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"People who don't use AI will be left behind"
- panny 6mo agoYes, I will be left behind. Left behind with my copyrights, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47932937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47932937 Left behind with my money, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47933355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47933355 Left behind with my intact data, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47911524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47911524 Oh, the horror. I am being left behind.
- jeffbee 6mo agoDon't forget your critical thinking skills, your unique voice you painstaking developed over your entire life, and your dignity.
- convolvatron 6mo agoand your ability to stop screwing around and sit down and actually get into something in depth instead half-assing everything
- embedding-shape 6mo agoI'm no AI-hypeman (nor the opposite, I guess), and I agree that replacing AI for critical thinking and writing will only turn out bad in the long-term. But "your dignity"? You mean like "I feel shameful over that people saw that my writing was actually AI?" or something else?
- freejazz 6mo ago> You mean like "I feel shameful over that people saw that my writing was actually AI?" or something else? Well if you don't have dignity in the first place, its hard to have any shame over losing it
- embedding-shape 6mo agoI suppose. So I still don't understand why users of AI should feel like they've lost their dignity, does it matter where the AI runs or using AI is just shameful regardless?
- freejazz 6mo agoIf you had dignity, you'd probably not want to have an AI write for you was my point
- jeffbee 6mo agoI meant the indignity of trying to have a conversation with someone who at first seems like a reasonable professional, but who at some point in the conversations insults you with something like "I asked Claude and ..."
- embedding-shape 6mo agoYeah, that'd be a terrible experience, not gonna lie. Bit like the folks that used to just quote whatever Google served them as the first hits when you're actively having a conversation.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Muhammad523 6mo agoIf that's the case, so be it.
- beastman82 6mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- fud101 6mo ago>What's with all the anti-AI sentiment here? Is it a bunch of unemployed devs? so what? if you aren't part of inflating the hype beast you're a victim of it. Eventually no one will be left to hype it because we'll all have lost the battle.
- Apocryphon 6mo agoThis site slid into pessimism like ten years ago
- beastman82 6mo agoTrue. I think I'm ready to accept it. I guess I should have given up when everyone was bragging about writing rust and go.
- Apocryphon 6mo agoOh, so you're excited about some technologies, but not those ones.
- beastman82 6mo agoI love python and go, not sure what you're inferring. I'm not excited that people wrote their widget with it.
- DonaldPShimoda 6mo ago> I thought people here got excited about technology. I am passionately excited about technology that serves people, but the current hype around AI is not that. LLMs are, fundamentally, a super cool development. That we can now generate large regions of text that are statistically likely to be perceived as accurate is phenomenally neat. But that's all they are: statistical text prediction engines. They do not think or reason; they generate next tokens based on prior context[1]. Unfortunately, because they predict really convincing text, a lot of people are willing to believe them to be more capable than they are. As a consequence, the companies developing these technologies have chosen to lean into rhetoric that exacerbates these beliefs because it means more money for them. The people running these companies fundamentally do not care about the human experience when they could instead care about profits[2]. AI, as an industry, is mostly hype — and it's a particularly insidious form of hype that preys on people's desire for cool, new things at the expense of our collective long-term well-being. The exponential ramp-up of AI data centers is wreaking havoc on natural ecosystems and local communities; the humans "employed" for RLHF are severely underpaid and exploited, and are mostly powerless to make other choices; the damage to our digital infrastructure and community is visible daily (how many "are you a human?" captchas do you get today versus ten years ago? how many useless pull requests do repositories big and small receive on a daily basis? how many "look I vibe coded a shitty app in three days and it's riddled with bugs, let me post about it" posts do we see now?). And this is all to say nothing of the rapidity with which huge swaths of people have just decided they don't care about other people fundamentally; they'd rather AI-generate some garbage company logo than employ a graphic designer to do a better job; they'd rather AI-generate copytext rather than hire an editor; they'd rather reach for the cheap, built-from-the-labor-of-others-without-respect-to-them tool that outsources all creativity and effort and gives them an immediately available "eh, it's good enough" solution. Before long, we will be inundated with "good enough", and we will forget what it was like to have good. I'm excited about technology. I am not excited about the current incarnation of this technology. [1] I am fundamentally not interested in sophistic arguments that "this is how humans work!" We don't know how humans work, so I make a choice to maintain a belief — based on my own experiences and learning — that LLMs do not accurately reflect the workings of a human brain. [2] See "Empire of AI" by Karen Hao.
- dudisubekti 6mo agoBlack-and-white thinking like this is not healthy. You can still do creative thinking while using AI as a powerful tool at your disposal. Some mathematicians like Terence Tao are comfortable doing this, for example.
