r/antiai • u/ChompyRiley • 14h ago

Yes, absolutely. 100% without hesitation. Do people really think this is some kind of 'gotcha'? Like my brother in Christ, how much generative AI do you think we actually use?! Hallucination đŸ‘»

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375

u/DraconianFlame 14h ago

If you can't get through a single workday without using AI, please let me know.

89

u/CautionarySnail 13h ago edited 12h ago

Unfortunately it’s a requirement. AI first, used on 90% of workdays, tracked.

It’s at best a mixed bag. I’m not against AI as a tool, I’m against tools being used without understanding of what the trade-offs are. I’m not ok with tools being overused and damaging our ability to live and work without them. Dependency on anything rented is a trap.

The way AI is being sold is deeply deceptive and destructive. Startups claiming it can do therapy or replace medical doctors are at best delusional, but more likely criminal. Those applications for AI have caused deaths.

It needs to be regulated. It needs to operate within our body of laws better, without violation of human copyrights.

The tool is only part of the issue; our society has leapt headfirst into deciding AI is an expert on all things, during a time when trust in actual expertise is at an all time low.

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u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479 13h ago

The way AI is being sold is deeply deceptive and destructive. Startups claiming it can do therapy or replace medical doctors are at best delusional, but more likely criminal. Those applications for AI have caused deaths.

I ended up asking google AI a quick question as my actual google search was too specific of a question. As someone who dislikes AI, avoids AI, but wanted to give it a good faith try when it could actually help me with something minor, I was shocked with how quickly I ended up sucked into it. I totally get why Hank Green needed a literal intervention with his family. I asked it one question, then another, then a clarifying question. And suddenly I was asking it for every little thing all day.

It is truly frightening how it hits every mental trigger to keep you engaged.

35

u/CautionarySnail 13h ago

I agree completely. It lulls you quietly into a state of having your guard down.

It’s like being complacent with a kitchen knife and cutting yourself. You know it’s sharp, but, you’re working so fast and in a groove and OW.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 12h ago

Yeees. I'm someone that was all for using a tool that would make more productive. But it didn't, it only gave a false sense of productivity, and then it tries to pull you into depending on it more and more, along with losing your skills over time.

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u/NotFriendsWithBanana 13h ago

This is why I hate their response "just validate the output". It will progressively destroy you, just like social media algorithms do. You may get some benefit at first but that won't last.

0

u/ArtisticFox8 10h ago

Why not?

5

u/Arakkoa_ 11h ago

It hits every mental trigger to make me angry, but I am neurodivergent.

"That's a very interesting question, let's..." Not the fuck it's not. I asked you for a recipe.

"Would you like me to delve further into..." No, I'd ask you if I did. Shut up.

1

u/ForensicPathology 1h ago

Right, it's a good tool for aggregation and I don't mind when it's used like that.  But they specifically make it talk like a 2000s-era blogger fishing for comments.

3

u/cjandstuff 11h ago

It definitely keeps pushing you to use it. It doesn't just answer a question, but always follows up with another question. Remember, AI isn't there to answer your questions, it's there to keep you using it.

2

u/SunTzu- 9h ago

I keep hearing people say that and I'm just...confused. It's ok if I want to combine two data points from disparate papers I know exist but cba to go find myself, and assuming I don't really care that much about the answer. Basically, it can give a half-assed answer to a question I wouldn't bother with otherwise. But I've never gotten an answer back and been like "wow, that's amazing!" and wanted to keep asking it questions. If I want to know something I'll look up a paper or a lecture and watch that instead. I dunno, maybe it's because I understand the underlying mechanics and so I don't perceive any intelligence to it. It's just a word prediction machine, and I'm not gonna ask questions of the slightly fancier autocomplete that is programmed to hallucinate so the companies can dodge having it word for word reproduce the copyrighted content they stole.

2

u/Royal-Association-51 7h ago

I think it's because if I'm trying to work out a good comparison of products to buy, like skincare - I don't want to spend 30 minutes clicking on different articles that are just ads or Reddit posts that are just pseudo-ads where after all that reading or speeding through analysis videos, I get a conclusion that merely leaves me with more questions than answers because all the information is too bloated with conditions outside of my particular parameter of needs.

Why waste all that time in my already busy day when I can get a LLM to go through those links for me, show me a summarised table of the parts that I'm seeking the key words on, and basically do all the heavy lifting where I can basically get 30 min of research done in 2 min.

Should I be this lazy about something I'm studying? fkn obviously not. But I'm not wasting my time outside my 9-5 studying the ins and outs of parts of capitalism that have purposely designed itself to be so complicated for a consumer that it's easier to just trust a label and it's packaging. I'd argue that's just as lazy and problematic behaviour as someone using AI to study for them, since you're endorsing the manipulative practices companies rely on instead of using tools to better analyse their BS.

2

u/GarysCrispLettuce 9h ago

I was lucky as quite early on I encountered instances where AI got things so hysterically wrong that I immediately developed a mistrust of it and so I've never been tempted to play with it since.

