If your AI use is counter productive, then it’s probably either because the scenario doesn’t benefit from AI or because you’re using it wrong.
There are PLENTY of cases where AI has made a world of difference productivity wise. Since it gained the ability to reason last year, there are just so many things it can do. Right now it’s better than every human at cyber security, period. Ask anyone who got to work with mythos.
Now I’ll agree that in the end cybersecurity is not a “productive” field since nobody cares when the cat doubled in size if the mouse did the same. However just last week we’ve seen something similar happen in Math, where it solved many math problems that no human or traditional computer has ever been able to solve. To say AI is “dumb” and “useless” after reading that paper feels a bit silly.
If your AI use is counter productive, then it’s probably either because the scenario doesn’t benefit from AI or because you’re using it wrong.
It’s harder to review code than to write it. Humans are kind of of lazy, and when we see code that looks generally correct we skim. We lose focus.
So if someone uses AI to generate a lot of code, it’s hard to review. If we just trust it, we lose knowledge of how our system works. If we spend the time reviewing it, that’s harder than just doing it ourselves. This is true at any scale, but the more you use it the worse it gets.
Maybe you consider using AI for code generation “using it wrong”. If so, please tell it to management at my job who are frothing at the mouth over the idea.
If you disagree that humans don’t notice problems, did you see the mistake I added in this post? Maybe you did! But most people wouldn’t.
Even if that wasn’t a problem, de-skilling is definitely a problem long term. If the AI did produce flawless code, after a few months of using it you’d start losing the ability to code yourself. Counter productive. Unless you’re management, and don’t care about your laborers.
I agree with what you’re saying in general, but most code out there doesn’t need to be high quality. There is no reason for anyone to design a web page manually in 2026 for example, AI will do it faster and cheaper than any human can dream of. And the code itself is incapable of causing issues, it’s just markdown/css. However even for high-quality code, if you look at benchmarks the top models produce higher quality code than the majority of devs.
As for losing understanding of our code, I agree but I suppose it’s the price to pay for productivity. Besides, it’s not like I understand Joe’s 30 years old ugly code any better than if AI had written it. At least AI has the decency to include comments.
How much web development experience do you personally have? Like, from before AI tooling?
Once your website is more complicated than a static marketing site, I don’t think AI is going to do it better. Some of the problems, like slopsquatting might be around for a long time. Possibly forever.
And the code itself is incapable of causing issues, it’s just markdown/css.
…what?
However even for high-quality code, if you look at benchmarks the top models produce higher quality code than the majority of devs.
Doing the wrong thing faster is not an improvement.
At least AI has the decency to include comments.
From what I’ve seen of AI comments, it’s not really helpful. It’s illusionionary confidence.
As for losing understanding of our code, I agree but I suppose it’s the price to pay for productivity.
That’s very expensive technical debt, or a massive de-skilling of labor.
Do you own a business? If you don’t, why would you dig your own grave here?
Honestly, I’ve only done web dev around 10 years ago and found it so mind-dumbing I left after a year. I have however had AI code a dashboard last year, roughly ~20k lines of mostly front-end and have yet to have heard of any issues from the ~30 people using daily. Why then would I have done this manually in a week when the AI did it better in an hour and $5?
Why then would I have done this manually in a week when the AI did it better in an hour and $5?
Some reasons may include
once you have the skills, it won’t take a week
once you have the skills, you learn them. They’re yours, not rented
you are better able to make changes to it
you can be much more confident it doesn’t have any horrible issues like exposing keys in plain text
less odds of other issues, like redundant or strange code
Some of this comes down to “why bother learning anything?”
I don’t know what your dashboard does. I made a simple display at an old job that showed some stats about new user signups. It took like an hour or two, and I’d never used the particular front end library before.
Edit: lines of code is a poor metric* but even so 20k seems like a lot
But why would I care about spending a week learning front end stuff when I can spend that week learning stuff that’s actually important for my job? Even had I actually learned it I’d have forgotten by next time I have to use it since too long would have passed.
