Amazon CEO Jassy Warns of AI's Unprecedented Adoption Speed, Education Shortfalls

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has this week sounded the alarm on AI adoption speeds. Though self-described as an AI optimist, Jassy cautioned that this technological shift "may be quicker than other technology transitions in the past."

Jassy pointed directly to declining education quality as "one of the biggest problems" facing AI implementation, not the technology itself. He questioned whether schools are adequately preparing students for future tool use, including coding applications.

Clarify?

[JamesTRexx]

preparing students for future tool use

Is it the AI used as a tool by students, or the students used as tools for AI?

Either way, I feel those who push unwanted AI in everything are utter tools.

Coding vs Concept

[gavron]

Too many schools are focused on coding without teaching computer science fundamentals.

That's leadingto coding which overlooks some things, and misses other things entirely.

"AI" (LLMs) can't fix that lack of education.

Oracle engineers took down 45 hospitals for 5 days during "routine maintenance".
That's not routine anything.
There was no peer review.
There was no backup.
There was no restore test.
But they probably got an A+ on coding and SQL.

Analogy:
If you don't teach the fundamentals you get people who know how to plug in a lamp, but have no idea how to wire up a receptacle, set a breaker panel, run conduit, build walls, lay foundation, set ingress/exgress for electric/water/sewer/gas.

So they have no business pretending they can do ANYTHING to build a house.
But they can plug in a lamp.

I've hired (and fired) people who start coding before defining the data structures.
DevOPS is for lazy people. "We can waste a lot more effort itterating than bothering to design right in the first place."
Ansible is an excuse for DevOPS people to say "We don't test our code, but we could if we wanted to."
Numerous other examples exist of tools that "enable" "coders" not to have to know crap except coding, and that
doesn't lend itself to long-term success.

Re:

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

Well said.
According to whasisname at Microsoft, 30% of their code is AI generated so... we know why it's so spectacularly horrible. Also, that is so vague. 30% of what?
The race to the bottom (actually it's the middle) is well under way and Amazon is in hot pursuit.

Re:

[dfghjk]

"DevOPS is for lazy people. "We can waste a lot more effort itterating than bothering to design right in the first place."
Ansible is an excuse for DevOPS people to say "We don't test our code, but we could if we wanted to."
Numerous other examples exist of tools that "enable" "coders" not to have to know crap except coding, and that
doesn't lend itself to long-term success."

"Coders" don't know crap about coding either. That's what object-oriented programming ensured. Today's coder views his job as gluing to

Re:

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

>Isn't defining data structures part of coding? But bottom-up programming ensures code before data structures, and bottom-up is the principle on which Agile is built. You and I are in violent agreement here, but the industry disagrees.

Not really. We can argue, collegially, I hope. Data structures, like linked lists, queues, and stacks, aren't *procedural* code. Databases are also data structures, obviously, and also not procedural. If you have a system complex enough to *need* a database, you won't get v

Re:

[whitelabrat]

DevOPS is for lazy people. "We can waste a lot more effort itterating than bothering to design right in the first place."
Ansible is an excuse for DevOPS people to say "We don't test our code, but we could if we wanted to."

This comment about DevOps and Ansible is worth unpacking a bit.

DevOps is a philosophy and a strategy for collaboration between development and operations, while Ansible is a tool for
automation. They are not substitutes for quality control, testing, or systems thinking. Effective DevOps requires a culture that
prioritizes reliability, safety, and design and it's up to an organization's leadership to promote that.

the old college system needs to be updated

[Joe_Dragon]

At the very least an AA/AS should be part of an extended HS / 2 year community colleges (at HS costs to student)
4 colleges must take 100% of community colleges credits with no BS fees or bridge classes (unless they cover 100% of the cost of them)
No more BS like forced swim tests and if they want one it needs to be free.
Need more trades like education for tech jobs.
Jobs need to drop need degrees and don't use this an way to demand masters or higher for basic jobs.

Need more life long Education that does have

oh the irony

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

We can't find any... let's call them "engineers"... to do stuff on the computers here because no one knows how to do computer stuff anymore because everyone stopped learning to do hard things because they all use AI for everything now.
And now we can't find any more good data to train our AI because people are not smart anymore.
<womp womp>

Re:

[gweihir]

Yep, funny how that works...

I do expect that if I want to do some FORTRAN coding after retirement, I will not lack in offers. At that tome (in 8 years or so), the deranged AI hype should be over as well and the actually not that great capabilities of LLMs will hopefully be seen as what they are.

"preparing students for future tool use"

[ZipNada]

I'm wondering what preparations he suggests? AI is rapidly moving into the entire coding domain, and as a result there won't be much payoff for investing in learning how to write basic software. I agree there will need to be a different educational paradigm for adjusting to this, but what would it be? Some form of prompt engineering? Any course of study you could imagine implementing today would likely be obsolete in a few years when the student would graduate.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

AI is rapidly moving into the entire coding domain, and as a result there won't be much payoff for investing in learning how to write basic software.

In that case, prospective programmers should move directly to learning how to write complicated software, and just skip that first step.

Re:"preparing students for future tool use"

[jenningsthecat]

AI is rapidly moving into the entire coding domain, and as a result there won't be much payoff for investing in learning how to write basic software.

What you said may be roughly equivalent to saying - back in the day - that "Very Large Scale Integration is rapidly taking over electronic hardware design, and as a result there won't be much payoff for investing in learning Ohm's law, semiconductor behaviours and properties, and the use of logic gates".

