The Jeopardy Phenomenon – Chris Coyier
AI has the Jeopardy Phenomenon too.
If you use it to generate code that is outside your expertise, you are likely to think it’s all well and good, especially if it seems to work at first pop. But if you’re intimately familiar with the technology or the code around the code it’s generating, there is a good chance you’ll be like hey! that’s not quite right!
Not just code. I’m astounded by the cognitive dissonance displayed by people who say “I asked an LLM about {topic I’m familiar with}, and here’s all the things it got wrong” who then proceed to say “It was really useful when I asked an LLM for advice on {topic I’m not familiar with, hence why I’m asking an LLM for advice}.”
Like, if you know that the results are super dodgy for your own area of expertise, why would you think they’d be any better for, I don’t know, restaurant recommendations in a city you’ve never been to?