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AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

koshyjohn.com

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Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#41

Post by _pdp_ »

Huberman: Your brain has a region that only grows when you do things you don't want to do

...or as I interpret it your brain grows only when it does things that are difficult.

If you remove the difficulty, it will atrophy into a hum of a mindless chit-chat.

Engineering the data structures and control flows from scratch is a completely different than asking an LLM to scaffold them for you.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#42

Post by erxam »

Here's the question I want to posit and nobody who's against AI has managed to answer satisfactorily: what is it in for me if I were to acquire all those skills?

I don't give a shit about this career. I don't give a shit about engineering. I despise every second of it. There's nothing to aim for other than being a drone that does whatever is asked of it.

If AI can reduce my mental workload, why wouldn't I want to delegate everything over to it so I can save my faculties for what I truly enjoy? For the art of a worthless craft?

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#43

Post by cyclopeanutopia »

andsoitis wrote: post #21
orblivion wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compilers are a layer of abstraction that we can ask another human about. Some human is there taking care of it. Until we get to the point where we trust AI with our survival it would be good to be able to audit the entire stack.

any human can read the code an AI produces.

Nope, not anymore. Many already forgot how to do that and it's not a joke.

And putting aside the vanishing skill, there is also an issue of volume.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#44

Post by fnordpiglet »

nickandbro wrote: post #9

I think there are engineers that can’t think without AI. But the best think with it. Unfortunately, we are now living in a day and age where simply ignoring AI is no longer an option.

There were always engineers who didn’t think and depended on crutches around them like senior engineers and politicizing the perf cycle. Most people got into this because their parents told them it makes a lot of money, and they never had the drive and curiosity to develop the passion required to truly think through the problems in computing and computer science. They will continue to use crutches to survive. Those that are driven by the problems for the problems will continue to think and use AI as a tool for leverage. This is no different than any other assistive technology.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#45

Post by m4rkuskk »

Before AI I would spend multiple days mapping out my database tables and queries while now I ask AI to propose multiple different approaches and I pick the best one. But then on the other hand I’m working on 10 features at the same time and have to carefully look through them. But I can see that I’m totally dependent on the AI now. Creating a full plan by yourself feels like a waste of time, since you know the AI can create the same or better plan in a split second. So when Claude is down, I end up not being productive at all.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#46

Post by halamadrid »

This is true. Speaking only based on personal experience. My team had started treating AI like a super intelligent being.

“AI suggested we do it that way”

And we’ve been degrading our systems rapidly for last several weeks. We’ve decided to pause and reflect and change how we use AI on tasks that are not dead simple.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#48

Post by Ekaros »

saadn92 wrote: post #10

Hard disagree. I feel like I'm thinking a lot more now because I have so many parallel projects going on at the same time. AI has allowed me to really, truly create in a way that I've never done before. Yes, my coding skills probably aren't as sharp as they used to be, but my system design skills are at an all time high. Don't blame the tool.

For how many different parallel projects can you really keep proper mental model in your head at one time? Or put enough effort to seriously consider all aspects. I think number varies between simple and more complex. But still, could that number be lower than many think it is?

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#49

Post by Unmotivator2677 »

That why I don't use AI for any personal projects, I like to keep my mind sharp. Unless it's a projects that incorporates AI in some way, but don't use AI to code it. But at work I don't care, I do what I am paid for, if my manager wants me to entirely vibe code using Claude, his choice, I will not be the one paying for technical dept that creates.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#50

Post by bpye »

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #24

There are plenty of engineers that couldn't work without a modern IDE or in languages without memory management. Or without the ability to use a library from GitHub / their package manager. It doesn't feel THAT much different to me. "Engineer" as a term might drift. There are "web developers" that can only use webflow / wordpress.

At least today, it isn't practical for most people to run these models locally- I think adding a dependency on a cloud service is different enough to some local (possibly open source) tool like an IDE.
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