- d_silin 6mo agoMost people aren't anywhere close to Terence Tao on intelligence scale. Even most of HN commenters aren't that close to Terence Tao.
- kylecazar 6mo agoI don't think balancing AI use with creativity and thought is a matter of IQ. It comes down to how you use the tool.
- d_silin 6mo agoIn my practice, I found AI are more useful in adversarial mode ("criticize this concept, "find a possible bug in this code", "challenge me", "quiz me on the knowledge"), because the knowledge found adds up to your own skills.
- kylecazar 6mo ago100%. One of the things I use it for most is to steel-man an argument I hate or criticize a conviction I have.
- dudisubekti 6mo agoYou don't need super big brain IQ to be creative and expressive, all you need is simply a strong opinion on something, and you don't let AI (or other people) dictate otherwise. Now the skill issue lies in whether your opinion is a good idea or not lol.
- saadn92 6mo agoPeople also used to say that Google or calculators will make you dumber. Neither happened. Won't happen with this either.
- FiReaNG3L 6mo agoWeird fallacy that if you use a tool you can't use your brain anymore
- moron4hire 6mo agoI think it's pretty obvious that people who offload their thinking to an LLM will eventually get used to not thinking hard about things. Anything you do that you stop doing regularly eventually atrophies. Thinking hard about things and performing on work is as much a skill as it is an innate property of being smart, as evidenced by the many "prodigy" sort of folk who languish in obscurity later in life. - https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/mit-study-finds-artificial-intelligence-use-reprograms-the-brain-leading-to-cognitive-decline/ https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/mit-study-finds-artifi...
- CivBase 6mo agoA lot of people do outsource their thinking to AI, so it's not that weird to bring up. That's effectively how many AI companies are marketing the technology. But it's definitely possible to use AI without letting it think for you. OP should at least acknowledge that. Those who dogmatically refuse AI outright may be disadvantaged for some things in the future. But it's also probably hyperbolic to say they will be "left behind".
- beepbooptheory 6mo agoThis is not what a fallacy is.
- wesleywt 6mo agoIf you a tool that replaces your brain then you won't use your brain.
- bluefirebrand 6mo agoLike people who use machines are always physically strong enough to do the job the machine does, right?
- mempko 6mo agoThe author makes a great point about learning. Learning is what increases your intelligence and if we substitute learning for AI lookup we will literally get dumber. That said, AI models have a lot of information and can assist in learning. It's a tool, how will people use it? My fear is they won't use it to help learn.
- simonw 6mo ago> "People who don't use AI will be left behind", they say. I can't emphasize enough how much I hate it when I hear/read shit like that because I'm pretty sure, in fact, that what will happen is the exact opposite. > [...] they'll forget how to fucking LEARN. I think that's the part that makes me the saddest. What a beautiful thing it is just to learn stuff. I love learning. My life of self-education is so much richer with LLMs to help me. There are dozens of other arguments for not engaging with AI. If your reason is "I love learning" I recommend at least dipping your toes in before you declare that AI is a hindrance, not a help, to people who love to learn new things.
- ericd 6mo agoSeriously, these are an autodidact's dream. I've been having an absolute blast learning about stuff from government structures and the different approaches to fusion power to what types of electrical conduit are used for what applications and appropriate connectors, heat pump sizing, etc. It's so ridiculously empowering. All this info that you had to use an enormous amount of time synthesizing and studying is now available at everyone's fingertips. I think we're going to see an explosion in productivity on all sorts of fronts, not just writing code.
- furyofantares 6mo agoSome people who don't use AI will be left behind - those who work on things where LLM's are capable of a substantial amount of the tasks will be left behind if they just refuse to leverage the superhuman properties that LLMs have. I don't think it's hard to catch up if such a person changes their mind, though. Some people who do use AI will be also left behind - those who use it to replace their skills without developing new ones themselves, and those who use it to do the same or worse work more cheaply. They will be left behind in a competitive world where others will work out how use it to do more or better work with no reduction in effort.
- moron4hire 6mo agoIf LLMs mean I never have to open a PowerPoint from a client to pull out their "data" again, that'd be great. I gain nothing from being a manual data entry monkey for people who don't understand the concept that presentation-ready output formats are not data transmission formats. But if I'm to be expected to employ vibecoding in my day to day job as a software engineer, I'll dismantle my house and go live off grid somewhere in Alaska. I have enough power tools and knowledge to do it. Probably massively healthier for my kids.
