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I am leaving the AI party after one drink

lara-aigmueller.at

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Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink

#61

Post by deepfriedrice »

JPKab wrote: post #21
legitster wrote: post #7

> I don’t want to feel this kind of “addiction.” > I don’t want to depend on something doing the work I earn money with. > I don’t want to give up my brain and become lazy and not think for myself anymore. There are a lot of good reasons we should be skeptical of AI and not give up on essential skills. But sometimes I want to shake these people by the shoulders. Do you drive an automatic car? Do you use a microwave?…

Excellent point on the automatic car. I love driving a manual transmission. But I also understood why it was so hard for me to find a new Jeep Wrangler with a manual transmission a few years ago.

The automatic transmission gives us more dexterity for... what exactly? Fiddling with the dash, reaching for something in the back seat, texting? The best case human has much more control but the average case seems worse off.

Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink

#62

Post by Nevermark »

Some of us have been waiting our whole lives for a comprehensive DWIM command.

> DWIM is an embodiment of the idea that the user is interacting with an agent who attempts to interpret the user's request from contextual information. Since we want the user to feel that he is conversing with the system, he should not be stopped and forced to correct himself or give additional information in situations where the correction or information is obvious. [0]

— Teitelman and his Xerox PARC colleague Larry Masinter, Xerox PARC, in 1981

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWIM

Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink

#63

Post by tjchear »

Here’s my experience: just yesterday I had to tackle this task that’d have required a backend engineer and a frontend engineer several days, so I tasked several Claude code agents to work on them autonomously. With the time freed up, I didn’t just twiddle my thumbs. I used it to read up on this topic that was making the rounds yesterday and gained a better understanding of it - something hard to do when you juggle both a job and raising a family. I could then reinvest the time I used to learn something by using them in some other projects.

Just my two cents. No matter whether you use AI or not, I’m sure you’ll gain something.

Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink

#64

Post by bicepjai »

TechSquidTV wrote: post #34
tines wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you're likening fundamentally unlike things. AI isn't like a microwave or an automatic car or a power tool. It does not augment you. As I said elsewhere: AI is not a bicycle for the mind, it's an easy chair. You will lose more than you ever gain.

Im hearing a lot of opinion, but nothing convincing.

All knowledge started as someone's opinion. The goal isn't to avoid opinions, it's to stress-test them. That's exactly what HN is for.

Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink

#65

Post by cush »

legitster wrote: post #7

> I don’t want to feel this kind of “addiction.” > I don’t want to depend on something doing the work I earn money with. > I don’t want to give up my brain and become lazy and not think for myself anymore. There are a lot of good reasons we should be skeptical of AI and not give up on essential skills. But sometimes I want to shake these people by the shoulders. Do you drive an automatic car? Do you use a microwave?…

> I want to shake these people by the shoulders... Do you use a microwave?

Microwaves aren't doing active problem solving though. It seems what the author is trying to say is they enjoy problem solving and they find coding a rewarding and creative experience. Sure microwaves saved at-home cooks might enjoy zapping a frozen dinner, but the author is a chef who enjoys writing their own recipes and cooking from scratch. AI isn't just the microwave, it's also the chef.

> None of us have "lost" the ability to go backwards if we really wanted

This absolutely isn't true. Using google maps quickly makes people poorer at navigation - skills need to be practiced. The author thinks letting AI into their kitchen to cook for them will change themself cognitively and make them lazy and lose their skills. And that would be true.

What it sounds like you're getting at but never said is there might be newer skills on the other side that are even more rewarding, which may be true. But if history is any indication, there will be no shortage of folks who like things the old way and want to use their meat brains to provide bespoke goods and services that AI can't.

Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink

#66

Post by bluGill »

deadbabe wrote: post #37
JPKab wrote: post #14

"I'm not going to use this technology that obviously enhances my productivity because ." I think a lot of people have forgotten why we actually get paid to write code. The person who wants an automated billing system doesn't care if you hand-typed it or not, or if the CSS that would have taken 2 hours to write took 8 seconds via an AI plus 60 seconds of you tweaking a border you didn't like. They just want their bill…

Customer doesn’t give a fuck how long a billing system took to make, they only care that it works correctly. A billing system only truly gets built once, then possibly maintained in perpetuity. This makes the advantage of building it 20x times faster pointless. AI builds it in a day, will it matter 5 years from now if that billing system was instead built by hand in 20 days a long time ago? No. The speed advantage of…

Every billing system in use is constantly maintained with new features, bug fixes ane the like. The system of 20 years ago would apply the wrong tax laws today. the people asking for the new feature today care about how easy those are to add

Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink

#67

Post by nickrivadeneira »

deadbabe wrote: post #37
JPKab wrote: post #14

"I'm not going to use this technology that obviously enhances my productivity because ." I think a lot of people have forgotten why we actually get paid to write code. The person who wants an automated billing system doesn't care if you hand-typed it or not, or if the CSS that would have taken 2 hours to write took 8 seconds via an AI plus 60 seconds of you tweaking a border you didn't like. They just want their bill…

Customer doesn’t give a fuck how long a billing system took to make, they only care that it works correctly. A billing system only truly gets built once, then possibly maintained in perpetuity. This makes the advantage of building it 20x times faster pointless. AI builds it in a day, will it matter 5 years from now if that billing system was instead built by hand in 20 days a long time ago? No. The speed advantage of…

The customer cares how much it costs. And how much it costs is proportionate to how much time it takes to build. You’re conveniently ignoring market and price dynamics

Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink

#69

Post by jplusequalt »

mhluongo wrote: post #48
tines wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you're likening fundamentally unlike things. AI isn't like a microwave or an automatic car or a power tool. It does not augment you. As I said elsewhere: AI is not a bicycle for the mind, it's an easy chair. You will lose more than you ever gain.

If I'm not mistaken, this was Socrates' exact perspective on writing.

>Socrates' exact perspective on writing

Again, writing replacing memorization is not a good 1:1 comparison to AI replacing technical understanding. Someone still needs to understand what is written and act upon that knowledge. That requires skill and experience in the domain they're working within.

However, a person using an AI does not need to understand the underlying problem to get results. A person can ask Claude Code to write them a web app dashboard without having ever learned JS/CSS/HTML. It does not require them to have skills within a domain.

Also, we need to be honest with ourselves. Human brains did not evolve for the instant gratification of modern technology. We've already seen what technology has done to our attention spans. I am concerned over what further reliance on technology, particularly AI, will do to our brains.

Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink

#70

Post by cush »

legitster wrote: post #59
tines wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you're likening fundamentally unlike things. AI isn't like a microwave or an automatic car or a power tool. It does not augment you. As I said elsewhere: AI is not a bicycle for the mind, it's an easy chair. You will lose more than you ever gain.

This is purely a matter of perception. Cooking a meal is a deeply intellectual process. If I buy a meal from a restaurant, yes I am losing a skill. But if making a hollandaise is not a skill I ever need in my life, it's not really a practical loss. AI is taking problems and putting them in a drawer so we never have to think about it again. Matches de-intellectualized making a fire. A washing machine de-intellectualiz…

> making a hollandaise is not a skill I ever need in my life

I know you just wanted to poke at the analogy, but if you like hollandaise, it's one of the easiest and most rewarding sauces to make at home! Restaurant hollaindaise is usually terrible

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