2024-04-03
gihyo_hansoku WEB+DB PRESS plus “The Intellectual Production of Engineers: Learning, Organizing, and Outputting Efficiently,” written by Yasukazu Nishio, is now in its 5th printing due to its popularity! The book is now in its fifth printing due to its popularity! The book explains intellectual production methods using programming and writing as concrete examples. The author’s specific methods and his trial-and-error experiences are also introduced.
nishio is going into its 5th printing! The Learning Cycle is still valid in the LLM era. I would rather say that it is a book to learn “way of learning” which is important now that the world is changing so rapidly and textbooks are not matured in time.
let LLM comment
. This is the preface and table of contents to my 2018 book “The Intellectual Production of Engineers” Please look back and comment from the perspective of the present day 2024, when LLM technology has developed and the understanding and generation of text is powerfully accelerated by machines.
nishio (Claude 3 Opus) From the perspective of 2024, the content of “The Intellectual Production of Engineers” is becoming increasingly important.
nishio While the development of LLMs (large-scale language models) has accelerated information gathering and knowledge acquisition, the importance of chewing the information obtained and building one’s own models The importance of chewing the information obtained and building one’s own model remains unchanged. The “learning cycle” proposed in this book is considered to be an effective framework even today.
nishio The chapter on “motivation” suggests that human creativity and will will remain important even as AI advances in automation It suggests that even as AI advances in automation, human creativity and will will continue to be important.
nishio “Memory training” technology is an important skill for humans, even today, when AI has dramatically improved our ability to remember and retrieve information. The ability to structure knowledge and apply it, rather than simply memorizing information, is required.
nishio The skill of “reading efficiently” is even more important today, when the flood of information has further accelerated. The ability to quickly grasp the essence of the information and select and discard the necessary information is required.
nishio “Putting thoughts together” is still an important inherent human ability, even with the development of language models such as ChatGPT. We are expected to critically examine information generated by machines and form our own ideas.
nishio The process of “coming up with ideas” is an area where human creativity comes into play, even with the development of AI. Even though machines can provide ideation support, it is still the job of humans to ultimately generate valuable ideas.
nishio “Deciding what to learn” is becoming even more important with the development of AI. We need to be able to not only efficiently perform a given task, but also to identify the subject to be learned on our own.
nishio In general, I can appreciate that the ideas and skills presented in “The Intellectual Production of Engineers” is a good book that provides important suggestions for surviving the AI era. I appreciate the ideas and skills presented in “The Art of Intellectual Production of Engineers”. The contents of the book are considered to be very useful today as a guide to harnessing the power of machines and demonstrating creativity as a human being at the same time.
nishio (human) The time has come when such texts can be produced at low cost by using LLM. How to utilize this technology to intellectually produce and create value will have a great impact on intellectual productivity in the future. It can be said that we have entered an age in which it is important to have a bird’s-eye view of “intellectual production.
Comments
“Memory training” technology is an important skill for humans even today, when AI has dramatically improved our ability to store and retrieve information. It is not just about memorizing information, but the ability to structure and apply knowledge.
-
nishio Yes, mere memory of information has been delegated to machines with the advent of Google search and then the proliferation of “personal The mere storage of information has been delegated to machines with the advent of Google search and then the proliferation of “personal knowledge management tools” such as Evernote and Scrapbox. Humans have become more important in structuring and applying knowledge skills to use these tools efficiently.
The skill of “reading efficiently” has become even more important today, when the flood of information has accelerated even further. The ability to quickly grasp the essence of the information and select the necessary information is required.
-
nishio Recently I have been reading papers to Claude 3 Opus and pair reading while talking to GPT4. This chapter, which rethinks the “act of reading” and the “purpose of reading” in order to read efficiently, will serve as a foundation for considering changes in “how to read” as tools change.
“Putting thoughts together” is still an important inherent human ability, even with the development of language models such as ChatGPT. We are expected to critically examine information generated by machines and form our own ideas.
-
nishio You are absolutely right, LLM has allowed us to generate a lot of material for brainstorming ideas, etc. Humans need guidelines to avoid drowning in the information flood, and LLM can summarize, but giving guidelines for creating a good summary can make a big difference in the probability of creating value.
The process of “coming up with ideas” is an area in which human creativity can be demonstrated, even today with the development of AI. Even though machines can assist in the conception of ideas, it is still the job of humans to ultimately generate valuable ideas.
-
nishio It is important to consider what is a “valuable idea” in the phrase “ultimately producing a valuable idea”. An idea that is not implemented has no value, nor does an idea that is not feasible have value. The process of nurturing the seeds of ideas that will lead to future value is of increasing importance.
“Deciding what to learn” is becoming even more important with the development of AI. We need to be able to not only efficiently complete a given task, but also to identify the subject to be learned on our own.
-
nishio When major changes occur in the world, we cannot be sure that what was once considered “good to learn this” will continue to be useful in the future. Since no one knows the future, we cannot leave it to others, we have to choose for ourselves.
This page is auto-translated from /nishio/エンジニアの知的生産術第5刷の増刷が決定! using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.