I feel like a lot of the lament expressed in the comments is grounded in loss aversion. We really don't like losing things—regardless of the objective (or subjective) value of that loss. We know this intellectually, but we still feel it emotionally.
I'm feeling effects of using LLMs day in and day out, but I am not yet convinced that it's overwhelmingly negative, the way much of HN seems to lean.
I derive a lot of joy from shipping outstanding code for my clients and fixing problems they're experiencing. My joy has only increased as I can now ship better code, faster, with fewer bugs. No, I don't intimately understand the code the way I used to, but I understand it enough to accomplish the end goal.
The premise of this article takes a presumed position that the grades we were posting before really mattered a whole lot. I'm not convinced that's true.
> I derive a lot of joy from shipping outstanding code for my clients and fixing problems they're experiencing. My joy has only increased as I can now ship better code, faster, with fewer bugs. No, I don't intimately understand the code the way I used to, but I understand it enough to accomplish the end goal.
If you’re doing this than great! More power to you. But I think you underestimate the discipline it can take to focus on a task when “coding is free”. I don’t worry that I’ll just lose my old skills. I worry that in losing my old skills I’ll lose the new skills as well. Driving is great! But I still run for exercise and occasionally to get places too. I’d be a worse driver if I was out of shape do to the loss of energy and mental clarity.
LLMs are great at reducing how much you work you personally have to do. This is the exact opposite of what we need kids in education to do.
This is a good point! AI can't lift the weights for you.
Sure sure whatever suits you. But I personally have a very strong aversion to losing my intelligence.
The presumption that we're losing "intelligence" is unproven and widely debated. I'd prefer "capability" over raw intellect any day, and my capability is definitely greater than it was a year ago.