An Engineer or a Scientist?

AI could be the greatest dumbing down of our world ever, and where theory and proof fail to have any real significance any more. A great beauty in our world will be lost forever.

I am happiest as an engineer and not as a scientist. I don’t want to sit at a desk with mathematical equations, I want to do real things that solve real problems for real people.

I always “love” those TV programmes that show people as scientists, and where they are actually engineers. A typical narrative is:

“Janet is an AI Computer Scientist who works in a lab”,

and where Janet is really a Machine Learning Engineer (and proud to be an engineer rather than a scientist — as she often does real things). Her “lab” is actually a nice office with coffee on demand. There’s no test tubes, or people with white coats with pens in their pocket.

Unfortunately, our media world — in some countries — still has a hang-up in the usage of the engineer role.

So, do computer scientists mainly exist in the land of academia and research, and proper engineers in the real world? If so, why do we still call a mainly programming subject as school: Computer Science?

Overall, academia (mainly universities) perhaps has too much control over what is taught at school, and it would do us all well if we focused on engineering rather than the science of software.

My simplistic advice is to employ someone with deep engineering and scientific expertise and teach the ML/AI methods, and not the other way around. Someone who is knowledgeable in the domain will be able to adapt and understand results faster than those who have only a superficial knowledge of an area. The key skills now are not in fully in AI, but in the domains it applies to, and where the days of having to code ML are receding fast. Go hug an engineer.