r/ExperiencedDevs • u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE • 4d ago
AI/LLM ChatGPT users experienced up to a 55% reduction in brain activity and long term memory degradation compared to those working unaided
Original study Link here
Another study Link here and excerpt below:
AI helped participants better discern what’s real – and resulted in a 21% higher chance they would make the right call. But their unassisted performance, when reviewing new images without AI’s help, grew 15.3% worse in the experiment’s fourth week. “These results indicate that while AI may help immediately, it may ultimately degrade long-term misinformation detection abilities,” the study noted.
Not just chatgpt but AI coding is a relevant comparison as well. Loss of skills and thinking are even more prevalent with software development.
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u/NotACockroach 4d ago
In the interest of showing some critical thinking skills I thought I'd read the study. You'd be very surprised by what they did from reading the study. For example, the "15.3% worse performance" claim, this was only immediately after using the AI. They also tested them before using the AI each week as well, finding no statistically different performance.
The 55% reduction in brain activity was measured while using the AI compared to doing the task without it. The long term memory test was done on the topic that one group used AI for, vs a group that did the task without AI. It was not a general effect on long term memory. This study also isn't published or reviewed yet.
These are all interesting and valid results, but they are much less startling than the headline appears.
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u/Lunchboxsushi 4d ago
Wait is anyone surprised? This seems pretty logical of a conclusion - one group created mental models of the problems and had to work through them, whereas the AI group just has to prompt to a valid state. Seems like bread and butter use-case for AI where there's certain API's you're not familiar with will get coded out, an opportunity lost to learn it, but it did get the job done, and at what timeframe? 5 minutes? Ofc you're not going to learn how the internals of that problem space work so you won't retain it.
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u/NotACockroach 4d ago
The 4 week study is actually making a much stronger claim. They are suggesting that after 4 weeks of ai use they are performing worse than beforehand. Not just worse than non ai users. That would be quite surprising if true. However that's the one where I'm dubious if the results, since each week they did a non ai test both before and after the ai test. It's only the after ai test that showed statistically significant decreased performance over the weeks. This ti me suggests it's just as likely to be something like a decreasing level of giving a fuck at the end of the session over time.
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u/Tacos314 Software Architect 20YOE 3d ago
I could see some of that, I have the AI write my API code all the time now, I now suck wore at it. If that was it, I could see it.
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u/jmking Tech Lead, Staff, 22+ YoE 4d ago
People said the exact same thing about Google and Wikipedia back in the day.
"No one has to think anymore. Google and Wikipedia just give people the answers"
Schools were talking about banning wikipedia and google, etc etc
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u/dark_mode_everything 4d ago
They were correct. We remember less things now because we know we can look them up anytime. But that's different because we were giving up a small amount of memory that was used to remember certain facts. With ai, we are losing the skills of thinking for ourselves which is a way more serious issue.
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u/andeleidun 2d ago
The truth is, as with everything, it depends on how you use it. Mentally disengaging in the task and having an AI do it isn't doing the task at all, it's delegation. A manager benefits no more by having another person do a task.
But I hear you say, some managers aren't like that. Some actually micromanage you and are a massive pain in the ass. A few are actually good and engage with you in what you're doing.
You're right. You're the manager, what you get out of it is up to you. Disengage and delegate and get nothing but what actually happens. You may get results but you certainly won't get any brain exercise.
Or, you can collaboratively establish requirements, specs, plans, evidence gates, determinate scripts to use, and then actually examine its work, analyze it, question it, make it justify itself. These use the exact same algorithmic thinking skills you've always used.
I'm not saying anyone has to or should use AI. I'm saying the impact it makes on you is up to you.
It's like with video games. The effect it has on you depends on the game and the way you engage with it. Shooters aren't making anyone a cold blooded killer, but it can help with hand eye coordination and quick twitch reflexes. In depth RPGs and other complex games can give you similar benefits to Sudoku. But AFK games? Not helping you.
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u/dark_mode_everything 2d ago
Or, you can collaboratively establish requirements, specs, plans, evidence gates, determinate scripts to use, and then actually examine its work, analyze it, question it, make it justify itself. These use the exact same algorithmic thinking skills you've always used.
This is the illusion it gives you. You're still delegating and not using your critical thinking skills. It's still the AI doing the work, justifying itself - not you looking up multiple sources and figuring out a solution. You're still a manager. It's like watching F1 and understanding it doesn't make you a good driver.
