10 ms·

People are worried AI is making us dumber. You hear it all the time. GPS wrecked our sense of direction. Spellcheck killed spelling. Now it’s AI’s turn to suppo

People are worried AI is making us dumber. You hear it all the time. GPS wrecked our sense of direction. Spellcheck killed spelling. Now it’s AI’s turn to supposedly rot our brains. It’s the same old story. New tool comes along, people freak out about what we’re “losing.” But they’re missing the point. It’s never about losing skills, it’s about shifting them. And usually, the shift is upwards. Take GPS. Yeah, okay, maybe you can’t navigate with a paper map anymore. So what? Navigation isn’t about memorizing street names. It’s about getting from A to B. GPS makes that way easier, for way more people. Suddenly, everyone can explore, find their way around unfamiliar places without stress. Is that “dumber”? No, it’s just… better navigation. We optimized for the outcome, not the parlor trick of knowing all the streets by heart. Same with the printing press. Before that, memory was king. Stories, knowledge – all in your head. Then books came along, and the hand-wringing started. “We’ll stop memorizing! Our minds will get soft!” Except, that’s not what happened. Books didn’t make us dumber. They democratized knowledge. Freed up our brains from rote memorization to actually think, analyze, create. We shifted from being walking libraries to… well, to being able to use libraries. Again, better. Now it’s AI and coding. The worry is, AI code assistants will make us worse programmers. Maybe we won’t memorize syntax as well. Maybe we’ll lean on AI to fill in the boilerplate. Fine. So what if we do? Programming isn’t about remembering every function name in some library. It’s about solving problems with code. And AI? Right now, it’s a tool to solve problems faster, more efficiently. To use it well in its current form, you need to be better at the important parts of programming: - Problem Definition: You have to be crystal clear about what you want to build. Vague prompts, vague code. AI kind of forces you to think precisely. - System Design: AI can write code snippets. As of right now, designing a whole system? That’s still on you. And that’s the hard part, the valuable part. - Testing and Debugging: AI isn’t magic. At least, not yet. You still need to test, validate, and fix its output. Critical thinking, still essential. So, yeah, maybe some brain scans will show changes. Brains are plastic. Use a muscle less, it changes. Use a new one more, it grows. Expected. But if someone’s scoring lower on some old-school coding test because they rely on AI, ask yourself: are they actually worse at building software? Or are they just working smarter? Faster? More effectively with the tools available today? This isn’t about “dumbing down.” It’s about cognitive specialization. We’re offloading the stuff machines are good at – rote tasks, memorization, syntax drudgery – so we can focus on what humans are actually good at: abstraction, creativity, problem-solving at a higher level. Don’t get caught up in nostalgia for obsolete skills. Focus on the outcome. Are we building better things? Are we solving harder problems? Are we moving faster in this current technological landscape? If the answer is yes, then maybe “dumber” isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s just... evolved. And who knows what’s next? https://tulio.org/blog/dumber-no-different/ https://tulio.org/blog/dumber-no-different/

withinboredom 2y ago
AI can program, but not engineer. Even then, you eventually reach a point in the project where it is too complex for AI to even do snippets; especially if you are pioneering something new that has never been done before. A sprinter is unlikely to win a marathon, and that is what using AI to program is like. By the time you have to take over, you have a huge learning curve ahead of you as you can lean on the AI less and less. If you're doing something boring/boiler-plate, yeah, AI is helpful I guess.
- matwood 2y ago
  > AI can program, but not engineer. I feel like that's what the OP said. People can focus on the engineering part and not memorizing syntax or function names. Too often I see people thinking in very binary terms, and we see it here again. AI does everything or nothing. I just keep thinking it'll be in between and people who are good at leveraging every tool at their disposal will reap the largest benefits.
  - scaryclam 2y ago
    You don't need AI if that's all you're using it for. In fact, IDEs have been doing a fine job at that for years. It feels right now, that much of the time, AI is a solution looking for a problem to solve. I find it more useful to treat AI like an easier to search stack overflow. You can ask it to go find you an answer, and then elaborate when it's not the right one.
- analog31 2y ago
  Most people with "engineer" titles spend relatively little of their time on actual quantitative engineering or "higher level" thinking. A lot of their work involves manual information processing: Organizing and arranging things, fitting things together, troubleshooting. This could be justified for a couple of reasons: Maybe a lot of the stuff that was "engineering" is now handled by the CAD software. That's great. But also, the efficiency of those tools has raised the complexity of systems to the point where the interaction between parts consumes most of the engineers' attention. Managers also spend most of their time on the same things, but handling different kinds of information. But CAD hasn't changed the immutable laws of engineering, such as Brooks's Law. When I hear about the wonders of AI transforming engineers into higher level thinkers, my snarky response is: "Does this mean that projects will finish on time?"

withinboredom 2y ago

AI can program, but not engineer. Even then, you eventually reach a point in the project where it is too complex for AI to even do snippets; especially if you are pioneering something new that has never been done before. A sprinter is unlikely to win a marathon, and that is what using AI to program is like. By the time you have to take over, you have a huge learning curve ahead of you as you can lean on the AI less and less. If you're doing something boring/boiler-plate, yeah, AI is helpful I guess.

matwood 2y ago
> AI can program, but not engineer. I feel like that's what the OP said. People can focus on the engineering part and not memorizing syntax or function names. Too often I see people thinking in very binary terms, and we see it here again. AI does everything or nothing. I just keep thinking it'll be in between and people who are good at leveraging every tool at their disposal will reap the largest benefits.
- scaryclam 2y ago
  You don't need AI if that's all you're using it for. In fact, IDEs have been doing a fine job at that for years. It feels right now, that much of the time, AI is a solution looking for a problem to solve. I find it more useful to treat AI like an easier to search stack overflow. You can ask it to go find you an answer, and then elaborate when it's not the right one.
analog31 2y ago
Most people with "engineer" titles spend relatively little of their time on actual quantitative engineering or "higher level" thinking. A lot of their work involves manual information processing: Organizing and arranging things, fitting things together, troubleshooting. This could be justified for a couple of reasons: Maybe a lot of the stuff that was "engineering" is now handled by the CAD software. That's great. But also, the efficiency of those tools has raised the complexity of systems to the point where the interaction between parts consumes most of the engineers' attention. Managers also spend most of their time on the same things, but handling different kinds of information. But CAD hasn't changed the immutable laws of engineering, such as Brooks's Law. When I hear about the wonders of AI transforming engineers into higher level thinkers, my snarky response is: "Does this mean that projects will finish on time?"