There’s no glaring issue as big as exposing keys, I’m not that dumb, I don’t let AI have those. There is 100% some redundant code, AI likes to make 10 helpers that do variants of the same thing, but right now it works and still shows no signs of breaking down a year later. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
I did not mean to insult anyone.
If your AI use is counter productive, then it’s probably either because the scenario doesn’t benefit from AI or because you’re using it wrong.
There are PLENTY of cases where AI has made a world of difference productivity wise. Since it gained the ability to reason last year, there are just so many things it can do. Right now it’s better than every human at cyber security, period. Ask anyone who got to work with mythos.
Now I’ll agree that in the end cybersecurity is not a “productive” field since nobody cares when the cat doubled in size if the mouse did the same. However just last week we’ve seen something similar happen in Math, where it solved many math problems that no human or traditional computer has ever been able to solve. To say AI is “dumb” and “useless” after reading that paper feels a bit silly.
It’s harder to review code than to write it. Humans are kind of of lazy, and when we see code that looks generally correct we skim. We lose focus.
So if someone uses AI to generate a lot of code, it’s hard to review. If we just trust it, we lose knowledge of how our system works. If we spend the time reviewing it, that’s harder than just doing it ourselves. This is true at any scale, but the more you use it the worse it gets.
Maybe you consider using AI for code generation “using it wrong”. If so, please tell it to management at my job who are frothing at the mouth over the idea.
If you disagree that humans don’t notice problems, did you see the mistake I added in this post? Maybe you did! But most people wouldn’t.
Even if that wasn’t a problem, de-skilling is definitely a problem long term. If the AI did produce flawless code, after a few months of using it you’d start losing the ability to code yourself. Counter productive. Unless you’re management, and don’t care about your laborers.
I agree with what you’re saying in general, but most code out there doesn’t need to be high quality. There is no reason for anyone to design a web page manually in 2026 for example, AI will do it faster and cheaper than any human can dream of. And the code itself is incapable of causing issues, it’s just markdown/css. However even for high-quality code, if you look at benchmarks the top models produce higher quality code than the majority of devs.
As for losing understanding of our code, I agree but I suppose it’s the price to pay for productivity. Besides, it’s not like I understand Joe’s 30 years old ugly code any better than if AI had written it. At least AI has the decency to include comments.
How much web development experience do you personally have? Like, from before AI tooling?
Once your website is more complicated than a static marketing site, I don’t think AI is going to do it better. Some of the problems, like slopsquatting might be around for a long time. Possibly forever.
…what?
Doing the wrong thing faster is not an improvement.
From what I’ve seen of AI comments, it’s not really helpful. It’s illusionionary confidence.
That’s very expensive technical debt, or a massive de-skilling of labor.
Do you own a business? If you don’t, why would you dig your own grave here?
Honestly, I’ve only done web dev around 10 years ago and found it so mind-dumbing I left after a year. I have however had AI code a dashboard last year, roughly ~20k lines of mostly front-end and have yet to have heard of any issues from the ~30 people using daily. Why then would I have done this manually in a week when the AI did it better in an hour and $5?
Some reasons may include
Some of this comes down to “why bother learning anything?”
I don’t know what your dashboard does. I made a simple display at an old job that showed some stats about new user signups. It took like an hour or two, and I’d never used the particular front end library before.
Edit: lines of code is a poor metric* but even so 20k seems like a lot
*For example, the difference between
function add(a, b) { return a + b; }and
const add = (a,b) => a + bBut why would I care about spending a week learning front end stuff when I can spend that week learning stuff that’s actually important for my job? Even had I actually learned it I’d have forgotten by next time I have to use it since too long would have passed.
There’s no glaring issue as big as exposing keys, I’m not that dumb, I don’t let AI have those. There is 100% some redundant code, AI likes to make 10 helpers that do variants of the same thing, but right now it works and still shows no signs of breaking down a year later. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Again, we’re circling the question “why learn anything?” I seen to have as an assumption that it’s worth it for its own sake more often than you do.