Is anyone else experience this thing where your fellow senior engineers seem to be lobotomised by 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 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. -
@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. -
@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
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@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.
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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'll be looking for a new position next month and I'm scared
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@Purple I'll be looking for a new position next month and I'm scared
@gkrnours I'm trying to find a new job but I'm so worried a lot of IT engineering jobs are like this now
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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 don't worry it will only get worse since it hits every other industry eventually....
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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 seen a lot of such results of LLM use (I've also seen genuinely constructive use, when properly handled, so I don't want to be seen as a complete naysayer).
So yes, GenAI is definitely a factor.I'd also raise the point that most have gone through repeated infections with a neuropathologic disease that literally alters the brain.
And we all live in a world of massive external stress that melts our minds.
Sooo LLMs are arriving at the best of all times.
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@gkrnours I'm trying to find a new job but I'm so worried a lot of IT engineering jobs are like this now
@Purple maybe instead ofba resume, I'll make a flyier advertising me, a webdev doing backend, bit of front, bit of infra, 100% human
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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 Who could have guessed it, after 5 years of an airborne virus, amongst whose primary characteristics is non-recoverable cumulative neurological damage, "smart" people are coming up with dumb solutions that an even dumber system suggested to them.
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@Purple maybe instead ofba resume, I'll make a flyier advertising me, a webdev doing backend, bit of front, bit of infra, 100% human
@gkrnours Good luck
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@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.
"As per my previous email...."
Folks don't read anything longer than a sentence.
My default mode of over communicating with a wall of text has been a challenge for me to overcome my entire career.
Lack of receptivity to a proper answer predates the current LLM problem, but is exacerbated by it.
"It depends" is almost always the right answer to a subtle technical question, but the asker wants a simple yes/no.
