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Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
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Good article, Gordon. Don't envy those trying to sort this out in the engineering world.
I thought my HP-21 was magic...
DC Ron
BiaB Audiophile
Presonus Studio One
ASUS I9-12900K DAW, 32 GB RAM
Presonus Faderport 16
Too many guitars (is that a thing?)
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I enjoyed the article too, Gordon.
When I was teaching programming twenty-five and more years ago, my exams were "open everything except your neighbor". If they wanted to use the exam time to go next door and look something up, or log in to their terminal, that was fine. It was the same principle as the article, that these resources are not banned in real life, so you need to learn to use them wisely. That concept was pretty new at that time, because before that, getting the result back from coding might take hours or days.
The English teachers had it the worst when I became the academic dean, because of the ability to search and plagiarize the answers to assignments and essay questions. I even bought a tool for the English Dept. faculty that would take a phrase they found to be unusual wording for a student and locate that phrase in literature somewhere. Now of course Google would find that immediately.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Good article, Gordon. Don't envy those trying to sort this out in the engineering world.
I thought my HP-21 was magic... The engineering world has to go on results, so those that get the results to the finishing line should do well. As the article says, most of that will likely come down to people recognising and understanding the limitations, and doing the proper understanding and test of what gets built. Most of us will already have seen some real howlers from AI and some outright "it made that up" observations. Interesting. I enjoyed the article too, Gordon. That's good. I think it actually covers non-tech as well as tech, though I know not if the writer felt that. I think some of the arts and language subjects are pretty tricky to teach and judge. Some stuff is clear, some stuff is very much "In whose opinion?" . I don't envy that, though from an engineering viewpoint there are also many and varied ways to solve some problems.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
.
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Pretty straightforward way AI should be used. It is not perfect, and one should never assume anything. I find AI extremely useful for learning new material on most any subject. Most of what interests me is highly technical and math-based, or can be described in mathematical terms. As a result, my use of AI has been very useful.
Where was AI when I was struggling with valve electronics...lol
Billy
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Thanks for sharing. This was well written and brought back many memories. For years, I and my colleagues would receive the paper version of EE |Times sent directly to our offices. Machine Design was another free industry journal we’d read from cover to cover. We learned much from those periodicals.
This episode was a stark reminder of something every engineer learns early: reliability requires reasoning. When we stop understanding the systems we build, we give away the very skill that makes us engineers.
How true.
There is also a subtler issue at play: AI’s tendency to tell us what we want to hear. Because most LLMs are trained to maximize user satisfaction, they naturally agree with us. Psychologists call it the “Yeasayer Effect,” the machine becomes a mirror that reflects our confidence instead of our curiosity. It feels validating, but it is dangerous.
I have personally observed this time and time again. The mainstream LLMs are specifically programmed to pickup on and amplify the leanings of the questioner to the point of almost bending over backwards to please the questioner. But I was unaware that psychologists have actually gave it a name . . . good for them! Therefore, I've learned to frame my queries as neutral questions and find that what I get back is much more useful.
I advise beginners that every prompt is a hypothesis, and every output is an experiment. If they learn to verify results, document their reasoning and share what they discover, they will emerge not just as coders, but as critical thinkers whose skillsets are supercharged with these tools.
Wisdom for sure.
I'm glad to see that generally speaking (on this forum) gone are the days of someone saying "I do see a lot of artificial, but sadly, no intelligence".
Make no mistake, AI is intelligent and getting more so every week.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
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We use AI everyday at my job. I have used it to code several apps, plenty of visual basic for applications (VBA) macros etc. for Excel spreadsheets. I created a tool that automatically sorts my email attachments into proper folders based on who it is from or what it is. I can't code anything by myself. I created a very nice compressor plug in that I use all the time using Google Gemini and Juce. I, well Gemini, coded a desktop app that helps me calculate delays for various tempos to get different sounds on the guitar. I helped with debugging and directions. I am working on more ambitious projects now. It is quite fun and educational for an old dog like me.
Last edited by etcjoe; 12/01/25 10:41 AM.
My wife asked if I had seen the dog bowl. I told her I didn't even know he could.
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