Do your students know their feedback is AI generated?

A pre-AI example from the military : course reviews and performance assessments were changes to be from a set of about 70 descriptors instead of written custom. Instructors could modify them, but many didn't or did so only trivially. The system was junked in within three years because of the obvious: those giving feedback didn't own it, and those receiving feedback didn't value it.

Feedback is not AI generated, just structured grammar corrected and pasted at the right spot. I then review the output to see if it remains within what I meant to convey with my feedback. This is relatively simple feedback, I have 'highlight' and 'to improve' fieldsm, with a few sentences in each, very focused. If the feedback felt depersonalized or its meaning or tone changed I would fix it or not use this method. For longer forms of feedback it may not work.

Reviewing if generated feedback is within scope of what you'd give is not the same as giving feedback yourself. It is wildly different in fact.

Please, re-read.

I wonder if this will mean a resurgence of encyclopedias or other authoritative digital records that are known to be verified.

Well, I suspect the non-LLM ones will become much more expensive than they are now due to the specialist knowledge they’d require to make combined with the smaller pool of people willing to pay for the difference

And the fact that LLMs are actively taking traffic away from them

As long as they're behind a wall that AI bots can't reach and suck all of the authoritative information out and then starve of visitors.

Cool. I hope this blows up in their face and is reverted in a few months. I don't need my phone book index to suddenly not be an index and force me to use a call center instead.

I wonder how visible it will be when showing final charges for an order.

I'd definitely be more likely to "wait it out" when considering purchases in my cart if I can see what I expect will be a temporary levy.

So, given that Phoenix, Denver, and Vegas already have spacing similar to European nations do they see the benefits that the author is suggesting?

Phoenix metro has 5mm people and does 37mm bus rides. NYC has 8.5mm people and does 400+mm bus rides. London has 9mm and does 1.8 billion bus rides.

But those 37mm in Phoenix are probably going faster than 8mph.

Amusing that the author can't stomach referring to themselves as an agent manager so they retreat back to the term "agent engineering". Please.

That was the joke: it's not easy to quit smoking.

And yet somewhere around that 6th donut it will hit and you will stop.

Professional engineers are required to consider the interests of the public in their work, have an obligation to reject unethical or harmful instructions and are regulated by their professional organization to support competency and address malpractice. Much of this was driven over the past 50-100 years as society determined that they wanted things built by engineers to not kill people or have material deficiencies following construction.

From my understanding, software engineers are a long away out from this still but perhaps we'll get there once the dust settles on more of these sorts of lawsuits.

The dust will never settle because once people try to regulate they can basically move software engineering in its whole somewhere else. Something great about being active in multiple places is the fact that these companies have leverage. There's not just a cost advantage to having amazon in luxembourg, just employ a few thousands (10 000 jobs are linked to amazon in luxembourg) and you can block votes in europe (because of veto power). 10K jobs is nothing for amazon but is 2% of all jobs in luxembourg.

Same way amazon being big in india isn't just great because of the vast talent pool and 'low' costs in India (even if many if most indian programmers are subpar, they got over a billion people), they basically ensure that the government in India can never turn against Amazon, because these jobs are concentrated in a specific region and India isn't a unified state. Amazon can try many getting into many different things in India without having the risk associated some small foreign company breaking into India would have.

> basically move software engineering in its whole somewhere else.

You don't think that is true in other professions? You don't think I could get my accounts done in India, or a bridge designed in China? The regulatory environment in my country would still apply. Your answer is just exceptionalism

There's no need to have software engineering be regulated. It'd be a restriction/deterrent at the wrong level.

In order to fix this we need the individuals in charge to be held legally accountable without hiding behind a corporation.

In the software industry management rarely ever listens to concerns brought up by engineering even if it's technical concerns.

Management not having to listen to engineers is the structural problem. How do managers know which concerns that engineers bring up are actually relevant? How do engineers know which concerns have real world consequences (without having a incredibly high burden of proof)?

Having regulation, or standardisation is a step toward producing a common language to express these problems and have them be taken seriously.

Leadership gets a strong signal - ignoring engineers surfacing regulated issues has large costs. Company might be sued and executives are criminally liable (if discovered to have known about the violation).

Engineering gets the authority and liability to sign off on things - the equivalent of “chartership” in regular fields with the same penalties. This gives them a strong personal reason to surface things.

It’s possible that this is harder for software engineering in its entirety, but there is definitely low hanging fruit (password storage and security etc).

> In the software industry management rarely ever listens to concerns brought up by engineering even if it's technical concerns.

Yet they have to listen to a Chartered Accountant or a Chartered Engineer. Maybe it would be as much in the engineers interest to have a professional body as it would for the public

Not the kindest take (and unlikely true).