I’m thinking about limiting the extent I use it for coding. Just to stay sharp. Need to exercise my brain more.
Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
#22For me, it’s increasing and increasing by the day. I have no interest in limiting or stopping it, and every day I’m working to improve my workflows and interactions either AI. And I say that as a software engineer with 20-something years of experience; I’m not a new kid on the block.
Re: Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
#23I tried it for writing, and while the main LLMs do a decent job of vomiting out somewhat wordy but essentially okay text if you want some kind of generic content on a specific subject, there's always a distinctly generative feel to it, at least in my impression. The real problems emerge when you ask for technical or datum-rich writing. The little invented or "mistaken" details are just too frequent to let it be useful unless you do enough editing that you almost might as well write what you wanted yourself.
Given the above, it's useful as hell for generating templates and usable starters for creating your own work when you're feeling stuck, and that's mainly it for me.
Re: Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
#24My only negative thing about AI is that currently it's hard to do it locally, you rely on a third party who now suddenly has access to a large portion of the code. That is really a downgrade from before AI, when I had absolutely everything locally except Google search. But other than that, the bottleneck is with me, not with the AI. I think I can get a lot more out of it by getting more experienced in offloading work to AI.
It's just so good how I can just let it run bash commands on my system and figure out my problems. Too good of a utility to pass up on.
Re: Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
#25I don't use it at all.
I'm not delegating my thinking to a machine that can't think.
Learned helpesness as a service isn't a thing I want and I worry that long term it will make me think less deeply in ways I can't predict.
Re: Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
#26I did neither stop nor limit. That's because I use it in moderation when it makes sense (at least to me) and not with religious fervor.
Re: Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
#27I use AI in Google search results because I have not bothered to turn it off and it’s just there. Otherwise I have avoided AI.
Re: Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
#28Writing.
I've tried for years to build writing tools with AI. I think for the most part, it doesn't work well and they have become worse (more unnatural) since GPT-3, with the exception of GPT-4.5 and Gemini 1.5 Flash.
There are bits you can delegate to AI: Writing punchy intro paragraphs. Brainstorming titles. Starting off dialogue in a certain style, but it can't sustain it for very long. Or dialogue as another person - you often don't want two characters with similar language.
Writing is thinking. You can rubber duck it for ideas. And it does bounce back some good ones. But you can't expect it to do the heavy work.
Lately, I've been reversing the dynamic - getting AI to generate the bullet points while I write the document. The last straw was when I got it to summarize a doc, and then got it to do work based off the doc it wrote. It would get half the work wrong.
Re: Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
#29None. I try to use AI more every day.
I’m also type 1 diabetic and this is like asking me to what extent I have stopped or limited my use of insulin.
AI and insulin (to different extents) make my life better in significant ways. Why would I stop or limit that?
Re: Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
#30I personally do not use LLMs (knowingly) at all, largely for environmental reasons. The improvements are, to me, not worth the attrocious energy use. I will happily pay 20% or whatever more in both money and time. I also have no interest in technology that impedes my skill development. I do not want to use anything that makes me a worse writer over time. YMMV, I am answering the OP not evangelizing. Counter arguments…
You don't owe anyone a back and forth discussion anyway, so the last line comes off as redundant.