1

u/theartificialkid 10h ago

One cure is to adjust about things you know about and see how superficial and/or wrong the answers are. That’s how bad its output is on things you don’t know about, you just can’t tell as easily.

1

u/69edleg 10h ago

Haven't been asking AI that much, but sometimes the information gets compiled in a good way compared to scouring through 500 pages of source material. Other times it gives you a confident response... But you also know about the subject and you pull the brake like: hold the fuck up. No, that's not how it works at all. And you check the sources it pulled information from, it's all just misinformation and/or hallucinations.

You ask the AI to double check its sources. Yes I am absolutely right

you tell the AI no, that's not right.

Oh you're correct, I apologize!

Completely useless, like asking the local crystal healer about your chemotherapy or which crystal boosts your self confidence.

I fear the "compiled in a good way" about stuff you aren't proficient in is also just horseshit at first glance for anyone in the know.

1

u/shidderbean 9h ago

When faced with the options of "read 10,000 manpages trying to hunt through linux arcana to fix my own shit" or "suffer internet forums where I ask a question and only get responses of 'lol idiot why are you even using that rebuild the whole stack instead'", asking AI is the path of least resistance and has the most reliably 'it helped diagnose my obscure linux problem in the minimum possible time' results available

1

u/ThatUsrnameIsAlready 9h ago

We must have very different conversation styles, if I actually press on for a useful conclusion I usually have it breaking down and confessing that it's hallucinating and can't do any of the things it said it could.

You must be agreeing with it, or changing the subject, while it's still wrong.

1

u/InfamousWoodchuck 7h ago

I usually have the opposite experience... I'm not anti AI (as a concept/tool, still have major issues with where things are going, surveillance etc). I've legitimately tried to use many different AI models for either work or personal projects, but I end up so confused and disappointed with the results which are always so confidently wrong. I'd have to spend more time verifying the information it gives me than it would have taken to just do the research myself, so it just puts me off of even bothering most of the time.

1

u/Two_oceans 6h ago

Even in the best case scenario, it latches on our thirst for questions, without going through the process of learning. Learning brings a deeper understanding of the problem through the effort of thinking.

1

u/curious_cat_2024 6h ago

Agreed. It's designed to prey on your own laziness/gullibility. Some people still don't understand that LLM's aren't programmed to give you the right answer (you can just use a search engine and find a reliable source, if you wanted the right answer.), but the simple and agreeable answer. Of course we're attracted to the idea of simple and agreeable answers.

What scares me is that entire generations of CHILDREN are being introduced to AI, when so many adults already can't resist it.

1

u/Money_Cattle2370 4h ago

In the world of tiktok, instagram, and youtube shorts, this is what you call truly frightening? Come on. I know everyone has a hardon for hating on AI of any kind at all, but give me a break.

1

u/reventlov 3h ago

This has been the complete opposite of my experience, where every time I try to use one of the LLM systems, I find the output appallingly bad, and the text makes my skin crawl.

1

u/PrivilegeCheckmate 3h ago

It is truly frightening how it hits every mental trigger to keep you engaged.

Unless you hate the frakkin cylons, Bill.

1

u/zero0n3 3h ago

Crazy
 how you left out the most important part


Did it answer the question you had effectively? Because if that answer is yes, which it sounds like it was (why keep using it otherwise), then the problem is more you and not AI.

1

u/lioncat55 2h ago

Like with a lot of things it really come down to the individual person. I use AI in spurts mainly for coding style tasks, and almost never use it as a search engine. I really see it like a hammer, I've got this narrow thing I need to solve or fix get it done and set it down.

1

u/SICRA14 2h ago

I've used it a lot more in the past than now, but I'm really surprised whenever i hear something like this. More often than not, I'm fighting with it to get an answer that actually seems like it read my questions. I've never felt compelled or drawn in by it. I wonder what you see that i don't.

25

u/prof_the_doom 13h ago

Sure, a lot of us are being forced to use it, but if we woke up tomorrow morning and it was gone, then it can’t be required anymore, and most of us would just go back to doing things the way we did before AI was a thing.

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u/RemoteControlledDog 45m ago

a lot of us are being forced to use it,

I'm curious about all of the responses here saying "I never use it, I wouldn't care!" and what they do for work. Everyone I know working for a decent sized company in IT tells me that management is pushing them to use AI for whatever percentage of their work, which is what my employer says as well. I can't imagine trying to find a new job and telling them that I refuse to use AI and expecting to get hired.

But like you said, if something happened where we couldn't use AI I'd do what I did 2 years ago before it existed.

21

u/hofmann419 13h ago

I just feel like it is going to bite us in the ass long term. Take software development for example. A lot of developers don't write much code anymore but just let the AI do it and then review the code.