- furyofantares 6mo agoFor now at least, I think it really depends on what type of coding that is. I don't have any particular predictions going forward about it, but something I think about right now is, do I want to focus my time where the interesting decisions, the valuable contributions I make, are product-level thinking about what to build and what problems to solve? Or do I want to focus my time where the interesting decisions are technical ones, fully wrapping my head around a technical problem and coming up with a solution? I do think both options are still available, and personally I love them both. But I don't know what types of coding would involve significant amounts of both activities anymore.
- skydhash 6mo agoThere’s still a lot of place for both. Because they are just a shift of perspective around the same thing: Solving a problem for someone. Product is when you’re seeing things as the one who have the problem and designing the solution in a way that is usable. Technical is when you shift to see how the solution can be implemented and then balancing tradeoffs (mostly costs in time and monetary resources). While the code is valuable (as it is the solution). Building it is quite easy once you have a good knowledge on both side. The issue with AI is not in their capabilities, but in people rushing to accept the first version when there are still unknowns in the project. And then, changes costs almost as much as redoing the project properly.
- jojomodding 6mo agoI sympathise with the author and the argument. I know the text is a rant. As such, I can understand that the proposed consequences might not make sense. Yet still, there is a fun game you can play, where you replace AI by "chess engine" and you get a text that would be fitting for a late 90s chess grandmaster but seen as totally anachronistic today: "Chess players who don't use engines will be left behind", they say. I can't emphasize enough how much I hate it when I hear/read shit like that because I'm pretty sure, in fact, that what will happen is the exact opposite. People who rely on engines are the ones who will be left behind. They'll forget how to think, how to move the pieces, how to solve a simple straightforward mate in 3, how to tell victory from stalemate... they'll forget how to fucking LEARN. I think that's the part that makes me the saddest. What a beautiful thing it is just to play chess. If you think Deep Blue can do better than you, why would you just let it? Why wouldn't you aim to be better, to learn how to be or do something that a chess computer would never do?
- notahacker 6mo agoSounds like something Magnus Carlsen might say. I hear he's doing quite well out of the game of chess, and pointedly not playing how a computer would play, even though Deep Blue is clearly capable of winning more than he is and from more difficult positions. Also, the world isn't as trivially solved by computation as a game of chess, so maybe delegating your job or how to be a better human to ChatGPT isn't as much of a winning strategy as getting the computer to suggest chess moves.
- sublinear 6mo agoThat is a really accurate analogy. Deeper reasoning, longer term planning, and more efficient solutions have always separated amateurs from experts. That experience cannot be applied asynchronously or reduced to supervision. It has to be "in the loop" and there is always a lot of out-of-band information that only an experienced eye would notice and can't be trained into a model.
- ducttape12 6mo agoThe problem is AI is being pushed and used as the equivalent of using a chess engine to tell you the best move during a match. Maybe there's a way AI can be used to make developers better but it mostly just seems to be the equivalent of grand masters saying how great vibe playing is because now they can play 1000x more games every day. But don't worry, they're still steering the games.
- voidmain 6mo agoWhen on the road to hell, it's OK to be left behind.
- jckahn 6mo agoBut what if all the good jobs are only in hell?
- Barrin92 6mo agoa good job is one that brings you joy and improves your creativitiy, they by definition can't be in hell. if you mean well paying, that's a different thing entirely, ditch the fancy car and adjust your lifestyle
- jckahn 6mo agoI have a fancy car? News to me. I'm just trying to pay my bills and live a sensible and reasonably comfortable life. These days that requires a lot of money.
- hackable_sand 6mo agoThat's an excuse you made for yourself to feel better.
- Barrin92 6mo agomind you given the topic of the article I took the jobs in question to mean largely in the software industry, not talking about minimum wage workers here. But as a programmer I am quite baffled when peers my age, often without kids struggle in this kind of way. My essentials are rent, food, metro card, library card. When I hear people who make what I make say that living requires a lot of money that usually includes two dozen subscriptions, a few grand in useless electronics per year and ordering food most of the week.
- jckahn 6mo ago
- gdulli 6mo agoTrading practice of primary skills for indirect skills like AI is like a writer deciding they should stop writing directly and get really good at Microsoft Word.
- dsjoerg 6mo agoThat's why I write my own assembly language. Compilers just atrophy your skills!
- sph 6mo agoPersonally I just accept that all technologies are great and must be embraced! This way I do not have to think about ethics and potential implications for society.
- xigoi 6mo agoThe job that a compiler does is just a boring mechanical process, which makes it well-suited for a computer to replace. Also, I can use a compiler for free without relying on an evil company.
- chapz 6mo ago"People who drive cars will forget how to walk".
- slopinthebag 6mo agoNo, it's more like they'll just get really, really fat and die early of preventable diseases.
