Below is the link to the MIT study for reference.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872
Ask HN: From the MIT study, is it smarter to resign than to use forced AI?
1–10 of 19 posts
Re: Ask HN: From the MIT study, is it smarter to resign than to use forced AI?
#2I don't think a lot of us here write essays for a living.
Re: Ask HN: From the MIT study, is it smarter to resign than to use forced AI?
#3This paper makes me glad I am not a researcher.
Re: Ask HN: From the MIT study, is it smarter to resign than to use forced AI?
#4Shrug If you are being told by your boss to use AI or quit and you absolutely refuse to use AI yes you should quit.
The end. No anger at you or your boss. It's an incompatibility.
I understand why some companies mandate usage these days. Especially for programming. The honest truth is that it does speed up development. The other honest truth is that there's resistance to change that harms productivity at times like this and the only way around that is for leadership to be very direct on this point.
To use a metaphor employers don't want weavers who refuse to make use of the loom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
Re: Ask HN: From the MIT study, is it smarter to resign than to use forced AI?
#5Shrug If you are being told by your boss to use AI or quit and you absolutely refuse to use AI yes you should quit. The end. No anger at you or your boss. It's an incompatibility. I understand why some companies mandate usage these days. Especially for programming. The honest truth is that it does speed up development. The other honest truth is that there's resistance to change that harms productivity at times like t…
The loom however does not make t-shirts despite you asking it for the shorts. The loom does not confabulate, create four handed sleeves and tell you this is the correct way...
Re: Ask HN: From the MIT study, is it smarter to resign than to use forced AI?
#6Smarter is a very poor metric.
And a convenient excuse.
Re: Ask HN: From the MIT study, is it smarter to resign than to use forced AI?
#7Shrug If you are being told by your boss to use AI or quit and you absolutely refuse to use AI yes you should quit. The end. No anger at you or your boss. It's an incompatibility. I understand why some companies mandate usage these days. Especially for programming. The honest truth is that it does speed up development. The other honest truth is that there's resistance to change that harms productivity at times like t…
The loom however does not make t-shirts despite you asking it for the shorts. The loom does not confabulate, create four handed sleeves and tell you this is the correct way...
Just like, thinking about how bad early machines were, I bet early looms made a whole bunch of annoying mistakes that required cleanup. I think one of the biggest jobs of the early Industrial Revolution was like babysitting machines.
Re: Ask HN: From the MIT study, is it smarter to resign than to use forced AI?
#8Shrug If you are being told by your boss to use AI or quit and you absolutely refuse to use AI yes you should quit. The end. No anger at you or your boss. It's an incompatibility. I understand why some companies mandate usage these days. Especially for programming. The honest truth is that it does speed up development. The other honest truth is that there's resistance to change that harms productivity at times like t…
You are a good employee!
> To use a metaphor employers don't want weavers who refuse to make use of the loom.
The loom actually produced something, as opposed to mediocre coders who ingratiate themselves with management by pushing "AI" because they hate all productive people.
The loom also did not steal other people's IP.
Re: Ask HN: From the MIT study, is it smarter to resign than to use forced AI?
#9Shrug If you are being told by your boss to use AI or quit and you absolutely refuse to use AI yes you should quit. The end. No anger at you or your boss. It's an incompatibility. I understand why some companies mandate usage these days. Especially for programming. The honest truth is that it does speed up development. The other honest truth is that there's resistance to change that harms productivity at times like t…
> To use a metaphor employers don't want weavers who refuse to make use of the loom
it's funny to reference that, since the luddite movement was about working conditions, pay, and quality of goods produced. It wasn't ideological opposition to technology (They didn't destroy machines when acceptable conditions were agreed)
Re: Ask HN: From the MIT study, is it smarter to resign than to use forced AI?
#10Past a certain level of seniority, your job increasingly becomes translating imprecise mandates from on high into practical outcomes.
If I heard someone making a blanket mandate for using AI, I'd translate that to them hearing this "new AI thing" allows people to do more work more efficently, and they to see that increase in their org.
I'd take that mandate as a chance to explore AI on someone else's dime, but continue doing my work otherwise, only using AI as it benefits me.
If expectations rise to un-reasonable level because of unrealistic expectations around AI, that's a seperate problem you'll have to deal with.
(It's also not a great look that your leadership wouldn't dig in to realize how silly forced AI is, but a charitable reading is that they're trying to force interactions with AI so employees can discover where it works and where it doesn't)