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Task Paralysis and AI

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Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#11

Post by MrGilbert »

Weryj wrote: post #3

I could have written this article myself. The addiction part, the ADHD part and the pending test part. The fear of becoming addicted to AI is real and I don't think I'll be capable to stop it, considering we're asking people who struggle with avoiding quick dopamine to use it professionally in their daily work life. My Pro went to Max(5) to Max(20) pretty quickly and I was burning through that weekly limit still, wit…

> [...] considering we're asking people who struggle with avoiding quick dopamine to use it professionally in their daily work life.

It's so wild that it never dawned on me, why some people around me were so quick with "Let AI do that!". I'm not saying that each and everyone has ADHD, but I think I underestimated a) the flow of dopamine a successful prompt can set free and b) the craving for it by folks that I deemed more stable than myself.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#12

Post by thrance »

Don't know about ADHD and whatnot, but I do feel this "task paralysis" pretty often. One thing that I found works really well for me is to work on multiple projects at once. Go one to two weeks on one, then switch to another. I'm not lacking motivation anymore and it feels great.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#13

Post by pllbnk »

stavros wrote: post #7
pllbnk wrote: post #5

So the end game for the current generation of AI companies won't be productivity improvements but gambling, just like everything else nowadays. That's why they want to get us all into these massive casinos they call data centers and don't want us to own the slot machines. So what that you have ideas - other people have them too. It's not ideas that build businesses but knowing right people or ability to sell products…

The gambling trope is so tired. AI development doesn't involve luck to any appreciable degree, certainly not more than hiring people to do a job can be considered "gambling" (you never know what you're going to get!). It's just paying to get stuff done, which is how it's always been, since the dawn of man.

For most people who are not doing their day to day jobs it's just a prompt of their idea roughly sketched out and a miracle happens - LLM fills in the blanks. Every time it's different but it works, sometimes even better than initially expected. That's why the addiction and gambling. Gambling is a lot of things, not only flashing lights or play sounds. Some people claim prediction markets isn't gambling either, though that doesn't change the fact.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#15

Post by stavros »

mrbungie wrote: post #10
stavros wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gambling trope is so tired. AI development doesn't involve luck to any appreciable degree, certainly not more than hiring people to do a job can be considered "gambling" (you never know what you're going to get!). It's just paying to get stuff done, which is how it's always been, since the dawn of man.

The gambling part is because of the (hopefully emergent and not purposefully designed) intermittent reinforcement due to the limits. You don't get that with regular hires.

Really? All the hires I've seen had an 8-hour/5-day limit, or you had to pay through the nose for extended usage outside that window.

Where do you get your 24/7 hires from?

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#16

Post by stavros »

pllbnk wrote: post #13
stavros wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gambling trope is so tired. AI development doesn't involve luck to any appreciable degree, certainly not more than hiring people to do a job can be considered "gambling" (you never know what you're going to get!). It's just paying to get stuff done, which is how it's always been, since the dawn of man.

For most people who are not doing their day to day jobs it's just a prompt of their idea roughly sketched out and a miracle happens - LLM fills in the blanks. Every time it's different but it works, sometimes even better than initially expected. That's why the addiction and gambling. Gambling is a lot of things, not only flashing lights or play sounds. Some people claim prediction markets isn't gambling either, thoug…

How is this different from hiring a designer, telling them "make me a website" and then waiting to see if they resolve the uncertainty into something you like or not?

I tell LLMs what to do in pretty high detail, and they do it. With LLMs I have much less variance than with coworkers.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#17

Post by js8 »

stavros wrote: post #7
pllbnk wrote: post #5

So the end game for the current generation of AI companies won't be productivity improvements but gambling, just like everything else nowadays. That's why they want to get us all into these massive casinos they call data centers and don't want us to own the slot machines. So what that you have ideas - other people have them too. It's not ideas that build businesses but knowing right people or ability to sell products…

The gambling trope is so tired. AI development doesn't involve luck to any appreciable degree, certainly not more than hiring people to do a job can be considered "gambling" (you never know what you're going to get!). It's just paying to get stuff done, which is how it's always been, since the dawn of man.

> certainly not more than hiring people to do a job can be considered "gambling"

Actually it's quite possible that being a business manager/owner is actually addictive (having power over people), we just don't recognize it as such.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#18

Post by stavros »

js8 wrote: post #17
stavros wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gambling trope is so tired. AI development doesn't involve luck to any appreciable degree, certainly not more than hiring people to do a job can be considered "gambling" (you never know what you're going to get!). It's just paying to get stuff done, which is how it's always been, since the dawn of man.

> certainly not more than hiring people to do a job can be considered "gambling" Actually it's quite possible that being a business manager/owner is actually addictive (having power over people), we just don't recognize it as such.

All gambling addiction is addiction, not all addiction is gambling.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#19

Post by js8 »

stavros wrote: post #16
pllbnk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people who are not doing their day to day jobs it's just a prompt of their idea roughly sketched out and a miracle happens - LLM fills in the blanks. Every time it's different but it works, sometimes even better than initially expected. That's why the addiction and gambling. Gambling is a lot of things, not only flashing lights or play sounds. Some people claim prediction markets isn't gambling either, thoug…

How is this different from hiring a designer, telling them "make me a website" and then waiting to see if they resolve the uncertainty into something you like or not? I tell LLMs what to do in pretty high detail, and they do it. With LLMs I have much less variance than with coworkers.

It is different because for humans, it takes time to produce some result, while AI does it instantly. So if you tell a programmer to do X, you have a week for your adrenaline to cool off. If you tell AI, it will do it in minutes.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#20

Post by dgellow »

I do have an actual diagnostic and I had the same experience over the past year with early coding harness at the beginning of the year, then Claude code since its release date. But after 1+year going that direction I really don’t want to continue. The novelty is gone, dealing with AI now feels frustrating and boring, I miss engaging deeply with the actual lower level technical challenges. I do not want to manage fleets of agents. I do not want to rediscover for the hundredth time that in fact all this time an agent took shortcuts for acceptance tests I rely upon and didn’t catch. Or once again get the agent to understand why and what I want it to do after its context got bloated and it start to drift completely. While I got artifacts I can use (libraries, tools, docs), including some things that I’m pretty confident are SoA I do not feel satisfied anymore knowing that I used a model to generate them, even if I was the one designing every part of it. I do feel that I’m lying anytime I come to a colleague to share a new cool tool I have made. And I do not feel that relying on AI actually helped me improve with dealing with my executive function issues.

YMMV but I’m personally feeling burnt out with AI coding agents and ready to go back to the old ways for my next personal project

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