- seanplusplus 6mo agoIf you learn how to walk, then you'll forget how to crawl
- tsukurimashou 6mo agomore like they'll slowly lose muscle and the will to walk if they rely entirely on cars to move themselves around
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- jumploops 6mo agoMore like "people who wear shoes will forget how to run"[0] [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jrnj-7YKZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jrnj-7YKZE
- tartoran 6mo ago>"People who drive cars will forget how to walk". People who drive are in worse shape than people who walk
- gedy 6mo agoMaybe it's a generational thing, but I'm old enough to remember when personal and office computers were really hitting mainstream in the late 70s and 80s, the messaging was a lot more friendly and how they will save you time, help you, etc. Even though practically speaking it reduced a lot of manual jobs. This AI/LLM push from leadership is so damn tone deaf, like "you better do this", "ai layoffs", etc. I feel like they are jumping way too hard and fast into the "post-employee" thinking and deserve every bit of scorn from laymen.
- heliumtera 6mo agoJust like every single trend that came before, they said you would be left behind: If you didn't embrace OOP Test driven development Behavior driven development Events driven development Pants in head driven development SOLID DRY Cloud first Virtualization everything Microsservices Serverless Everything js Everything ts Everything Microsoft This will never stop. You either let someone be in the middle of you and what you want to accomplish, or you will be left behind. Think about the most mediocre person you know. Now remember 50% of people around you is dumber than that
- tsukurimashou 6mo agoI agree with OP it's the other way around, while some will gradually lose basic skills by relying more and more on AI for productivity sake and laziness, those "people who don't use AI" value will go up by choosing to simply keep "learning the hard way"
- mgaunard 6mo agoI find that good people get better with AI, but I'm not sure more average people really do. I've seen some produce stuff without really understanding it, barely review anything, and pretty much suffer from imposter syndrome.
- cyanydeez 6mo agoI think what we're seeing is it's just an amplification of whatever intrinsic motivations people have; the whole mirror to the self thing, on steroids. Obviously people who are motivated by curiousity will have a different view and those who value creativity will end up thinking otherwise. Also, it's basically impossible to separate the technical capabilities with the big money fascists pushing it.
- spamizbad 6mo agoThe statement is absurd because the skill curve for AI tooling is so small you can can mess around for a day or two and get "caught up" with the zeitgeist. And what you need to know to get started is actually far less these days than it was 1.5 years ago thanks to all the product refinement that took place in the space. The only real risk is that today there's an expectation from employers that you've got some AI experience under your belt you can articulate. But you can get that experience today.
- mlinhares 6mo agoYou're discounting the "being able to write properly and put ideas into inteligible text" skill piece here.
- avgDev 6mo agoMost people who have been programming for a while should have those skills. If they don't then learning AI is not the issue but communication is.
- skydhash 6mo agoMost good programmers are good at writing. If you’re capable at simultaneously writing instructions for a dumb abstract machine and have those instructions being understandable for humans, you’re clearly good at expressing at least technical ideas.
- Unmotivator2677 6mo agoYeah, never had a problem with explaining to AI what I want from it. That doesn't mean AI always follows what I tell it to do ...
- sumedh 6mo agoWhich AI are you using?
- scrumbledober 6mo ago
- freejazz 6mo agoDoing fine so far, thanks!
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- feverzsj 6mo agoIt's always obvious that LLMs are bullshit. It's blockchain, but far far worse. US invests too much in it and the collapse has already begun. Half of planned data center builds have been delayed or canceled across the country.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- stevenou 6mo agoI think not using AI is a manifestation of one's inability or unwillingness to LEARN. To your point, if you can't learn, you will fall behind.
- vehemenz 6mo agoYes, but it goes both ways. Using AI can be a great way to be productive while purposefully NOT learning how the sausage is made—say, boilerplate code in some devops system that you don't care about—allowing your attention to be focused on the part of the stack you actually care about.
- dingaling 6mo agoOn the contrary, using AI is like outsourcing your DIY to a professional joiner. Sure, he'll get it done twice as fast and you might notice some tricks as you look over his shoulder. But when you need a second door hung, you'll either have to start learning from scratch or call him again.
- saltcured 6mo agoOr a manifestation of having risk aversion that isn't easily swayed by peer pressure... Everyone seems to know you can't trust the AI output, and that it is on you to review it. But whenever I talk to people who claim to be getting big benefits, there is always a moment they reveal that they are not really reviewing the output. They are just going with it. Similarly, so many who claim to use AI as a search index eventually seem to just trust the summary instead of checking the references to figure out whether it is regurgitating fact or fiction. I don't really know if these users always had low quality standards or low diligence, or whether the tool usage degrades them. But I see the correlation among the friends-of-friends network I can observe.
