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Using AI is cognitive surrender. It's not your code, it's not your work.
by VCFundedGenYer 1mo ago
Using AI is cognitive surrender. It's not your code, it's not your work.
- onlyrealcuzzo 1mo agoUsing typewriters is surrender! Not your handwriting, not your work!
- some-guy 1mo agoI use AI all the time for coding, but a tool that non-deterministically reaches potentially a different output than I would have produced myself is not analogous to typewriters.
- qarl2 1mo agoYou yourself would be non-deterministic if we could rewind time. So what's the issue here? Not to mention, LLMs can be made deterministic if that were actually valuable. Seems like determinism is just the latest excuse to hate.
- some-guy 1mo agoIt’s not exactly determinism, it’s authenticity. If we rewind time, of course the words would be different. It’s not relevant to my argument. There’s a reason why the top comments of HN blog posts whine about articles that are clearly written by AI. I use AI constantly as a coding agent, but I care deeply about the authenticity of the words I write intended for other human beings to be my own.
- qarl2 1mo ago> It’s not exactly determinism, it’s authenticity. I hope you understand, by so glibly switching from "determinism" to "authenticity" you've just provided more evidence that this is just the latest excuse to hate. But that aside - what happens in a couple years, when LLMs inevitably improve, and their writing is objectively superior to human writing? And people who just want to read well-written material won't care about the authenticity? I suspect there will be another glib switch. Because the reality here is just that AI is hated. Full stop.
- bakugo 1mo agoI think it's pretty telling that the only response techbros have to that is some form of false equivalence, every single time.
- unknownfuture 1mo agoIf you can't see why your analogy is deeply broken I honestly don't know what to do for you.
- LPisGood 1mo agoIt’s not clear to me why people believe determinism has some special property.
- bad_haircut72 1mo agoWhen you read the code thats been generated and submit it as a PR it becomes deterministic
- unknownfuture 1mo agoYou still don't get it. Think about the act of writing with a pen. Now think about what a typewriter does in that context. Now think about what an LLM does in that context. Can you reason about how those are vastly different tools within the context of writing or communication, so much so that the comparison doesn't actually make any sense? Hint: it has nothing to do with determinism. It has to do with the nature of the work itself and the role of the person doing it. As an aside, this whole exchange really is just a perfect encapsulation of the outcome-focused versus process-focused individual. The outcome-focused person sees words in a document and whether an LLM produced them or a human typed them is a distinction without a difference. The process-focused person is utterly baffled that anyone could think those are in any way equivalent.
- qarl2 1mo ago> You still don't get it. HEH. I just read your comment three times and I definitely don't get it. I think its entire point is to express outrage about not getting it, rather than actually explain it.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- SmasherEpilepti 1mo agoThat's a terrible analogy. It's more like using a typewriter where the job is calligraphy. I use LLMs at work all the time, and it truly does feel like somebody else coding for me, and me reviewing, cleaning up, and asking for changes. It's really not my work, nor is it my code, but I'm still fine bringing it in. I also don't use LLMs on my personal code done in my free time because I want my brain to still be fully functional in a few years.
- cdelsolar 1mo agoI still use LLMs on personal code as well because I can build way more of it and I have way too many open source projects
- tmountain 1mo agoThere are lots of ways to have a fully functional brain besides writing code manually…
- SmasherEpilepti 1mo agoYes, and all of them involve exercising your mind regularly. I could let LLMs do my personal projects for me and then try to make up the difference with brain teasers, language learning, etc. I choose to exercise my mind because I still love programming, including writing my own code. I suspect that a lot of people who are going full hog on LLMs aren't actually making up the difference, and are simply offloading their thinking. I choose to not be one of those. I'll use them at work because they make me faster and most of the code is already not mine. It's a means to an end. My personal projects are for the fun and love of programming, not just to have some software in the end.
- LPisGood 1mo agoCould you not say the same about using a compiler or higher level language or a library you don’t understand or an algorithm you don’t understand or a chip that you don’t understand?
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- inigyou 1mo agoYes. How many JavaScript bootcamp programmers don't know how memory works?
- agiacalone 1mo agoWhen I was in high school, graphing calculators were pretty new. New enough that most teachers had not yet encountered them. I was a pretty nerdy kid even then, and I saw graphing calculator as 'portable computer' in 1993! So, of course I wanted one. When our teachers found about them, they banned the use of graphing calculators, some teachers going so far as to only allowing 'four-bangers' (a basic one) for classes lower than Trig (I never got to Calc in high school). Funny, but your statement reminded me of what one of math teachers used to say: "If you use a graphing calculator, you aren't doing math." It seems really quaint today.
- teeray 1mo agoIt’s more like cheating off your neighbor’s math test than using a calculator
- nsxwolf 1mo agoIf I hand you a math problem, and you point your camera at it and write down ChatGPT’s answer, you are definitely not doing math.
- agiacalone 1mo ago"If I hand you a equation to solve, and you type in the numbers, hit enter on your programmatic calculator, and write down Texas Instruments' answer, you are definitely not dong math." <-- would have been my teachers' attitude too. Throw in "and when the batteries in your calculator die, you'll need to know how to do it by hand!" for good measure. :-) I jest...
- mysterydip 1mo agoI think the difference with the calculator analogies is a calculator just speeds up calculations you could do yourself (granted some very slowly). I can’t type in “sally has 35 apples, and wants to give an equal number to each of her 7 friends. how many apples does each get?” I have to know to do 35/7. But an ai will do that problem solving for me, with zero understanding on my part.
- TuxSH 1mo agoIMO it's fine if you use it to review hand-written code. Vibe-coding (and especially 100% slop projects) on the other hand, is indeed cognitive surrender as it's identical to cheating on homework back then.
- nickysielicki 1mo agoActually it is your code and it is your work.
- CursedSilicon 1mo agoThe legality around that has not yet been tested, so
- iAMkenough 1mo agoIn the same sense that hiring someone overseas to do your remote work job is submitting your code and your work.
- deadbabe 1mo agoThere's a time for cognition and a time for just moving quickly and getting shit done. Downloading a bunch of open source libraries and putting together some project with a bunch of glue code also requires little thinking, but before AI no one really said that was "cognitive surrender". People even got pats on the back... for using other people's work to build something.
- rasz 1mo agoits a decomp, it wasnt your code to begin with
- cdelsolar 1mo agoYes it is
- chollida1 1mo agoWhat about writing in C. If you use a compiler its not your code that's running and not your work. You are setting the bar way to high. We use LLM's for our coding and its most definitely our code and work. How would it be any different than a collogue writing code that you review and commit?