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AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

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Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#61

Post by order-matters »

intended wrote: post #29
embedding-shape wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? How long you've been a developer? I've been almost exclusively doing "agent coding" for the last year + some months, been a professional developer for a decade or something. Tried just now to write some random JavaScript, C#, Java, Rust and Clojure "manually" and seems my muscle memory works just as well as two years ago. I'm wondering if this is something that hits new developers faster than more experienced…

It a side effect of using AI. People using AI for tasks (essay writing in the MIT study linked below) showed lower ownership, brain connectivity, and ability to quote their work accurately. > https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 There was a MSFT and Carnegie Mellon study that saw a link between AI use, confidence in ones skills, confidence in AI, and critical thinking. The takeaway for me is that people are getting into…

i think your environment is a big role. with Ai you can kind of code first, understand second. without AI if you dont fully understand something then you havent finished coding it, and the task is not complete. if the deadline is too aggressive you push back and ask for more time. with AI, that becomes harder to do. you move on to the next thing before you are able to take the time to understand what it has done.

i dont think it is entirely a case of voluntary outsourcing of critical thinking. I think it's a problem of 1) total time devoted to the task decreasing, and 2) it's like trying to teach yourself puzzle solving skills when the puzzles are all solved for you quickly. You can stare at the answer and try to think about how you would have arrived at it, and maybe you convince yourself of it, but it should be relatively common sense that the learning value of a puzzle becomes obsolete if you are given the answer.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#62

Post by dleslie »

neals wrote: post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

All skill degrade with disuse. For example, here in Canada we have observed a literacy and numeracy skills curve that peaks with post-secondary education and declines with retirement.[0]

Use it or lose it, as it were.

0: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/241210/dq241...

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#63

Post by girvo »

dodu_ wrote: post #32
awongh wrote: post #16

I think it's clear to me that AI will be both things: 1) as in the article it's a contraction of work- industrialization getting rid of hand-made work or the contraction of all things horse-related when the internal combustion engine came around but- it will also be 2) new technologies and ideas enabled by a completely new set of capabilities The real question is if the economic boost from the latter outpaces the los…

> do people really believe no novel things will be unlocked with this tech? Yes. It's a mostly shitty but very fast and relatively inexpensive replacement for things that already exist. Give your best example of something that is novel, ie isn't just replacing existing processes at scale. It's been 3 and a half years now since the initial hype wave. Maybe I genuinely missed the novel trillion dollar use case that isn…

It’s pretty decent for natural language -> query language tasks

But also you don’t need SOTA frontier models for that!

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#64

Post by TeMPOraL »

butlike wrote: post #59
awongh wrote: post #16

I think it's clear to me that AI will be both things: 1) as in the article it's a contraction of work- industrialization getting rid of hand-made work or the contraction of all things horse-related when the internal combustion engine came around but- it will also be 2) new technologies and ideas enabled by a completely new set of capabilities The real question is if the economic boost from the latter outpaces the los…

So now the ancillary question from your example is: "Is hand-spun cotton better than industrialized polyester?"

Define better. Fast fashion sucks, but hand-spun cotton won't give you Kevlar or modern wind-resistant clothing or fireproof materials for your furniture or... .

It's always win some, lose some with the economy, but technology itself opens previously impossible capabilities.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#66

Post by dwedge »

neals wrote: post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

Will you do anything differently knowing this? Does the risk of LLMs being unaffordable to you in the near future make you wary about losing the skills?

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#67

Post by XCSme »

neals wrote: post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

I guess writing code is now like creating punch-cards for old computers. Or even more recently, as writing ASM instead of using a higher level language like C. Now we simply write our "code" in a higher language, natural language, and the LLM is the compiler.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#68

Post by bdangubic »

jasonlotito wrote: post #55
neals wrote: post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

Others have addressed other aspects of this, but I want to address this: > I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. I don't know exactly what you mean by boilerplate stuff, but honestly, that's stuff we should have automated away prior to AI. We should not be writing boilerplate. I'd highly encourage you to take the time to automate this stuff away. Not even with AI, but with scripts you can run to automate boilerp…

I read the "boilerplate" in that comment as "basic" meaning "I don't know how to center a div" or "I do not know how to remove duplicates from a collection"
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