- black_13 6mo ago[dead]
- beepbooptheory 6mo agoI just don't get even the presumed risk here. How can something be so revolutionary in its capacity to increase productivity but still so esoteric or specialized that there is a risk of being "left behind"? Like all these things people talk about are, at the end of the day, products that want you to use them; they aren't gonna make it hard for someone to onboard in the future. Sure if all coding became ecommerce overnight and I'd never "learned" Salesforce, there might be brief friction there, but I could still just, like, learn Salesforce. It's gonna be a lot easier than learning good software engineering in general. Why spend your life "learning" something whose whole deal is about not needing to learn? Even if you gamble incorrectly, its not going to be hard to get into! Like, what, if I don't start practicing now I am not going to be able to... express concepts with natural language as well?
- baddash 6mo agothis discussion is so stupid. no one who isn't a moron is offloading all work and thought to LLMs. no one who isn't a moron is seriously afraid of their thinking and learning skill "atrophying", whatever tf that means. it's clear that LLMs are unique in that you actually do have the capability to turn your brain off and blindly trust whatever it does for you. but it should be equally clear that that's a stupid approach. people will still use their minds, and this use gets empowered with proper use of LLMs. it's that simple. ffs, we take the fact that they pass the Turing Test routinely for granted now. let's not forget that this technology is legitimately incredible. it stands to reason that you are seriously handicapping yourself by not trying to use it.
- yanis_t 6mo agoCame here to write something like that his. It’s so sad we still have these stupid conversations with people thinking black and white in 2026.
- r00t- 6mo ago"People who use a calculator will forget how to think"
- skwirl 6mo agoThis is a HN comment reply masquerading as a novel submission.
- wesleywt 6mo agoI disagree. People who use too much AI will not learn anything and will not contribute significantly to new developments.
- cbarnes99 6mo agoYou clearly missed that the statement in quotes. And didn't actually read the linked post.
- sdevonoes 6mo agoAny engineer (any person actually) can “learn to use AI” in a couple of days. It’s not rocket science; there’s no chance of left behind. If you haven’t use LLMs at all, a weekend would be enough to be on par with everyone else in the industry
- embedding-shape 6mo ago> a weekend would be enough to be on par with everyone else in the industry I kind of agree in general that it is a learned skill, but considering how unclear people generally are when they communicate, I'm guessing it'll take longer than a weekend to be able to catch up, especially catch up to people who've been working on precise and careful communication and language for years already in a professional environment.
- giancarlostoro 6mo agoThe better you are at architecting or even directing a junior developer, the better your output too. Dont let AI make decisions, its supposed to take your decisions and turn those into code. When AI makes decisions, well the unexpected outcome is always on you.
- pydry 6mo agoi always found it to be easier to write code myself than to direct a junior developer. the level of teaching involved would always mean the overall velocity of work slowed down. some people say you can throw them the drudge work but i find that if you're doing coding right (e.g. you dont let your code base degenerate into a mess of boilerplate), there is barely any drudge work to do.
- CamperBob2 6mo agoi always found it to be easier to write code myself than to direct a junior developer. Me, too. But that doesn't mean I'm a great developer, just a shitty manager.
- 6mo ago
- dsiegel2275 6mo agoBoth of these can be true. And I'm sorry to nitpick - but "People who rely on AI are the ones who will be left behind" is NOT the opposite of "People who don't use AI will be left behind".
- yanis_t 6mo agoThat reminds me of an old Fry and Laurie sketch. Well of course too much is bad for you, that's what "too much" means you blithering twat. If you had too much water it would be bad for you, wouldn't it? "Too much" precisely means that quantity which is excessive, that's what it means. Could you ever say "too much water is good for you"? I mean if it's too much it's too much. Too much of anything is too much. Obviously. Jesus.
- Terr_ 6mo agoThe sketch in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XewVicFzRxw&t=2m43s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XewVicFzRxw&t=2m43s
- jesse_dot_id 6mo agoThis is an abacus-to-calculator situation. Some people still use an abacus. The vast majority do not. It's wild living through one of these technological transitions. People just eschew all common sense and critical thinking as it relates to the adoption of new technologies. If it's good, lots of people will use it commercially. If it's generationally good, everybody will use it commercially because commercial use is about competition. It either gets banned outright, like steroids, or — if it doesn't get banned — those who use it will have a clear advantage and that will lead to a very small number of people who don't use it (in business). This is not really something that opinions are required for because if you think LLMs are going away, your opinion is historically incorrect. Things that reduce toil and increase output do not go away.
- lousken 6mo agoAI was always slowing me down, only recently it has become somewhat useful.