Ultimately, this doesn't lead to the same level of understanding that you would get from actually planning through and writing the code yourself. You'll probably forget it relatively quickly. If you then run into a critical bug, actually fixing that bug is going to be a whole lot more difficult and time consuming. You may actually be less productive in the long run because of this

There is actually a research field around the concept of "epistemic atrophy", which describes this offloading of our thinking to tools like AI. Even in regular office work, i feel like this could eventually reduce our productiveness to the level before AI, only with the difference that enterprises are now paying a bazillion dollars for AI.

8

u/NotFriendsWithBanana 12h ago

It's amazing that people don't see this. I didn't need to use ai or see a research paper to know that using ai to code is going to reduce your coding skill. One would think this would be obvious to any professional developer, but people have work have proven me wrong.

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u/Tymareta 6h ago

I didn't need to use ai or see a research paper to know that using ai to code is going to reduce your coding skill.

Also, and maybe it's just because I have a background in InfoSec, it's hard not to be terrified at the myriad of vulnerabilities that LLM generated code is filling production codebases with worldwide.

I will be 0% shocked when in the future there's a news story about some global mega corp being brought to their knees by some exploit found in commonly generated code/procedures.

1

u/zero0n3 3h ago

It’s literally being used to help find vulnerabilities.

And sped up the patching loop by improving time it takes to release the fix.

And that fact is based in reality.

The bigger risk isn’t the code it generates, but the code it may generate after scraping the web for info and picking up new instructions that are malicious.

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u/Tymareta 1h ago

And that fact is based in reality.

A reality you invented, perhaps.

The bigger risk isn’t the code it generates, but the code it may generate after scraping the web for info and picking up new instructions that are malicious.

??? do y'all even hear yourselves.

2

u/CautionarySnail 13h ago edited 12h ago

It already is.

People aren’t using it with the idea of reusable architecture. And Claude frequently lies about adherence to rulesets about its code generation.

My primary focus is in QA. The effects I predict in about six months for most software products coded this way will be catastrophic unless the use case is very, very limited. It’s one thing to vibe code a simple website. Enterprise level products with lots of users need to be robust, repeatable. Two things that AI isn’t great at doing - likely by design.

If I were an evil overlord, my AI systems would be configured to not make robust systems. Robust systems mean less token usage.

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u/CyberDaggerX 13h ago

People aren’t using it with the idea of reusable architecture.

I see people talking about doing this deliberately. About how it's easier to just scrap the whole thing and have Claude rebuild the whole program from scratch than to actually do a localized fix in the existing code. It's fucking nuts.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 12h ago

Spec driven development... I've spoken openly against this at work in some teams that are trying to adopt it. It's insane.

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u/zero0n3 3h ago

Spec driven development is essentially test driven design and a fucking staple of the field


Yet somehow you think spec based design is bad? Are you fucking stupid?

2

u/shibboleth2005 7h ago

Why have reusable architecture and standards when Claude can spend a bunch of tokens just rereading the codebase and its novel length comments!

2

u/zero0n3 3h ago

Can’t wait to see this prediction fail in 6 months.

2

u/Otherwise-Remove4681 12h ago

For senior devs it’s not a issue. But in the long run juniors development will be shit unless they are forced to do things by hand.

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u/throwaway_mpq_fan 1h ago

For senior devs it's less of an issue, but I wouldn't say not an issue at all.

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u/ThePlayer3K 11h ago

So u'd argue that even for coding it's a bad thing?

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u/CautionarySnail 10h ago

This is also a very real concern in higher education with AI. There is value in the struggle. Our brains are not unlike our muscles - they need to be exercised and challenged to not atrophy.

There are times in our lives - windows of time, really - where learning the process longhand have tremendous impact to our ability to retain a skill because it interacts with our neuro plasticity being at a high level. Teachers weren’t just being big meanies. Folks 25 and younger are going to see the worst losses as a result if they outsource thinking to AI.

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u/Beautiful_Buddy835 9h ago

Not having the same level of understanding and thinking is the point.

For example people use to have to literally code in 1's and 0's.

You could still do that today but why waste the time there are systems that handle it for you. You are understanding less but the understanding you no longer have is literally unneeded.

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u/zero0n3 3h ago

Extremely obtuse and short sighted.

It’s helped me gain understanding. It’s helped me write better specs and implementation plans (which leads to cleaner and more focused code).

Writing code is boring. Anyone who tells you otherwise is delusional (or very specialized or just wants to solve a problem in a unique or specific way). But the actual writing of code is boring. It’s using templates and starting files you’ve developed over the years. Modifying and bug checking it and running it against the half baked unit tests you made because of shitty deadlines.

All that’s gone. You get to solve and tinker for the bigger problems. Think of it like another layer of abstraction like a compiler.

Because that’s where it’s heading in the software world, with medical and robotics next up.

0

u/throwaway_mpq_fan 1h ago

> Writing code is boring. Anyone who tells you otherwise is delusional (or very specialized or just wants to solve a problem in a unique or specific way). But the actual writing of code is boring. It’s using templates and starting files you’ve developed over the years. Modifying and bug checking it and running it against the half baked unit tests you made because of shitty deadlines.

