Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
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@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.
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@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?
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@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.
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@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
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@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
Actually really valid observation, the industry has been sick for a while in general
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple me, an unhired watching all the experienced people melt their brains:
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple to a much lesser degree, it happens to me too
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@Purple me, an unhired watching all the experienced people melt their brains:
@kirakira Not sure if jealous... Maybe a little bit if we ignore the financials of it
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple One of my coworkers (very much not a senior though) is in a particularly dangerous spot for how he uses it, as he frequently doesn't have the foundational knowledge to understand how the output is only convincing-sounding bullshit, and he's leaning on it so hard I'm not sure if he's actually learning those foundations...
Meanwhile I'm the resident stick-in-the-mud who knows how the damned things actually work under the hood, trying to temper the marketing-wank everyone's blindly repeating... My boss is appreciative though, as he understands that it's coming more from simple pragmatism about the environment the tech exists in than "fear of change" (even if it did actually work, (which it usually doesn't) VCs are currently shoveling money into a furnace to subsidize it, and when that money dries up it's going to skyrocket in price to the point it's likely not cost-effective)
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@kirakira Not sure if jealous... Maybe a little bit if we ignore the financials of it
@Purple no no the financials ruin everything else, i'm 32 and i've never had autonomy over my own living situation, i can remember every time i've been on an airplane, and i can't even go to local cons anymore unless people help pay for it. i think a moderate tech salary is my yearly income every 2-3 months, there's a reason i'm still trying to get in
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple I was asked today why I don't want to teach juniors and beginners how to use AI to write code. This. This is why
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple well, yesterday I got a similarly weird interaction with a lawyer I respect and trust (or rather trusted). Had some technical questions just out of the land of curiosity, regarding some recent changes in the system of local courts. She insisted on "asking" ChatGPT, despite the fact that I showed multiple times that it's just wrong and misleading.
And my main motivation was to understand and update Wikidata and Wikipedia (because it was also wrong and has been that way for a decade or so).
So, to conclude, by lobotomizing people it also takes away some chances for decent conversation, debate, line of thoughs and arguments.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
*sigh*
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple Well, I am benefitting from others stupid vibe coding, but yes, I can't wait until the AI bubble bursts so we can get back to sane industry practices.
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@Purple I was asked today why I don't want to teach juniors and beginners how to use AI to write code. This. This is why
@Archivist @Purple i mean, that would be a short lesson: Don't.
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple@woof.tech given that these LLMs are trained on things like GitHub/stack overflow/etc, I wonder where we end up in a few years. So many people are leaning on the LLMs instead of writing/answering questions on publicly accessable stable forums....
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple
I think once a week I'm either told I'm going to get left behind if I don't get up to speed on .... prompting an LLM idk.Or mocked for trying to save the world/rainforest, being contrarian for not using AI.
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple I experienced something similar with people around me. They ask me the weirdest questions. They would even ask me things like "how do I run this python script" even though they have done it before. They ask "I want this and that, how do I do that?" when I already explained it and documented it.
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple someone compared this feeling to being one of the only humans left in a zombie apocalypse, the more I think about it, the more I agree.
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
"...just ask Copilot to turn it into a curl" from next to me the other day.
So that would be a yes, and not just the once either. (But for other items than not even writing your own curl command line.)
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Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by AI?
I've had 4 different senior engineers in the last week come up with absolutely insane changes or code, that they were instructed to do by AI. Things that if you used your brain for a few minutes you should realise just don't work.
They also rarely can explain why they make these changes or what the code actually does.
I feel like I'm absolutely going insane, and it also makes me not able to trust anyones answers or analysis' because I /know/ there is a high chance they should asked AI and wrote it off as their own.
I think the effect AI has had on our industry's knowledge is really significant, and it's honestly very scary.
@Purple The sad thing is, it's not just senior engineers. It's systems administrators as well - though the enshittification of the mind started happening long before AI. That started around the time that folks started using containers (Docker, K8s, etc.) and gave up trying to understand how their systems worked. And why would they - they can just trash the container and grab another one, right?
Well, it's lead to a LOT of brain rot and now we're seeing the effects of this all up and down the tech stack. Add in AI to the mix and it's all just an unreliable mess - sysadmins just going to the Magic Words Generator(tm) to get steps to "solve" problems that just create more and leave it for the increasingly few of us who care to clean up.