- bluegatty 6mo agoPeople not using AI will 100% get left behind as sure as those refusing to 'cars' or 'computers'. There is absolutely not doubt; and it will be impossible to avoid as using 'plastic' or 'electricity'. The narrow challenges of 'AI aided development' or 'AI aided creative work' are legitimate - that part is real and fair, but it'd be an over-statement to contemplate 'not using it'. The cyclists who keep their muscles strong the 'hard way' ... will win the delivery war vs. cars!? The carpenter who hammers every nail and saws every plank by hand 'the hard way' ... will win over the guys using power saws and nail guns!? No - AI is changing the landscape. What is 'hard and easy' are changing. We won't need some skills, we will need others. It maybe harder to maintain some critical skills, but the upside is obvious. What is fundamentally missing from this treatise is that 'there is always a hard way'. Personally - I have never been more 'cognitively overloaded' than ever. The AI 'amplifies' the depth of complexity one can reach, it's just at 1/2 a layer of abstraction above the code. Driving a 'race car' at the highest speeds - is as challenging - and perhaps more so - than riding a horse. The 'instinct to push back' is fair and there are innumerable legit criticisms ... ... but AI is just a new part of the stack and it will be as horizontally applied as 'software or the transistor' - it's not reasonable to think one could or should avoid it entirely.
- suriya-ganesh 6mo agothis is definitely not true. with AI agents, you're obtaining a mildly lossy perspective of the code itself. whereas if you wrote it by hand, you'd have a more concrete understanding. This is not too different from an engineering manager directing junior developers. The stereotype of the engineering manager who forgot to write a line of code is not wrong.
- bluegatty 6mo agoThat's a fair point, but you're i) radically underrepresenting the broader impact of AI ii) under estimating the power it will have over the short horizon, and iii) missing the fact that 'abstractions are real'. i - AI is going to interject in so many things and so many ways beyond 'helping you write some modules' so consider that. ii - AI 2 years ago was useless for code, you can see how well it works not, and this progress is still very real. By this time next year, the power will be more evident, making the position harder to take. iii - to your point - the real answer is 'abstractions'. We used to write machine code by hand as well, until someone came up with FORTRAN and C etc. Now, people have 'forgotten' how to do that, largely, because we don't need people to do it. AI is crudely that abstraction. You don't have to know a lot about some things. Now - it's very fair to highlight the fact that the abstraction isn't very clean (!!!) but that will come over time. So yes - for writing software today, we're '1/2 a layer abstraction up' - and it's 100% essential to keep an eye on the code, the architecture etc. - it's 'not fully there' but it's better to look at this through the lens of growing capabilities because over the horizon, the argument starts to tilt.
- dollylambda 6mo agoMy take on it is I would rather code than ask the machine to code. It's frustrating though how many open source projects now are overrun with massive PRs and nobody to code review them. This feels like fallout from too much reliance on AI.
- thewebguyd 6mo ago> My take on it is I would rather code than ask the machine to code. Same. I don't really care about productivity or if AI is so much more productive, tbh. I'd rather just change careers at this point. I'd prefer not to just be a full time code reviewer while my agents go do the actual work. But I'm also tired of this in between state. Either rip the bandaid off already, fire everyone, and force governments to implement UBI so I can finally be free, or finally admit that the productivity gains have been vastly oversold and the LLM apocalypse is only a half truth, half grift and get on with our lives.
- bluefirebrand 6mo ago> But I'm also tired of this in between state. Either rip the bandaid off already, fire everyone, and force governments to implement UBI so I can finally be free, or finally admit that the productivity gains have been vastly oversold and the LLM apocalypse is only a half truth, half grift and get on with our lives. I'm also tired. I wish this would happen too. I just don't think it will because it would devastate the market.
- hmokiguess 6mo agoThis energy would be better directed anywhere else. The author chose to take offense by connecting with a false dichotomy presented vaguely in a way that serves no purpose other than dividing and poorly labeling everyone in an area where much nuance applies. I think this is perhaps a side effect of consuming too much content and feeling overwhelmed with it. Engaging with stuff like this only amplifies its effects, how about do anything else instead? Maybe learn something new, like how to channel your anger.