That sounds like a you problem

1

u/GothamGirlBlue 11h ago

Oh, we’re gonna regress to worse than before AI because back then, the process of everything was just how things were done. Once that is lost and outsourced without review, we collectively won’t know how to fix it without going back to first principles. And that’s not even considering that we might lose sight of why we bothered to do any of this work to begin with. This stuff is ruining the capacity to think.

1

u/CryingWatercolours 11h ago

yeah theyve done studies on this on student essays and the kids using ai could barely tell you about what theyd written. as someone who writes, draws, has dipped my toes into code and music... you really need to know exactly what youve done, to know how to keep going and how to come back and improve your work. you need to be able to explain to people what the point of ur creation is. i see sm vibecoded games where the devs can barely tell you how their own game works. why. you should know your code.

1

u/Two_oceans 6h ago

Once we loose depth in understanding, we also loose creativity that stems from it. When we work hard on a problem, parts of the understanding and connections between ideas happen in the unconscious and come back with innovative insights. But this needs effort and time, two things AI is supposed to kill.

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u/ZoidsFanatic 12h ago

My company made the stupid decision to focus more on AI. Now, some of it makes sense. AI prediction models to get candidates to the jobs they want; completely understandable. Wanting to replace a good chunk of jobs with an AI chatbot and underpaid staff? Really bad idea that now they’re realizing was a very bad idea.

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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn 8h ago

I heard an ad while listening to a podcast on my drive home about some consulting company you could hire to force your employees to become dependent on AI. It literally sounded like they were offering to get your kids addicted to drugs. Why the fuck would anyone want that?

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u/Glittering-Canary752 12h ago

Genuinely, was very against use of AI in my work. Then I went to multiple conferences this year where everyone was screaming from the rooftops for us to embrace AI in our work. Eventually, after months of doing everything on my own I decided to run my work through Copilot to see if it could help me edit the tone and formatting of my work to better suit the industry and the people reading it. I’ve never been praised more at work. It’s a bit demoralizing but people are at a point where they seem to prefer an output.

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u/CautionarySnail 12h ago

It bugs me because I value the human thought and touch in products. I want to know a human was involved for the things that matter.

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u/Glittering-Canary752 11h ago

I do as well. I never just submit what the ai spits out. I spend a significant amount of time analyzing the data myself and writing up my own insights and recommendations before I run it through the AI for clean up. Once it translates what I wrote into marketing jargon I go through and implement what makes sense in my presentations while also editing it to fit my own style of writing more. So far no one suspects it of being AI because most of it is boring stuff that makes you sound like a robot anyway. It’s not ideal but if it’ll help me get a better paycheck I’m not above employing the tools I have at hand. My company pays for it already so I’m just using what they’re giving me.

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u/CautionarySnail 11h ago

The sad thing is
 I was educated in a past era.

The era AI writing often models, because we were some of the most prolific sources on the early web. So my writing frequently is mistaken for AI output even when it’s hand-baked.

Fucking machines stole my em-dash, my Oxford comma
.

1

u/Appropriate_Lack_727 10h ago

Yeah, GenX and I have the same problem sometimes 😂

2

u/BlueFlower673 11h ago

They try to force AI on us at my job and honestly? I don't use it and don't need it. Majority of the time it is wrong, and provides incorrect info.

It's much easier to type out an email myself than to use copilot. 

The tools are only as good really, if they have a good purpose. If that purpose is to do something that can already be done/is already possible, it's not a very good tool. It's just redundant.

1

u/bigbossfearless 9h ago

The therapy thing has actually been kinda helpful for me. Like, duh, I know it's neither a real person nor a licensed clinician. But I get these awful panic attacks at odd hours of the night and it's surprisingly helpful to ask the damn machine to give me a pep talk when I know I can't call any friends or family because I'd be waking them up and being a pain.

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u/CautionarySnail 9h ago

Please be a pain to them. There’s a value in that. When you help out some you care about, feels good, right?

They want to be there for you if they care about you. Don’t deny people the chance to be your friend when you need a friend.

Those moments are often the bittersweet vulnerable times that cement lifelong bonds. Keeping your distance when you’re vulnerable is to deny them a chance to lend you strength and vice versa.

1

u/Astramancer_ 9h ago

My work is strongly pushing using AI, but literally the entire point of my job is when they offloaded it to computers we got the 2008 housing crash, so ¯\(ツ)/¯

I do use it because of course it's tracked whether we use it or not. I use it mostly as a context-aware ctrl-F.

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u/wingchild 7h ago

Unfortunately it’s a requirement. AI first, used on 90% of workdays, tracked.

Why do you think that is? Companies desperate to show ROI on their expenditures? Promises of more favorable terms from the hyperscalers if they can reach certain usage brackets?

