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  • Back in the mid-90s I was doing desktop support. It was a lot of work because PCs were relatively new (and they were garbage!), and people broke shit all the time. Sometime around '96 a disk-cloning utility called Ghost was released. It was great - one could provision a fully working PC with all required apps and config settings in minutes! Sounds lame now, but back then it was revolutionary. It had a dark side, though. After about a year most people I worked with had lost the ability to troubleshoot even the most basic problems. The solution to every problem was to just re-apply the standard Ghost disk image (we called it 'Ghosting' back then) ... Can't print? Ghost it! Not receiving emails? Ghost it! Word is too slow? Ghost it!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(disk_utility)

    by jimt1234
  • The biggest negative I'm seeing is that people are moving _too fast_ to evaluate the stuff they're slinging. When you move too fast, you do not take the time to build up your taste or appreciate the nuances of different approaches to the same problem.

    I am using LLMs quite a lot, but the amount of time I spend sitting on some slopped out code is I think on average much longer than a lot of my peers. What I've found is that while the original thing "works", it usually winds up being another 2-3 cycles of iterating on the original idea after I've let it settle in my head before I actually feel confident about merging.

    As a result, when I add it all up, for actual "this is important" design-level concerns, I do not feel significantly more productive.

    by devin
  • Tool use typically follows this curve. If you want to preserve a skill you have to actually preserve it. This isn't inherently bad by itself, tools enable us to do much more than we can without them and its a point of contention whether or not any skill is inherently important when a tool comes along that does it for us.
    by ianbutler
  • Im learning new things at a pace I never imagined at 40 years old. New sports, new businesses, new academic pursuits. Technology is a lever and AI is the biggest lever we've ever had. It enables laziness or incredible productivity. Choose your own path forward.
    by hodder
  • This is new, the scope of it, its not just about individual "skills" because its all of them; we are being challenged at the very fundamentals of our ability to think deeply and widely and persistently. That has never happened before like this.

    It is quite extraordinary and breath-taking at times to see the agents in action; the flipside is that very power renders us both vulnerable to its seduction and enfeeblement on an equal scope - its almost hard-drug like in its potential long-term psychological effects.

    by mellosouls
  • I haven't written a full function of code in over a year. That being said, I've been spending a lot more time thinking about architecture and system properties.

    So, yes, I do feel like I've lost some of that very low-level skill. But maybe I've also been able to spend more time on a higher level skill? Maybe the doctors got worse with the images but had more cognitive resources to think about the patient's context?

    Not sure.

    But yes, I can't physically get myself to write code without an AI anymore. It feels so much slower, almost painful.

    by nilirl
  • I wonder if this same effect happens for very wealthy and/or very senior executives? Those sorts of people have always had numerous people they could 'outsource' their thinking to; delegating work, asking for research/summaries, assigning tasks.

    Does handing off that sort of work to people also ruin your skills in the same way? Or are AIs fundamentally different, and if so, why? Because we have no moral or social pressure to not delegate everything?

    by cortesoft
  • We were so spoiled. We got fat salaries to sit in air conditioned Herman Millers all day learning about computers. Now we discover a way to synthesis intelligence and the only thing we can think to do with it is ruin the most fun career most of us could have ever hoped for.

    Sure, we're all more productive now, but how much of that is because we leverage AI on top of the intelligence we gained from all of that manual work? Who is to say that in 36 months you're not a worse developer over all because that systems knowledge starts to atrophy too?

    This isn't me saying you shouldn't use AI. I use it all of the time to do useful side tasks like to setup GitHub Workflows while I write a feature, or with my agent on a VPS to do internet tasks for me. It's nice to have a little synthesized intelligence.

    What isn't nice is to supplement your own intelligence. I think the gains are in the work there--similar to how you can be absolutely ripped from taking steroids while destroying your body. Often it's the shortcuts that are the most treacherous path.

    by u8

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