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Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

nature.com

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Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#11

Post by Fergusonb »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #4

The two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Their code has become terrible and their judgment even worse. A very similar topic was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392004 and I make the exact same conclusion: All of this makes me selfishly excited for my own future. It's glaringly obvious that anyone who's a heavy user of LLMs i…

My friends can't ride horses as well as they used to, they've been using cars to get around too much.

Sure horses are more efficient, but cars are faster and more convenient, and allow you to get a lot more done.

Also cars will get better in our lifetime, horses are horses.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#12

Post by antonvs »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #4

The two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Their code has become terrible and their judgment even worse. A very similar topic was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392004 and I make the exact same conclusion: All of this makes me selfishly excited for my own future. It's glaringly obvious that anyone who's a heavy user of LLMs i…

Another tactic is to use LLMs to help you learn. That's another way to approach "It has never been easier to get better than others."

Avoiding tool use because you're afraid you won't be able to use the tool responsibly is not likely to be a winning strategy in the end. Learning to use the tool well is much more effective.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#13

Post by rf15 »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #4

The two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Their code has become terrible and their judgment even worse. A very similar topic was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392004 and I make the exact same conclusion: All of this makes me selfishly excited for my own future. It's glaringly obvious that anyone who's a heavy user of LLMs i…

I did stop because I noticed the severe atrophy after using them for a year. Never again.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#14

Post by largbae »

My compiler writing skills atrophied with the advent of high-level languages, but in exchange I got more done. There is still a very well paid market for compiler writers, but the fact that not everyone needs to be one has made the world richer overall.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#15

Post by contingencies »

ianbutler wrote: post #5

Tool use typically follows this curve. If you want to preserve a skill you have to actually preserve it. This isn't inherently bad by itself, tools enable us to do much more than we can without them and its a point of contention whether or not any skill is inherently important when a tool comes along that does it for us.

Sure. But if you don't own the tool and it is held by a cabal of centralist (even political state-adjacent) parties, you're having a bad day when computer says no.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#16

Post by slibhb »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #4

The two senior engineers in my org (in a FAANG) who vibe-code the most have lost literally all of their skills. Their code has become terrible and their judgment even worse. A very similar topic was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392004 and I make the exact same conclusion: All of this makes me selfishly excited for my own future. It's glaringly obvious that anyone who's a heavy user of LLMs i…

The article is saying that using AI degrades certain skills when AI is not available. You're claiming that AI is making people less effective even when they have access to AI. I'm skeptical of your claim.

The article's claim is probably true, but not really an argument against AI. Using keyboards degrades my ability to write by hand but that's not a good argument against keyboards. AI will become another tool that allows us to operate more effectively and at a higher level of abstraction. Just like keyboards and Python.

Now, we still occasionally need people who can write assembly (and do calligraphy). But mostly we don't.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#17

Post by hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm »

devolving-dev wrote: post #2

Is this a situation where AI will go away and we will regret the loss of skills? At worse, we will be forced to use open weight models instead of the cutting edge, so I don't think it's a big deal. I'm sure people got worse at arithmetic after the invention of the calculator.

At worse you suffer from cognitive atrophy. Become more dumb and lazy.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#18

Post by ianbutler »

contingencies wrote: post #15
ianbutler wrote: post #5

Tool use typically follows this curve. If you want to preserve a skill you have to actually preserve it. This isn't inherently bad by itself, tools enable us to do much more than we can without them and its a point of contention whether or not any skill is inherently important when a tool comes along that does it for us.

Sure. But if you don't own the tool and it is held by a cabal of centralist (even political state-adjacent) parties, you're having a bad day when computer says no.

We love our open source models. GLM 5.2 came out recently and the timeline for closing the gap to closed source shrank to something like 2 weeks by popular measurements.

Edit: Mis remembered the timeline I saw not 2 weeks, 3 months, but still I think my point stands.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#19

Post by georgemcbay »

devolving-dev wrote: post #2

Is this a situation where AI will go away and we will regret the loss of skills? At worse, we will be forced to use open weight models instead of the cutting edge, so I don't think it's a big deal. I'm sure people got worse at arithmetic after the invention of the calculator.

I don't think the real threat is at the individual level, but at the societal level.

Building skills over time leads to insights that lead to innovation.

AI does many interesting things, but it doesn't innovate (yet).

The real threat isn't that we'll all lose our skills (possibly) and then lose access to AI (unlikely), it is that AI will remain at roughly currently levels and we'll dull our skills due to reliance on it and innovation will stall because we've offloaded too much of the thinking to the non-innovative machine.

I'm not saying this is what definitely will happen, but it does seem like a very possible outcome.

Re: Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

#20

Post by mediaman »

contingencies wrote: post #15
ianbutler wrote: post #5

Tool use typically follows this curve. If you want to preserve a skill you have to actually preserve it. This isn't inherently bad by itself, tools enable us to do much more than we can without them and its a point of contention whether or not any skill is inherently important when a tool comes along that does it for us.

Sure. But if you don't own the tool and it is held by a cabal of centralist (even political state-adjacent) parties, you're having a bad day when computer says no.

The tools aren't owned by a cabal of state-adjacent parties. Specific implementations are. But open-source models have saved the day here.
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