I’m an Old Fart and AI Makes Me Sad

Even some top scientists in the field admit that we don't really understand how AI works.

"If we open up ChatGPT or a system like it and look inside, you just see millions of numbers flipping around a few hundred times a second," says AI scientist Sam Bowman. "And we just have no idea what any of it means."

want to understand how things work. AI feels like a black box to me. The amount of papers I'd have to read and mathematics that I'd have to ingest to really understand why a certain prompt X results in a certain output Y feels overwhelming.

But what if OpenAI decides to revoke access to that API feature I'm using? What if they change pricing and make it uneconomical to run? What if OpenAI extends their offering and makes my product redundant?

To me as an engineer, that is just incredibly unsatisfying. Without understanding how something works, we are doomed to be just users.