Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?

moments before sunrise 🏳️‍⚧️

@Purple at large, i see this as capitalism digging its own grave, unfortunately at the expense of individuals.

what's a good argument against "we all should use ai to solve problems of a business faster" given that garbage throwaway code has silently been acceptaed across the board?

Purple :verified:

@river

The frustrating part is, in order to be able to convince someone they need to have a deep understanding of what output the AI is producing.

To the lazy or unsuspecting eye its output looks superb and perfect. But only if you have a reasonably deep understanding of the engineering challenge you've asked it to solve, you will understand it's more often garbage than not.

I don't see a way to win this battle, other than finding a company that doesn't fall for AI and keeps producing high quality services, even though they may take a little longer to build than competitors. Eventually others will start to collapse under the technical debt

食 Shoku the MN Wolf

@nekayee @Purple can we go back to the days when AI was discovering protein sequences and identifying Pokémon on a standalone raspberry pi? Maybe then I would have my AI tool for automatically generating alt text because my brain has so much trouble with it for reasons I can't understand.

mkj

@Purple @kitcat To say nothing of when you've faced a problem, figured out a fix, and can *actually explain why that fix is correct*, and *apply the same reasoning in other situations*. Not just the same fix, but the same *reasoning*.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned like that, but actually having figured something out brings me joy. Even if it is stuff that lots of other people know. Learning how the pieces fit together to bring the result I get out of the thing I made.

Ozzelot :anarchy: :linux:

@mkj
To have made something is to have overcome some challenge that comes with making it. (And if making something in particular is easy for you, congrats, you're a great overcomer.)
@Purple @kitcat

Intaglio Whitegraven

@Purple As someone who basically refuses to use AI for anything, it's likely I'm unaware of just how much the use of it has pervaded people's working behaviors.

My understanding is that AI and LLM's are meant to be a tool. As with any tool, if used properly, it can be helpful and effective in completing a task. But there's a reason that people are educated on how to do things manually before they're allowed to use tools: there needs to be that sense of intuition that informs a person whether something seems correct or doesn't.

What you're describing, seems to be an outsourcing of critical thinking to these tools. It's like putting someone in the driver's seat of a self-driving car and now they're panicking when they have to take manual control.

Maimuaika 🇵🇸

@Purple I think people are burned out and are just find AI easier to just continue earning money and do less.

source: me, coding makes me wanna kms

Maimuaika 🇵🇸

@Purple I think there would be less stories like these if the industry was more focused on just programming rather than having overengineered cringe solutions to suck off investors, so people do things that are actually interesting and have a real impact for the good rather than putting stress, pressure and making engineers just hate their hobby

Mr. E. Grey Seale

@Purple using AI is just like managing a fairly incompetent Junior. Welcome to management. This is the fear and dread and uncertainty that you feel for the first couple of years after somebody has put you in charge of a software team. Where productivity can't be managed, and the results are not really within your control. How long do you wait to fire your AI assistance and go looking for another?

四

@Purple I think it’s more exposing than changing.

AI coding won’t make you able to do something you can’t do, it can give you code you must understand and verify.

It can’t replace someone with knowledge, but it can, if used sensibly, augment some parts. Like boring refactoring and generating some simple boring stuff.

Quincy

@Purple same here, and I hate it so much, it's beyond words

Marijke Luttekes

@Purple I haven't seen it at these extremes in AI yet (with seniors).

What I have seen is that someone pushed a huge upgrade out in record time, one that would normally require careful consideration and planning.

Turned out they instructed an LLM to do the upgrade and not much else, because I later spotted some pitfalls mentioned in the upgrade guide (and not a long one, either).

To me, LLMs are tools; you can use them, but they do not absolve you of your responsibility to at least try to do your due diligence as a programmer (which goes beyond writing code and shipping it).

Luna Lactea

@Purple @swift It is an addiction. It's very similar to gambling.

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

@Purple it is not just you. My former threw fits when I spelled out very clearly that it did not work, would not work, would cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars they insisted we didn't have, and not only that, but every one of the problems from the junior was because they didn't listen, just plugged shit into ChatGPT, and the others were too lazy to actually review it.

Swift

@jackemled @Purple thing is, I'm not sure they're even using it personally all that much. They've actively bought into the idea of doing the work to integrate into systems they build for clients because of The Possibilities, the New Capabilities it unlocks. And I just don't know how to reconcile people I know are otherwise smart, conscientious, environmentally considerate, etc. with what seems so clearly to me to be blatant snake oil.

fluffy 💜

@Purple I’ve been feeling like the whole industry has been going crazy for years, now, and the AI step is just the latest of many bananapants steps towards oblivion. But it’s certainly a big one.

Like, for ages the software industry has been high on its own farts about self-importance and trying to justify itself as the source of its self-made problems and a sinkhole of outsized valuation. And all for what?

Dave Polaschek (he/him)

@Purple @danlyke One of the things I’m pondering as a user, is just not taking any more upgrades. That’s obviously not ideal from a security standpoint, but the alternative isn’t all sunshine and puppies, either.

Then again, one of the books I’m currently reading is “Threaded Interpreted Languages” and I’m pondering making a Forth OS on a laptop I’m currently building. It’s not unlike making my own damned screws because the local HW store didn’t sell what I needed, and I refuse Amazon.

Evelyn :spinny_cat_trans: :spinny_cat_lesbian:

@Purple@woof.tech oh yea this has definitely happened to me. i feel like its most prominent in people who also overestimate their own abilities, which is also surprisingly common in this industry

Purple :verified:

@clumsy

Actually really valid observation, the industry has been sick for a while in general

oo im so employable oo u want to hire me so bad

@Purple me, an unhired watching all the experienced people melt their brains:

Wandering Adventure Party

Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?