IANAP - I've only done a very small amount of programming, so I may be wrong. But I think that learning how to write basic software is analogous to learning the alphabet, having a small-but-growing vocabulary, and knowing basic grammar. People need to learn how to think about and evaluate the programming problems that AI solves, and how it might have tried to solve them. Also, since AI is trained on existing code, having a clue about that code is probably a good idea.

AI isn't always going to get it right, and I suspect that even figuring out how to prompt AI to correct its own mistakes will require some programming skills.

yes, of course

[dfghjk]

Of course a transition to AI will happen as quickly as billionaires can achieve it. It's profitable in its own right, but there's a lot more.

There is no faster way to enslave a population than to make them unemployed, hungry and homeless. AIs can be owned, people cannot (currently). Billionaires seek to own everything; AI can be owned. If AI can do everything, billionaires no longer need lower classes and do not have to negotiate for anything. And they will not. It is no surprise that Silicon Valley c

Re:

[drinkypoo]

AIs can be owned, people cannot (currently).

False. Read the 13th amendment. We still have slave states and non-slave states. And even California is a slave state. We literally voted not to abolish slavery in California just recently.

Re:

[Chris Mattern]

You make no sense whatsoever. The Thirteenth Amendment in it's entirety:

Section 1

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

That sure seems to be abolishing all slavery to me. If I had to guess, you're a loon redefining slavery so you can call something you do

Re:

[drinkypoo]

That sure seems to be abolishing all slavery to me.

That's because you can't read.

Tell us what this part means: except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Use small words so we know you understand them.

Thank God AI writes itself

[awwshit]

Holy Shit! Where would us knuckle-draggers if AI didn't write itself?

Which is it?

[hdyoung]

One day the tech bros are talking about how formal education is totally redundant and all the wannabee tech entrepreneurs should leave school and start their businesses inside the Peter-Theil-sponsored tech incubators. Which, by the way, are simply honeypots that will allow the current billionaires to harvest the best ideas from the younger upstarts before they can actually become a threat. The next day they're complaining that their employees need to have advanced degrees in a field that basically didn't e

For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

[TwistedGreen]

This "warning" is completely disingenuous, of course. What is actually being said is that education as we know it is obsolete. Why bother learning anything when the AI can just solve it for us? As long as we have rudimentary literacy skills, everything else can be offloaded to the AI. I fear that ultimately we will all be trained to be utterly dependent on these amazing new tools. In a way, we are blessed to witness the birth of a new period in human history.

Are schools preparing kids.... No!

[Murdoch5]

I read a Slashdot article yesterday that pointed out kids aren't getting more adapted to using computing infrastructure, they're getting less adapted. Schools aren't even teaching the basics any more, they teach "new" basics, just not in a useful methodology, lacking a better term. What I mean by that is teaching concepts like "long division" or "multiplication", and using methods that may be valid, but perplexing.

When it comes to AI, it's being demonized by plenty of teachers / schools / boards, but not for, generally, right or valid reasons. Last year, my younger daughter's teacher told me (paraphrased): "The math is so confusing, and it's difficult to understand the questions, sometimes.". That's where AI can come in, I'm not going to discuss if it's acceptable for a teacher to lack basic math skills, in this thread, I'm just going to state AI can be the new tutor.

The old saying: "The only bad question is one you don't ask", well, AI can probably answer it, and do a fairly reasonable job. Instead of having to raise your hand and look like an idiot, which is hard for a kid to do, they can ask AI, and that's what AI, from a school's perspective, can do amazingly well. What AI shouldn't be doing, is your homework, if the homework is worth doing. AI can review the work, AI can prompt the work, or help you explore lines of thought you didn't consider, but it shouldn't do that work. That's what schools need to promote AI as being great for.

Gun pointed at head: USE OUR AI

[ebunga]

It's not like we have a choice.

Tech Mogul to English translation:

[Tablizer]

"We need more students who know how to make themselves obsolete, and be willing to make themselves obsolete."

Problem is Management

[RossCWilliams]

Today's managers don't really know what they need in any real sense. "I need someone who can produce an AI that gives reliable answers. And universities are failing to provide anyone. So the university is failing at its purpose which is to provide me with employees who are certified to be able to deliver the things I need done. Because god knows I have no way to figure that out. I have no idea what is required to produce an AI that gives reliable answers. That's why I need to hire someone who does.

Re:

[wyHunter]

Yes, exactly. I keep saying "We have a management crisis in the USA" and perhaps, in a larger sense, in the west in general. Why do companies outsource (whatever..software engineering, manufacturing, etc.)? Because nobody in house knows how to do it and doesn't want to. But you if you don't know how to do it, you can't manage an outside vendor to do it.

Re:

[RossCWilliams]

if you don't know how to do it, you can't manage an outside vendor to do it.

That isn't true. We all hire people to do things we don't know how to do. The problem comes when you don't even know what it is you need them to do.

Re:

[wyHunter]

It certainly is. You are trying to build a product with integral things in it that you're getting others to do. If you don't know how it works, you can't support it, enhance it, or even know what you're selling. It's different from hiring a plumber or an electrician or a car mechanic.

Not a problem

[gweihir]

Just wait until the hype collapses. And then it will just be one more small step that AI research has done and not in any way the "revolution" it currently gets sold as.