The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

#1

Post by acmerfight » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

I've been reflecting on how LLMs are changing our learning habits as engineers, and realized something worrying.

AI can now quickly help search and research information, distilling the core of a paper into a concise summary. It lets you pick up a term fast and have something to talk about.

But real learning requires deep reading, thinking, and practice. A polished summary is far from enough. Since having AI, how long has it been since you truly studied a paper or deeply read through and implemented a technology? Has your ability to think and your taste improved or declined? Once that ability is weakened, are you ready to let AI replace you entirely? Taste is never built by reading abstracts — it is forged through countless bad decisions and excellent practice.

To be honest, most people never seriously finished reading many papers before AI either. AI hasn't taken anything away — it has just made shallow learning more efficient and more deceptive. The real risk isn't that AI makes people lazy, but that AI makes "lazy" look like "productive." Spend ten minutes reading a summary, post it on social media, feel like you're keeping up with the frontier — but nothing actually sticks.

I am absolutely not against AI. What I advocate is using AI for deep work, not treating it as your TikTok of pretend learning. From "summarize it for me" to "debate it with me," from "do it for me" to "help me reason through it" — that is what matters.

Re: The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

#2

Post by nis0s » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:20 PM UTC

What’s important? That bridges get built and stay up, or that they’re built only after toiling X amounts of hours. AI will change the nature of work, it’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. But more importantly, it’s going to let people who understand things faster get the info they need to be productive.

Re: The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

#3

Post by DarthCeltic85 » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:43 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

#4

Post by quater321 » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

So what is important is not that 10 or 20 times the work can be done, but that you are stressed out and exhausted while doing your work?

Re: The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

#5

Post by dsabanin » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

I'm convinced that at some point looking like being productive and being productive becomes the same thing.

Re: The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

#6

Post by bluefirebrand » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

nis0s wrote: post #2

What’s important? That bridges get built and stay up, or that they’re built only after toiling X amounts of hours. AI will change the nature of work, it’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. But more importantly, it’s going to let people who understand things faster get the info they need to be productive.

AI does not currently build bridges that stay up

Re: The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

#7

Post by elgertam » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

I have a nearly total opposite take. I can't tell you how many times I've read a book, a paper or something else and been confused by some ambiguity in the author's prose. Being able to drop the paper (or even the book!) into an LLM to dig into the precise meaning has been an unbelievable boost for me.

Now I can actually get beyond conceptual misunderstanding or even ignorance and get to practice, which is how skills actually develop, in a much more streamlined way.

The key is to use the tool with discipline, by going into it with a few inviolable rules. I have a couple in my list, now: embrace Popperian falsifiability; embrace Bertrand Russell's statement: “Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.”

LLMs have become excellent teachers for me as a result.

Re: The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

#8

Post by phil21 » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

bluefirebrand wrote: post #6

nis0s wrote: post #2

What’s important? That bridges get built and stay up, or that they’re built only after toiling X amounts of hours. AI will change the nature of work, it’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. But more importantly, it’s going to let people who understand things faster get the info they need to be productive.

AI does not currently build bridges that stay up

I have a feeling we would all be terrified if we knew how much AI had a role in building bridges at the moment.

TBD if they stay up, I suppose.

The stories I hear from various white collar professions not related to tech are... interesting, to say the least. There is a whole lot of unsanctioned shadow IT going on regardless of policy.

Re: The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

#9

Post by caprock » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

I find value in learning some things deeply but not all things.

The ability to be more selective about where I attend deeply, while leveraging fast shallow learning to complete other tasks... That seems like a potential benefit and a nice choice to have in the toolbox.

Re: The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive

#10

Post by atomicnumber3 » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

I don't think it's all that bad. There's definitely vibe coding that is "copy paste / throw away" programming on ultra steroids. But after vibe coding two products and then finding them essentially impossible to then actually get to a quality bar I considered ready to launch, I've been working on a more measured approach that leverages AI but in a way that simply speeds up traditional programming. I use it to save tons of time on "why is pylance mad about X" "X works from the docs example but my slightly modified X gives error Y" "how do I make a toggle switch in css and html" "how am I supposed to do Python context managers in 2026 (I didn't know about the generator wrapper thing)" all that bullshit that constantly slows you down but needs to be right . AI is great at helping you kickstart and then keeping you unblocked.

I've been using Gemini chat for this, and specifically only giving it my code via copy paste. This sounds Luddite but actually it's been pretty interesting. I can show it my couple "core" library files and then ask it to do the next thing. I can inspect the output and retool it to my satisfaction, then slot it in to my program, or use it as an example to then hand code it.

This very intentional "me being the bridge" between AI and the code has helped so much in getting speed out of AI but then not letting it go insane and write a ton of slop.

And not to toot my own horn too much, but I think AI accelerates people more the wider their expertise is even if it's not incredibly deep. Eg I know enough CSS to spot slop and correct mistakes and verify the output. But I HATE writing CSS. So the AI and I pair really well there and my UIs look way better than they ever have.