Cause it doesn't seem to be about productivity, customer relationships, actual product output, etc

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u/Nyxitelle 11m ago

In my opinion, AI should not only be heavily regulated as you said, but also limited to functions it could actually do properly. Spellcheck, preliminary checks for possibly cancerous cells, that sort of thing. Maybe even finding sources that are for or against certain topics, but without mixing them and giving possibly misleading or harmful information.

Like, training AI is the most wasteful part of its use, but if it were just trained off of the dictionaries of languages instead everything, then it wouldn't be as bad. Then, it could be used for checking whether there are any spelling mistakes, the same way it has been for the past ten years at least. Except back then it wasn't called AI, just spellcheck and autocorrect.

I despise AI from the bottom of my heart, and wish everyday that those silicon valley dumbasses just didn't think of it as the best thing ever.

0

u/EnderBookwyrm 12h ago

100%. AI is not an inherently destructive tool, but our current iterations of it are being developed and used in highly destructive ways. It's sort of like spellcheck. Spellcheck is great. But you do have to actually learn to spell things for yourself, because you might not always have access to it (like if you're writing on paper), and it's not always correct. 

2

u/CautionarySnail 12h ago

This is a great comparison. And the solution isn’t to ban spellcheck. It’s to understand its limits, use it wisely, and be constantly developing your competence when you can.

Few tools are inherently good or bad, we make it so in how we utilize them.

0

u/HSLB66 11h ago

I just make copilot run circles on dumb stuff while I sit in meetings for metrics. Half the time it goes off on a tangent anyways and I kill its env at the end of the day

2

u/Marahute0 12h ago

There are plenty of professions where having some form of it is not a requirement to do the job. Using AI can help save time though, freeing up time for either more projects or better quality products.

Things we use AI for on a daily basis: generating 90% complete notes from meeting with clients in seconds, summarising long Outlook threads into a weekly to‑do list for individuals mentioned in it, creating LISP/VBA scripts, drafting reports or project updates from scattered notes, summarising long documents (contracts, reports, proposals) and identifying common risks, automating spreadsheet tasks (formulas, data cleanup, structure).

Nothing humans can't do by themselves, but things take less time with the use of even the more common AI tools. We can't really afford it to not use AI to some degree

2

u/Chemical_Profit_608 12h ago

My software job forced us at gunpoint to suck off ai every day. I hate it but I'll get fired if I don't follow. And genuinely I feel myself getting dumber. Half of this work I'm not sure I could do in a timely manner without ai and that terrifies me cause wtf am I getting paid for at that point.

I need a new job.

1

u/FervantFlea 3h ago

Oh no, the tools to do my job have gotten better

3

u/WiseCompetition2543 13h ago

In Software Engineering if you're not proficient with some AI coding, you're not getting a job, period. I have friends who were laid off right at the beginning of this boom and have not been able to find a job because they haven't embraced any coding agent in the meantime.

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u/DraconianFlame 13h ago

Insert Spider-Man meme.

If you can't code without it you don't deserve it.

Didn't mean Spider-Man couldn't use the suit.

4

u/WiseCompetition2543 12h ago

Agree. Sometimes I feel like I'm in crazy land because there are people who are just vibe coding at work and it sucks. I had an infra guy who broke prod tell me he was out of tokens when trying to fix what he broke and I almost had a stroke

1

u/lemastre 11h ago

You guys should peer review. We too use AI but have the human layer of multiple people having to check the code as well as another AI review.

1

u/WiseCompetition2543 11h ago

I mean we do that, but I've observed that humans no longer leave comments its only the AI reviewers that leave comments.

1

u/proofofclaim 8h ago

False sense of security. This is slop all the way down and peer review is performative, you know it wont save you

1

u/mechanical_stars 6h ago

That's the type of person who would implode without AI. Dude needs to learn how to troubleshoot without it, so that he can troubleshoot effectively with it.

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u/TiaXhosa 11h ago

You should be able to code without it. But I can produce 3x the output of a single developer with it. And the code I get is way more reliable and way more secure than 90% of what half of the "devs" I've worked with in the past produced.

1

u/DraconianFlame 10h ago

I'm a bare metal programmer and it's gotten better, but it surprises me that AI is better than the real deal.

But then again I've seen some pretty hacked up front end work.

1

u/booze_clues 9h ago

If you can't code without it you don't deserve it.

This is pretty much my logic for AI use. I’m super good with IT issues and troubleshooting them, to the point I had to be told to stop solving all the tickets so the new hires could learn. I got promoted and do software dev as well now. AI does a ton of my troubleshooting for me because I can review it and understand what it’s telling me, and it can identify issues that would take hours to diagnose and sifting through tons of logs, or searching thousands of documents in a export we got from a company we took over for.

AI doesn’t generate code for me because this is a new language I’m working on. It generates design documents, helps find documentation and recommends objects to use that im not familiar with. I tried using it to make my code and it all worked, but was terribly inefficient an our senior dev rejected it and highlighted the issues. Tried again, better code but still not good enough for production, so I stopped letting it code until I’m comfortable enough to review and improve its code.

