writers are now word engineers, artists are image engineers, and politicians are now bullshit engineers.
Prompt engineering is just people putting effort into studying the behaviour of ML models and how input affects the output. They're more like ML psychologists than engineers. Calling themselves engineers just makes them feel better about being glorified prompt testers.
100% agree (especially the politician part). Engineer became a status signum and people apply it to all kinds of stuff, diluting the meaning of the term. Engineering isn’t the right tool for the job in a lot of cases, and there’s no shame in that. It reminds me of “physics envy” in academia where other fields are applying methods and models that aren’t appropriate just because physics has high status.
OTOH, we already have social engineering and reverse engineering, which are now accepted terms, even though the engineering aspects are relatively weak. However, I must say I really still mind the term “data scientist”. Honestly it would be more appropriate with “alchemy”. It would also be quite hilarious. I wouldn’t mind being called a software alchemist.
I object. Please don’t take the word alchemy away from us amateur alchemists before we even figure out an economical way to transmute nuclear waste into gold.
Can we hold off on the cultural dilution until there’s an extant culture to dilute? :’(
Perhaps "prompt doctor", "prompt physician', or "medical prompt professional" is a better term since they're making prompts better. People will probably like that much better since physicians seem to have high status.
It's actually significantly more appropriate as well considering the lack of understanding in cause and effect in both biology (physicians) and NNs (LLMs) compared to the better fundamental understanding from physics which influences design in engineering.
sound like more copium to me. These guys aren't doctors because they don't fix anything. They just study it to use it the best way to accomplish their goal. there's no engineering or doctoring involved. They're just looking for prestigious titles to co-opt for their ultra mundane completely replaceable job.
> These guys aren't doctors because they don't fix anything. They just study it to use it the best way to accomplish their goal.
By that logic, most doctors aren't doctors. The primary job performed by many medical professionals is simply that of convincing the patient to leave the office happier than when they came in, actual medical practice be damned. They "just study" the superficial aesthetics of medicine to "accomplish their goal" of making money and maintaining status (and of course, less cynically, making other people happy).
At the end of the day, these are all silly word games. Titles are meaningless in the search for truth. They exist only to flatter us as the infinitely fallible humans we like to be, and there isn't any point in picking fights over them.
no it means prompt engineering is not engineering, thats just a euphemism used by those people to pretend to be doing something prestigious. They're doing engineering same way subway's sandwich assemblers do sandwich engineering - which is to say they aren't.
Prompt engineering is just people putting effort into studying the behaviour of ML models and how input affects the output. They're more like ML psychologists than engineers. Calling themselves engineers just makes them feel better about being glorified prompt testers.