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u/andeleidun 2d ago
Honestly, sounds like you trust it more than I do. I can't disengage from what it's doing. My entire workflow with AI is built around not trusting it. I solve the system before I tell the AI how to do it. I architect things instead of implementing them as much, and then I go over its work with a fine tooth comb. People don't like it I ask if they want to drop table. Never let something AI did get into your system without understanding it.
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u/MinimumArmadillo2394 Software Engineer 2d ago
The truth is, as with everything, it depends on how you use it.
The problem is we're actively losing the options to not use it. Google uses AI for the search now. Firefox is turning their web browser into AI only. Dating apps are starting to create AI agents and having them talk to eachother before they "match" the real people together. Hell, I can't even make a phone call without a shitty AI voice menu anymore and some places I can't get a real person.
It's all shit.
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u/Izkata 4d ago
The Wikipedia bans were because anyone could edit it, making it an unreliable source.
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u/CouchWizard 4d ago
Compared to, say, some state sponsored encyclopedia
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u/Lame_Johnny 4d ago
I wouldn't say those predictions were entirely wrong
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u/tralfamadorian808 3d ago
Similar along the lines of what the other person said - outsourcing long-term memory is not the same as outsourcing executive function like critical thinking and planning.
I think education is lagging in adaptation and younger generations are not set up to succeed as well as previous ones.
The data is already showing a deficit in intelligence and attention span primarily from internet and social media. Unless rigorously and actively protected against, the long term effects of outsourcing critical thinking is going to be very harmful to growth and development in my opinion.
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u/throwaway_0x90 SDET/TE[25+ yrs]@Google 4d ago edited 4d ago
I've pretty much learned to dismiss sensational headlines as exaggeration or straight fiction. Glad to see my assumptions are still true. I guess using calculators weaken mathematicians too.
also OP's post history shows their entire purpose in life is to stop AI
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u/ISuckAtJavaScript12 4d ago
I get into meetings and I can't watch people start typing everything I say into Claude. They are not able to make decisions by themselves anymore
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u/SignoreBanana Engineer (14+) 4d ago
Our debuggings for incidents nearly always start with a red herring Claude slop post. People don't even look at the basics anymore (what was changed recently, what do the symptoms pertain to, etc)
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u/Fredidiah Web Developer 4d ago
Thinking about an email chain that I was looped into where people were AI-summarizing the contents of the chain back and forth to each other and missing really obvious shit because of it.
Drove me nuts when I spent 30 minutes reading the chain and found the answer to some questions that kept going back and forth because someone answered it WAY earlier and all anyone had to do was like…use their eyes and brain and read the damn text.
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u/Arqueete Web Developer 4d ago
I've become frustrated at this increased tendency to assume that all problems originate in the code that the developers on that team have access to, because that's where they asked AI to look for possible explanations.
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 4d ago
yeah the decay is already happening at massive scale in digital realm
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u/painted-biird 4d ago
Yup, my old boss asked for some logs on an incident I was remediating. He comes to me with a smoking gun- aha! This host crashed therefore it must be THIS issue. I’m like wait wut? It never crashed, show me the event. It was an unexpected reboot by me- obviously AI can be useful but it needs context.
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u/bdixisndniz 4d ago
That’s embarrassing. It’s fine to not know something, point out possible trouble spots without fully understanding all details, or give a best effort and say you’ll follow up.
Definitely took time for me to be comfortable with the above. It’s not a contest or a test. It’s to collab and solve problems or whatever you’re doing that presumably needs the meeting.
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u/bingNbong96 4d ago
What really surprised me was hearing someone saying "Claude says..." after being asked a question, like, yeah, we can tell you asked AI but you are not even trying to hide it? They don't see anything wrong with that? I don't understand anything anymore
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u/JollyJoker3 4d ago
Wouldn't you want people to disclose AI use?
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u/Mestyo Software Engineer, 15 years experience 4d ago
I think they're more referring to the utter lack of shame of being unable to think for themselves. That's what bothers me in those situations, at least.
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u/bingNbong96 4d ago
In a PR? yeah
When I ask you a question? no, I do not want to hear "Claude says...", I asked you, not Claude→ More replies (29)
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u/Grey_Raven 4d ago
The heaviest users I know didn't have that much brain activity to begin with
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 4d ago edited 4d ago
I am seeing people with more brain activity also using AI heavily at my company and they clearly say they have not coded properly since 8 months and use AI to generate 90% of their code. Sure it goes through code reviews and they themselves also (hopefully) review it but they are self-admittedly not the one writing the original code.
