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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

#71

Post by xyproto »

idle_zealot wrote: post #35
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.

If 1% of people using the tool end up like you, and 99% end up drooling invalids, I think it would be insane to not blame the tool. If a tool that's incompatible with humans isn't to blame for that incompatibility, what is to blame for the harm done? Human nature? The point of a tool is to be used by humans.

Even if a tool can only be used for lobotomizing humans, the usage of the tool is where the main blame should be placed.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#72

Post by heipei »

torben-friis wrote: post #54
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.

The huge difference is that we don't know the cost we're going to end up with. Will you have AI at the cost of a slack subscription? At the cost of a teammate? Will it not be available and you'll have to hire anthropic workers with AI access?

Local AI models are already more than capable enough writing code that surpasses the ability of any bad or even mediocre engineer. That is not something we need to worry about.

In a way, this is less of a cost issue than the fact that some/many engineers do not seem to be willing or able to host things themselves anymore and will happily outsource every part of their stack to managed services, be it CDN, hosting, databases, etc. I don't know why that's not more alarming than the LLMs.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#73

Post by addaon »

srcreigh wrote: post #53

Is it wise to understand everything that AI does for you? Let’s say a person has 10 units of learning per week. Is the author actually claiming that that person must not deliver any results beyond their 10 units? It makes some sense to have say 20 units of results and prioritize which ones to fully comprehend. I suspect APIs / libraries / languages / platforms will have more churn due to AI. New platform new system n…

> Let’s say a person has 10 units of learning per week.

This is… not how humans work? If you have the time and energy to learn ten things, and then spend time babysitting a random number generator to produce evidence of 10 more units of work, you’re paying an opportunity cost compared to someone who spends the time learning an eleventh thing. You can argue who has more short term value to a company… but who is the wiser person after a thirty year career?

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#75

Post by xnx »

staticshock wrote: post #66

The eloquence with which this point gets (repeatedly) made is continuing to improve each next time I read it. However, I still feel like we haven't nailed it. That is, we are not yet at the "aphorism" stage of the discourse (e.g. "the medium is the message", "you ship your org chart", "9 mothers can't make a baby in a month"), in which the most pointed version of this critique packs a punch in just a few words that r…

This concept won't reach that point because when you chisel too hard it crumbles. There are countless lower level tasks that typical programmers no longer learn how to do. Our capacity for knowledge is not unlimited so we offload everything we can to move to the next level of abstraction.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#76

Post by Waterluvian »

I think AI can generally be utilized in two ways:

1) you use it to help write code that you still “own” and fully understand.

2) you use it as an abstraction layer to write and maintain the code for you. The code becomes a compile target in a sense. You would feel like it’s someone else’s code if you were asked to make changes without AI.

I think 2) is fine for things like prototypes, examples, references. Things that are short lived. Where the quality of the code or your understanding of it doesn’t matter.

I think people get into trouble when they fool themselves and others by using 2) for work that requires 1). Because it’s quicker and easier. But it’s a lie. They’re mortgaging the codebase. And I think the atrophy sets in when people do this.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#77

Post by clutter55561 »

AI isn’t creating the problem, it is just showing the problem. Those who did not want to learn before AI did so reluctantly, mixing Google and SO. Now they ask AI. An existing problem found a new solution.

Personally, I really enjoy using AI. I have created my own cascade workflow to stop myself from “asking one more question”. Every session is planned. Claude and Codex can be annoying as hell (for different reasons). Neither is sufficiently smart for me to trust them. I treat them as junior devs who never get tired, know a lot of facts but not necessarily how to build.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#78

Post by AndrewDucker »

xyproto wrote: post #70

Calculators and computers are creating engineers that can't think without them either. There are many problems with AI, but from my point of view, the title has not thought things through.

We teach kids basic maths before we give them calculators.

University degrees certainly used to teach computing fundamentals without you having a computer in front of you.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#80

Post by cyclopeanutopia »

cyberpunk wrote: post #68
cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So... Our jobs are safe then? I mean, assuming we don't also atrophy to the same extent as the 'many'?

I'm just saying that I already see that people are outsourcing all the thinking to the models - not only code generation and reviews, but even design - the part that "senior engineers" without imagination think only they are capable of doing.

It's worrying how much trust is being put in those systems. And my worry is not about the job anymore, but our future in general.

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