LLMs and keep transforming myself into a big picture designer versus low-level tinkerer. What I’m doing and what I recommend you do is continually switch to whatever state-of-the-art tool is for generating code. For me, currently I recently switched from VS Code to Cursor, and before that it was Emacs to VS Code switch. Cursor is this editor that’s based on VS Code that leans heavily on LLMs and integrates the co-generation really nicely into the editing process. It makes it super easy to continually use the LLMs. What I would advise and what I’m trying to do myself is to learn how to use it and to master its co-generation capabilities. I, personally, try to now allocate a significant amount of time to designing with natural language first versus writing code from scratch, so using my understanding of programming to edit the code that’s generated by the LLM versus writing it from scratch and then using the LLM to generate small parts of the code. I see it as a skill that I should develop in parallel to my programming skill. I think this applies to many other careers too. Don’t compete with AI for your job, learn to use the AI to do that job better. But yes, it is scary in some deep human level, the threat of being replaced. But at least I think we’ll be okay. ers too. Don’t compete with AI for your job, learn to use the AI to do that job better. But yes, it is scary in some deep human level, the threat of being replaced. But at least I think we’ll be okay. All right, next up, I got a very nice audio message and question from a gentleman who is 27 and feeling a lot of anxiety about the future. Just recently he graduated with a bachelor’s degree and he’s thinking about going to grad school for biomedical engineering, but there is a lot of anxiety. He mentioned anxiety many times in the message. It took him an extra while to get his degree, so he mentioned he would be 32 by the time he’s done with his PhD, so it’s a big investment. But he said in his heart he feels like he’s a scientist. I think that’s the most important part of his message, of your message. By the way, I’ll figure out how to best include audio and video messages in future episodes. Now onto the question. Thank you for telling me your story and for submitting the question. My own life story is similar to yours. I went to Drexel University for my bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees, and I took a while just as you’re doing. I did a lot of non-standard things that weren’t any good for some hypothetical career I’m supposed to have. I trained and competed in Judo and Jiu Jitsu for my entire 20s, got a black belt from it. I wrote a lot, including a lot of really crappy poetry. I read a large amount of non-technical books, history, philosophy, and literature. I took courses on literature and philosophy that weren’t at all required for my computer science and electrical engineering degrees, like a course on James Joyce. I played guitar in bars around town. I took a lot of technical classes, many, for example, on theoretical computer science that were way more than were needed for the degree. I did a lot of research and I coded up a bunch of projects that didn’t directly contribute to my dissertation. It was pure curiosity and the joy of exploring. Like you, I took the long way home, as they say, and I regret none of it. Throughout that, people around me and even people who love me wanted me to hurry up and to focus, especially because I had very little money, and so I had a sense like time was running out for me to take the needed steps towards a reasonable career. And just like you, I was filled with anxiety and I still am filled with anxiety to this day, but I think the right thing to do is not to run away from the anxiety, but to lean into it and channel it into pursuing with everything you got, the things you’re passionate about. nxiety to this day, but I think the right thing to do is not to run away from the anxiety, but to lean into it and channel it into pursuing with everything you got, the things you’re passionate about. As you said, very importantly, in your heart you know you’re a scientist, so that’s it. You know exactly what to do. Pursue the desire to be a scientist with everything you got. Get to a good grad school, find a good advisor and do epic shit with them. And it may turn out in the end that your life will have unexpected chapters, but as long as you’re chasing dreams and goals with absolute unwavering dedication, good stuff will come of it. And also try your best to be a good person. This might be a good place to read the words If by Roger Kipling that I often return to when I feel lost and I’m looking for guidance on how to be a better man. “If you can keep your head when all about your losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting or being lied about, don’t deal in lies or being hated, don’t give weight to hating and yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise. If you can dream and not make dreams your master. If you can think and not make thoughts your aim. If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools. If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss and lose and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss. If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they’re gone and so hold on when there’s nothing in you except the will, which says to them, hold on. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with kings nor lose the common touch. If neither foes, nor loving friends can hurt you. If all men count with you, but none too much. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that’s in it. And which is more, you’ll be a man, my son.” Thank you for listening and see you next time.…

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