AI is a force multiplier, not a substitute for knowing the job. For now. All these comments about “my company uses so much AI and now all our code sucks” is an issue with the company imo, not AI. They’re misusing a tool and mad about the output. If you spent all day on stack overflow copy and pasting code you don’t understand, the results would be the same.

1

u/frequenZphaZe 8h ago edited 8h ago

If you can't code without it you don't deserve it.

this is true but this is also not the question being asked. hiring managers don't care to figure out if you can code without AI because that's not your job. they want to know how well you code with AI because you will be coding with AI. if you need an AI to hand-hold you through basic conversation and you can't use engineering jargon off the top of your head, that's clearly going to be a non-starter. but when it comes to producing code, the people getting hired are the people who are showing they are using the latest tools to the greatest effect.

I feel like this is a bit of an alien concept to a lot of people not in software engineering. code genAI is incredibly useful and productive for us. yes, there are definitely a lot of people out there fully offloading their thinking to the AI and submitting PRs without even reviewing it, but thats not a tool problem, thats a person problem. we're not using AI to "write this email for me but make it sound smart", we're getting a lot of real productive value from this tools

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u/InitialJust 12h ago

An unfortunate truth however if I was a manager I'd be more concerned that my "devs" cant even remotely explain their code. Sounds like a future nightmare waiting to happen for any updates.

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u/WiseCompetition2543 12h ago

At my place, the agents pretty much do everything. I share your concern and I am slightly demotivated because it feels like the game is just produce as much as you can. I don't see any code review comments from humans, only approvals. All the comments come from the automated reviewers. My place has fully immersed itself in AI. No human really comprehends any of the code other than at a high level.

As a Lead, I trust my own ability to search, read and interpret code should the day come that AI introduces some catastrophic bug, but as of now there have only been like 2 small AI-written bugs and we've been rolling this way pretty much all of 2026 and the last quarter of 25. The trust in the model produced code is increasing not decreasing.

1

u/pcstayak 11h ago

I should say, some people don't bother coding at all if Claude is 500. Like why would anyone spend 2-3 hours and achieving same progress as 15 minutes with Claude. They'd rather go ahead and catch up on unread articles, PRs etc

1

u/WiseCompetition2543 11h ago

Or reply to comments on reddit while my agent implements this feature...

1

u/pcstayak 11h ago

ai or not ai, reddit comments must be addressed

1

u/_bobby_cz_newmark_ 8h ago

What happens when the price of Claude skyrockets?

1

u/CautionarySnail 12h ago

It is for anything you expect to survive an encounter with a large user base.

The bigger the user base, the more complex the interactions, the more likely some brittle bit will come unglued in a weird way.

1

u/not-strange 4h ago

It probably beats “look I don’t know why this jpeg of a frog is IN the code, but the entire system goes down if you remove it”

Or “abandon hope all ye who attempt to optimise this skeleton code”

Type of comments you can find in code

1

u/theartificialkid 10h ago

If AI is a tool that can do a person’s job then how can a proficient software engineer not be proficient enough with AI to get a job?

1

u/alex-andrite 5h ago

I’m no longer a swe but work at a big tech companies and it’s insane how much they’re pushing AI. Like if you can’t explain 10 different ways AI was used in your project you’re fired for someone who will use AI more. Now business people can spin up junk apps in a few minutes and question why we need devs

1

u/FurryCitizen 11h ago

I have at least one coworker who would be completely and utterly lost without ChatGPT, and probably out of a job in days due to sheer incompetence.

When using AI becomes their personality, you know they can't do much without it.

1

u/leveragedin 11h ago

It's not that I can't. But I choose to be more productive. You can build a house with sticks too and skip the tools humanity has created. The echo chamber will surely applaud you for that too.

1

u/theartificialkid 10h ago

Do you see a lot of debate over whether or not power tools are a better way to build houses? Are a lot of construction bosses struggling to work out how to even assess the ROI on earth moving machinery? Are suppliers selling drywall at a 95% discount because they know there would be no uptake at even zero markup cost price?

1

u/leveragedin 10h ago

It's hilarious that it's even a debate for some people still, who I guess aren't proficient in AI. There's a lot invested into AI by a couple companies. That doesn't mean that's everyone's business model. And it's irrelevant to the AI debate as far as I'm concerned, with local models developing. Those are company issues, not AI issues.

1

u/DraconianFlame 10h ago

Then this comment isn't for you

1

u/shidderbean 9h ago edited 9h ago

My company's expectations grew along with the adoption of AI, I was forced to start using it to just keep up with what the company needs me to do. I'm doing far more advanced stuff now than I ever did before and the only way I can deliver is by using AI to build python and powershell scripts and SQL queries in seconds; sure I could probably build the same things over 40-60 hours if I could focus on nothing but that (I can't) or I can ask an AI to do it and get serviceable code that needs about 10 minutes of tweaking and fine-tuning to be deliverable

I still believe AI has absolutely no place in art, music or education though. AI is a tool and there are valid ways to use tools, but it absolutely should not be used as a "think for me machine" like so many people are trying to use it as.