- jerhewet 6mo agoThank ghod I'm retiring in six months. I'm very thankful I came of age during the golden age of personal computing. I was able to own my own computer(s) and earn a living writing software on them and for them. Fifty years was a good run, and I consider myself lucky to have participated in it. IMO we've gone full circle: dumb terminals chained to mainframes and the whimsey of someone else's rules, restrictions, and rent-seeking, to my own bought-and-paid-for computer sitting on my desk that did exactly what I told it to do using software that never changed unless I wanted it to change, and now we're back to dumb terminals (browsers) that talk to mainframes (the cloud) that not only harvest and sell my personal information to the highest bidder but constantly change the rules and restrictions on my software and have gone back to renting me the software and pushing changes that I never asked for and never wanted in the first place. I will never use spicy autocomplete for anything, and I find it depressing that people are being forced to use it in order to keep their job. I see a very dark future for computing if real skills are all replaced with garbage being vomited out by rules engines that harvested their "guess the next word" results from today's internet.
- dsiegel2275 6mo agoTake me with you, please.
- raffael_de 6mo agoWhere he goes, he has to go alone.
- classified 6mo agoThat sounds like it could be a quote from a book or a movie. Any hints?
- fragmede 6mo agoThe Road by Cormac McCarthy
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- Tade0 6mo agoFriendly reminder that we're still in the hype phase, even if it's the late stages. To me the idea that a GPU which costs as much as a car must read its entire VRAM just to output a word sounds incredibly wasteful. I'm exaggerating here, but it is literally reading gigabytes of data and processing it to produce relatively little information. Some data is truly worth the effort, but the majority won't be able to afford this long term - especially when those who capture the market increase prices.
- jsbisviewtiful 6mo ago> a GPU which costs as much as a car must read its entire VRAM just to output a word sounds incredibly wasteful Kind of how I feel about Bitcoin at this point. The coins take so incredibly long to mine if you aren't in a pool that it could cost hundreds of dollars in electricity to own a fraction of the coin months later.
- BadBadJellyBean 6mo agoPeople who can only use AI will be left behind. It is easy to shut off your brain when using AI and then get overwhelmed by the amount of code it produces. Worse is though when people replace programming experience with AI. I have seen a lot of really bad AI code. I can spot and repair it. Others can not. And that is a problem. And I am not talking about purist principles. I am talking about bad unoptimized code that I can spot with just one look. It is a tool just like syntax highlighting, code completion and refactoring tools before it. You need to know how to use them, where their usefulness ends and you should probably have an idea how to do it yourself without the tool. It is okay if you will be less efficient, but it's bad if you just can't.
- carpo 6mo agoCan't you do both? Use AI and still learn and strive to be better.
- lexandstuff 6mo agoI have a feeling that a big risk of using AI all the time is that our own neurological capacity starts to dwindle. Just as many people leading sedentary lifestyles have to make a deliberate effort to exercise, because inactivity is really bad for our bodies, I think we're going to realise that a similar process is necessary for our minds. You really want to be spending a bit of time every day operating at your cognitive limits - trying to fully engage your System 2 - if you want to avoid brain atrophy. Coding used to kind of give you this exercise for free, but you can go really far with just your System 1 nowadays - literally get things done while scrolling Reddit. I'm trying to allocate 30-60 minutes a day to doing something difficult, like writing code by hand for an unfamiliar problem or reading and summarising difficult papers without AI.
- docheinestages 6mo agoI think of AI as just another abstraction layer, somewhat similar to what high-level programming languages provide compared to writing machine code. Deciding how deep to understand the abstraction layers is a choice the user has to make, which could be optional if they don't really need to. Nevertheless, the responsibility of whatever a human produces with AI is still on the human. With that said, knowing how to use AI the way it's right for you can give you a huge advantage. You don't have to though. And there is not a standard way of doing it. What I recommend to everyone is give it a try and see if and how it could help you. At the end, you have to make the decision based on your constraints and what you're aiming to and can sacrifice, including but not limited to speed, accuracy, learning, etc.
