Comment by mpalmer
Physical engineers might scoff good-naturedly at an attempt by project managers to refer to work scheduling as "logistics engineering".
But they really shouldn't because obviously scheduling and logistics is difficult, involving a lot of uncertainty and tolerances.
Uncertainty and tolerance implies that you have a predictable distribution in the first place.
Engineers are not just dealing with a world of total chaos, observing the output of the chaos, and cargo culting incantations that seem to work for right now [1]…oh wait nevermind we’re doing a different thing today! Have you tried paying for a different tool, because all of the real engineers are using Qwghlm v5 Dystopic now?
There’s actually real engineering going on in the training and refining of these models, but I personally wouldn’t include the prompting fad of the week to fall under that umbrella.
[1] I hesitate to write that sentence because there was a period where, say, bridges and buildings were constructed in this manner. They fell down a lot, and eventually we made predictable, consistent theoretical models that guide actual engineering, as it is practiced today. Will LLM stuff eventually get there? Maybe! But right now we’re still plainly in the phase of trying random shit and seeing what falls down.