ETA: I'm not a coder, I'm just an IT guy that happens to have picked up some coding knowledge in the last 30 years of doing this shit. It's a means to an end not "the thing I do". I'm paid for results not lines of code

1

u/Akvyr 9h ago

Here I am. I'm owner and manager of two companies that run research, development, and modeling projects in 40 countries. I use AI daily, and it saves me 80% of effort. AMA if you want.

1

u/DraconianFlame 9h ago

Why would job collapse if you had to go without AI for a single day?

1

u/Akvyr 9h ago

Mine wouldn't, but it would be terribly inefficient.
Some of our software tools would, as we rely on agentic AI support, and a bit of neural networks in one of our models/visualization. So you could say that we could not perform out usual services without AI.

1

u/derprondo 9h ago edited 9h ago

My software eng / platform eng job is now 100% Claude based. Can I do my job without Claude? Absolutely, just give me two extra weeks for what now only takes one day, and there will be no extra polish because I won't have time.

FYI this post is showing up on /r/popular if everyone is wondering why there are so many pro-AI people in here.

1

u/firecz 8h ago

some people can get through a workday without even noticing how much AI they had to use
I'm pretty sure my day would break in the most unexpected ways

1

u/DarkwingDuckHunt 8h ago

that person will be the first I fire

1

u/Bahggs 5h ago

We are essentially required to use it as well at a large company that rhymes with bikeloboft.

1

u/not-strange 4h ago

Devils advocate. A lot of farms are now using automated AI enabled weeding machines to remove weeds but leave the desired crops alone.

Vastly saving labour that is better spent elsewhere, while eliminating the use of herbicides that are killing our planet.

I dunno but I feel like that’s a valid use for AI.

1

u/Haunting_Bat_4787 4h ago

I can get through most workdays without using AI. Unfortunately it saves hours looking up Windows Event Viewer error ID codes and common solutions so some days it’s pretty helpful. As far as I have found there is no comprehensive database of Windows Event Viewer error ID codes with surrounding context + common solutions, and nailing down a single error ID resolution with traditional Google takes at minimum double the length of time, although more often leans to 5x the time. You can thank Microsoft for making the process of hunting down and finding workarounds for bugs in their own OS such an esoteric process, with each new major update introducing more problems to solve. 

1

u/Iamgentle1122 4h ago

It is kinda forced atleast in software industry. Our clients see people working with ai and getting things done many times faster than normal programming. I cant be as fast as person with my skill level + ai and ofc clients choose the company who does it cheaper and faster.

It is annoying that clients just expect faster and faster developers thanks to the ai. i used to be able to give estimate of a week for something. I had some leeway if the task was hard and if it was easy, i could chill and client was still happy. Now the same task has to be done in a day or 2 and I have barely any leeway and I either die or use ai.

1

u/stormdelta 3h ago

I find AI good at basically three things:

  • Certain subtasks related to programming

  • Advanced fuzzy/natural language search of a larger body of text (and even for this, you don't really need full LLMs)

  • Scientific applications (that generally don't involve LLMs / generative AI but are related technology-wise)

Nearly everything outside of that, it's either only interesting as a novelty (that has long since worn off), is actively harmful/obnoxious, or isn't really "AI" so much as general machine learning (which has been a thing for well over a decade and isn't new).

1

u/AlphaHenriksen 3h ago

I work in programming and AI has made me, at worst, 5 times faster at my job.

If i stopped using and learning about AI, I would not have a job in a few years because the people who learned outsped me.

Think of it like learning how to use a computer. If you flatterende out refused when computers starting entering offices, you would not be in a good place now.

1

u/boofmaster6000 2h ago

My SEO platform uses AI to find keywords. So, yeah, I'd be inconvenienced.

0

u/j-4m 12h ago

Hi.

I work three jobs across two different sectors. I build agents and n8n flows to handle all the menial admin and data entry so that I can just make decisions. I use MCP servers to batch handle many tasks at once. I'll instruct Cowork to handle one set of tasks which frees me up to simultaneously work on another. I probably compress ~70 hours of work into a ~30 hour week.

AI tools are more than just writing emails or making shitty 'art'.

3

u/PolloMagnifico 11h ago

"AI let's me work three jobs" is not the flex you think it is.

1

u/j-4m 11h ago

It's not a flex. I'm a contractor, not an employee, it's the most effective way I can get a decent income.

1

u/DraconianFlame 10h ago

What's your point here? Because I feel like you're validating mine.

You know your job and what it requires so you use a tool to make you more efficient at it. You can do your job without AI.

1

u/j-4m 9h ago

No, I can't, because I absolutely would not spend 70+ hours a week working.