- jdw64 6mo agoIn the 1950s, COBOL was introduced with the idea that programming could be written almost as if one were speaking English. But eventually people realized that writing COBOL well, in a style that resembles English conversation, was itself difficult. Today, we are hearing a similar claim: “If you can describe the program in natural language, programming is basically finished.” But the industry is now discovering that describing the program well is the hard part. This is also why ideas like harness engineering are appearing: methods for controlling the range of outputs, from poor to excellent, that can emerge from minimal input. And honestly, I do not think the “vibe coding” phenomenon is entirely bad. The essence of programming is automation. Many people were previously limited because they did not know programming languages. Now, through AI, they can express themselves and turn that expression into working apps. Seeing this, I understand how deeply people have wanted to create. I write industrial software that runs in large factory environments, and because of the nature of my work, it is difficult for me to use AI directly. These environments are usually closed networks, so AI does not really benefit my own production work. Even so, I still defend AI, because it functions as a new kind of voice that allows more people to express themselves.. Of course, capitalism distorts this. Many people use AI to chase money and capital, and as a result, a lot of low-quality apps are being produced. But on the other hand, what is wrong with the motivation of wanting to make something one wants to make? I have been studying the history of programming, and I like Dijkstra’s famous line: > Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.. To me, this means that computing is fundamentally about automation. AI has existed as a research topic almost since the birth of computers. We tend to think of it as recent, but it is a field with a history of more than sixty years. Starting from early work such as the Perceptron, there have always been people claiming that AI was a fraud or an illusion. But now a new seed has germinated. The amount of complexity that a single human can handle has increased. Historically, the techniques for managing that complexity were things like programming patterns and software architecture. And even people who strongly argued for software architecture also warned that if architecture becomes detached from code, then something has gone wrong. Memes always damage the essence of ideas. As information circulates, it degrades, and eventually the original meaning disappears. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a good example. The original paper was not simply saying, “ignorant people show off, while knowledgeable people do not.” It was more about how both less competent and more competent people can have difficulty accurately assessing their own metacognition. But the idea became distorted. The same thing happens to many famous ideas in programming. Knuth’s statement about premature optimization is also constantly distorted as it circulates. In that situation, can we really say it is always bad to step away from online communities and learn through AI while cross-checking against books? When I see people making extreme claims about this, I sometimes find it absurd. Of course, many people may flag or downvote my comment. But this is how I see it.
- akomtu 6mo agoIf the crowd is running towards a cliff, I'd rather be left behind.
- uggt 6mo agoThis is the only advice. It’s gonna be painful and many firms will go bust - not because of being left behind. But they got so deep in pushing llm’s their competitors came in and offered their customers what they wanted - the customers don’t care how you produce it. They want the thing to that leaves them in the best economical state. And this llm mania is gonna cause many firms to forget this and go down paths they will later regret.
- fdsajfkldsfklds 6mo agoIf your job can't easily be done by AI, then you can pick it up and get "up to speed" any time you like. If it can be done by AI, then you have no hope of competing with the quantity of AI output that anyone can trigger in very little time. As my job seems pretty secure, I can ignore AI for as long as I like.
- abustamam 6mo ago> Why wouldn't you aim to be better, to learn how to be or do something that AI would never? Because it doesn't make sense to be better than a tool. A woodworker could use a hand saw and take an hour to cut wood... Or he could use a buzz saw and cut it in a few minutes. Is the woodworker any less of a woodworker when he uses a buzzsaw vs a hand saw? Outsourcing thinking to AI is not healthy, and certainly if everyone used AI like this we're doomed. I still think it's true that those who don't use AI will be left behind, but it's a bit tautalogical because the thing they're behind left behind on is AI. A lot of the biggest companies on earth are putting a lot of money in AI, but if you're OK with working for a company that is not putting all their money in AI that's perfectly fine. Just like block chain was everywhere ten years ago and now is just kinda _there_. If you got in before the hype you could have made a lot of money. If you didn't, you were left behind. I was left behind and I'm OK with that.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6mo agoPerhaps programming will once again become primarily a hobby
- ixxie 6mo agoOrganizations and communities that embrace both AI users and AI abstainers will be the true winners. A bimodal strategy gets you the best of both worlds: the ability to rapidly explore and develop ideas, and the ability to critically and cautiously assess them. Diversity fuels evolution.
- b3n4kh 6mo agoPeople who don’t use online search engines will be left behind. No, it is not an issue that they might „forget“ how to search for the information in a book from a public library.
- b3n4kh 6mo agoPeople who don’t use Online search engines will be left behind. No, it is not an issue that they might „forget“ how to get this information from a book in a public library.
- Olumde 6mo agoI don't (yet) use AI in the way I am expected to. I have not integrated it into my IDE -- can't be bothered, plus I code in notepad++. Rather I use in a browser and have raging arguments with it over the course of three days about a design. After we come to an agreement I write the code.
- abstractspoon 6mo agoI'm just retired and more than happy to be left behind. I'll carry on writing software the way I love until I die
- znpy 6mo agoThe author is making a very coarse reasoning mistake. Using AI is and "think, how to write, how to do a simple reliable search, how to tell fact from fiction" are not mutually exclusive. Yeah I don't think this line of reasoning is to be taken any seriously at all. It can be... left behind.
- ChoGGi 6mo agoI fully plan to dig deep into AI, just as soon as we have models that stop presenting lies as facts.
- tokkkie 6mo ago[dead]
- KevinMS 6mo agoI'll jump into AI when I'm convinced it has a sustainable business model.
- Cameri 6mo ago“People who rely on AI are the ones who will be left behind.” And that’s exactly what happened to those who started using an abacus, a calculator, or a computer.