As large language models take over more and more cognitive tasks, researchers are warning this mental outsourcing comes with a cost.

In addition to making people stupid, I wonder what affect will LLMs like Claude will have on programmers? How will new programmers learn if companies start using Claude?

  • StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    18 hours ago

    I wish that I didn’t have to use them, but for basic Linux troubleshooting, it’s easier to ask the chatbot and have it explain itself and cross-reference than to use a search engine or forum. The internet has become so shitty for self-teaching. You either end up on YouTube watching videos that aren’t relevant, your search engine pumps you to garbage on top of ads, or you find a forum from 5 years ago with someone asking the same question, but it was closed because it’s the same question that was asked 20 other times, and all the solutions don’t actually work.

    I know that I am robbing myself of this collection of secondary skills, and that part of it is a lack of patience, but the pool of knowledge that is the internet has been poisoned. The only way I even get to useful guides anymore is if Claude links me to them. It’s becoming impossible to use the internet otherwise. Even spell checkers have gotten shittier.

    Even in Word, it will try to autocorrect or just tell you something is wrong without auto-correcting, as if I want to search for the word that it obviously marked in red. Even if it offers a correction, it will be one word, and it will be the wrong word. My phone too, constantly changing my words or somehow hitting the wrong letter when it didn’t before.

    I just don’t even know anymore. The mental energy to “do it myself” is exhausting. Then, of course, whatever I do or learn to do will be undone with the next update that gets pushed out and changes all my settings. My fucking phone settings have completely changed between when I got it and today. Every app has tied its permissions for functionality to its permission to send notifications, and those notifications are just ads. If I want to order DoorDash and know when it arrives, I have to agree to have DoorDash bug the shit out of me to order food when I don’t want to.

    I’m just tired, and if using an AI helps me figure out how to replace my bootloader when I accidentally deleted it, then so be it. I can’t fight every battle.

    • Dymonika@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      10 hours ago

      it was closed because it’s the same question that was asked 20 other times, and all the solutions don’t actually work.

      This has absolutely been my experience as well, yeah. I rarely go straight to LLMs first but sometimes I’m not comfortable with simply posting my problem on Reddit and waiting (or posting on Lemmy and waiting forever lol), since it isn’t always that simple or convenient to first anonymize data before getting public help, nor do people even always reply, leaving me back to square one with time wasted. I am by far the techiest person in my company (and I barely know anything relative to full-time programmers), so there sure isn’t anyone at work who I could ask for help, haha.

      I don’t go to LLMs often, and they sure messed up a lot even just 2 years ago, but they’ve come an impressively long way from the unintelligible-text and six-fingers era (despite still occasionally messing up nowadays) and have legitimately optimized my formulae dramatically in both function and legibility, such as by showing me LET() that I didn’t even know existed. While I’ve been meaning to take an online course on spreadsheets and just haven’t gotten around to it yet, I try to learn from how the model did XYZ right away but it’s nice to have a personal, on-demand tutor, as long as you’re always aware of the fact that what it says could be garbage, despite it speaking so confidently. I think for actual, entire vibe-coded products, it’s much harder to learn what the heck it’s doing versus just simple one-liners. Anyway, on-device and FOSS LLMs make for better compromises, I think, though their quality is noticeably poorer.

      The reason I try to avoid “AI” use is not The Dumbening™ but because of the ecological impact, yet I contend that spending hours and hours trying to traditionally solve a problem in frustration is also harmful in its own ways… It’s a decent tool of last resort and the Stupids are merely the ones treating it as a line of first defense against everything.