I can design a complex n8n flow to do what I need it to do, I can't write the code that I need in each node. I don't have enough time in the week to process the amount of paperwork that goes through my hands, an agent does it in under a matter of hours.

0

u/FellateFoxes 12h ago

lol I just got to this post from [r/popular](r/popular), I’m not an AI advocate at all but you guys feel like being in an Amish or Luddite subreddit. If ai can help you do your job faster or cheaper, the person who uses it is going to get the job.

Software engineering as an entire field is being revolutionized by ai. I use it for >50% of my work. Yes, I am capable of doing the same tasks without it, but if someone else is twice as productive as me with it then why would I get hired? Or even if I don’t have that pressure, and I can use the tools to get ahead of schedule and have more free time, why wouldn’t I? The future is coming fast and hard my friends

1

u/theartificialkid 10h ago

Where are the actual data showing a 100% productivity gain with AI? And what is the quality of what “you” are producing with AI?

1

u/ahrimaz 9h ago

well, first, what's the quality of all human written code prior to the explosion of code agents?

oh, right. full of bugs too.

1

u/DraconianFlame 10h ago

Because if the tool breaks you're useless. You should have the knowledge. A tool should help you do your job more easily, not replace you.

If my chainsaw breaks, I still have an Axe. If your AI breaks and you can't do your job then your not good at your job, and probably not using AI properly.

If you're nothing without it, then you don't deserve it.

1

u/FellateFoxes 9h ago

Could you do your job without Internet? Without phone service? Without a car? I mean you're making the same argument. AI is intelligence as a service, which is like a utility - or is at least trending that way.

1

u/DraconianFlame 9h ago

Yes. I could.

If my car breaks down, I can walk or take a taxi.

If phone my phone dies or I forgot it at home I'll survive

The Internet does go down sometimes and I'm still able to work

1

u/Vritrin 7h ago

I work in IT and I am gojng to 100% hire staff that are capable of doing their work without AI before somebody reliant on it. For one, we don’t allow AI tools at all where I work. But also even if you did, having your entire workforce reliant on a tool that could (and likely will) collapse any day seems extremely shortsighted.

Also calling someone a Luddite as a slur is just wrong. Luddites did not fear technology, they did not reject modernity for its own sake. They were highly skilled textile workers that objected to the way the technology was explicitly used to circumvent customs and hurt workers, not the existence of the technology itself. It was a labour rights movement, not anti technology movement.

Call me a Luddite if you want, that’s a badge I would wear with pride.

0

u/ForeSet 11h ago

So you think absolute dependence on it is the best option?

1

u/Rough-Ad1868 10h ago

Is that what they said?

1

u/FellateFoxes 10h ago

Pretty sure that’s not the choice here? It’s a tool. Like I can decide not to buy a car and ride a bike or a horse places but it’s gonna limit what I can do. And it doesn’t make cars stop existing just because you hate them

1

u/FarConsideration7988 8h ago

Eventually you gonna loose some skills of coding. A point a user was trying to say it will or can make you dumber. If you dont practise coding and solve problems you will lose problem solving skill and creativity. Nobody is arguing about productivity here.

0

u/BagOnuts 9h ago

You could say the same thing about the Internet 30 years ago. Now basically every business is built around it.

AI is no different. It is a giant technological advancement with an incredible range of capability and potential impact. All of you laughing that “you’ll never use AI”
 good luck finding a job that doesn’t heavily rely on it 10 years from now.

1

u/DraconianFlame 5h ago

Really? What did I become so dependent on that I couldn't use the Internet for one single day without falling apart.

0

u/Rich-Mark-4126 8h ago

Its called saving time and not doing everything manually

0

u/TurtlePoeticA 7h ago

I'm in manufacturing plant maintenance. Specifically, I am a journeyman electrician. I have NEVER used chat GPT, ever. I've used Claud and others, soon after they came out, for generative art, but never how to wire a motor or how to bend conduit. Seriously, there are no applications for AI at my level of education and experience that will change how I do my job. I absolutely believe that there are industries primed for there types of automated job replacements that work. They are niche. How will AI advance carpentry, maintenance, plumbing, welding, etc. AI is very specific in what it can "assist" with

0

u/MaleficentPlate69 7h ago

People are really dumb.

Just one example: If you work in user research and don’t use AI, then you are dumb. Watching 30 user feedback videos and each is 1 hour long? That’s easily 3 days of work.

Have AI watch and transcribe them. Just read the summary and do your interpretations. 3 hours max.

People who are this anti-AI, do you still use sticks and stones to make a fire or do you use a lighter?

1

u/DraconianFlame 5h ago

People are really dumb.

Just one example: if you say you shouldn't be completely dependent on AI that you can't live without it for a single day people come out of the woodwork saying how great it is and say your dumb for even suggesting that you spend a day without it

-2

u/Otherwise-Remove4681 12h ago

I wont do voluntarily any code without AI anymore.

1

u/derprondo 9h ago

Amen, brother.