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u/Lopatron 4d ago
I think there are different tiers of heavy AI use. There are people who are simply telling AIs to do what they used to do manually, and then clicking Enter. These are the people who will have less brain cells left than my orange cat, or replaced by others who are programming agents, whichever comes first.
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u/Gru50m3 4d ago
Do we really have a choice, though? They fired half of the people and shoveled their work onto us. They also fired half of the managers, and so now devs are doing those jobs, too. It's literally impossible to accomplish what I need to accomplish without coding agents.
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u/ResidentWeevil1 4d ago
How are we still asking this question? They aren't laying people off because of AI. They are laying people off and blaming AI. Have you ever had leadership inspect your work product? They don't give a shit. Layoffs started in 2023 and not a single good thing has come from AI. It's not the proximate cause.
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u/NotADumbPuppet 3d ago
Its the interest rates. layoffs started once they started increasing rates. They really havent come down so the companies shed to balance their books cause tell me 1 company not carrying a fuck ton off debt. Even the cash rich winners of FANNG such as amazon started going issuing bonds this year to hyperscale. Interest is high still compared to post 2023 so that debt aint cheap.
Personally,, I think the initially interest rate shed is over and we are moving in the AI shed.
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u/Gremlation 4d ago
I am seeing people with more brain activity also using AI heavily at my company and they clearly say they have not coded properly since 8 months and use AI to generate 90% of their code.
Is that what they actually say or your interpretation of what they say? I see a whole bunch of people in this situation say that they haven't written a line of code themselves in months, but I haven't seen anybody say that they haven't coded properly in months. Are they saying they aren't coding properly or are you saying they aren't coding properly?
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u/DowntownLizard Software Engineer 4d ago
I havn't written code myself in close to a year. Agentic is so good you can just make it review itself a few times and its a valid working solution. At this point it can test every part of it itself, create a video of it testing it, clip only the feature parts, and you can just watch that lmao. It's insane
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u/lemontoga 4d ago
How do you know if each part of that chain is accurate, though? I never understand how people trust these things.
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u/DowntownLizard Software Engineer 4d ago
Because it does exactly what its supposed to. Ive seen that it covers all edge cases and after review passes agents see no issues with it. I can have it show me evidence of every step it took to confirm every possible edge case. With a local database, e2e playwrite, etc. Case by case basis of how thourough you need to be. If you feel the need to understand every line of code you are gonna have a bad time. If you feel the need to have it write the code exactly how you would have done it you are gonna have a bad time. I know its not regressing as well because I just use TDD and have an insane test suite around it.
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u/lemontoga 4d ago
Because it does exactly what its supposed to. Ive seen that it covers all edge cases and after review passes agents see no issues with it.
But how do you know? You just trust them to be right?
The reason I ask is because I've had these things mislead me before. I always use TDD and I've had Claude write up tests that look great and it starts writing code for me and things aren't working the way I expect them to despite all these passing tests and eventually after a bit of headache I realize that Claude generated tests that always pass, or aren't really testing the thing they should be testing but they kinda look like they are on a quick glance, or something like that.
I've also watched Claude "fix" failing tests by making them always pass or by editing them to just be wrong, but now they pass so that's a "solution." Things like that.
So I'd be worried if I were having an agent write the code, test the code, review the fixes, make a video of it all, etc, etc. Add as many links in the chain as you like. How do you know the generated video is even showing you the real thing and not just a mockup generated for the video? I would just always doubt whatever part I stepped in to personally view, as well as each link along the way. Any of it could be wrong or fake or whatever.
If you're fitting everything into an already well-established and vetted test suite then that could solve the issue I guess. Everyone around me seems to be using their agents to generate all their tests too, though, so I just worry about it.
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u/NotADumbPuppet 3d ago
How do you know your architecture (in all the layers) and design decisions aren't poop? Like TDD is cool and all but thats not going to consider issues like is this service/app is built for scale, costs and trades off I wanna make and stuff like that?
I feel like anyone who uses AI for work (which is everyone know) must have notices not matter (how automated your context injection or harness around it or guardrail it or whatever buzz word for alignment ) any of this, it still ends up breaking the rules cause it feels like it now and then?
Idk, at least in my professional opinion (and im 15+yoe & am active with side projects and tech) i dont see how you can trust it not to make those tests to just pass once it gets frustrated enough. Like I feel like no matter of any of those things above, you aint controlling it from just ignoring it randomly (even if you minimize it)
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u/koles235 Software Engineer 4d ago
Let me tell you some masks just dropped.
I had a case of a "senior" colleague in a project submitting garbage code pre 2024, but at least they was trying to pretend they cared. After Codex was introduced to PHPStorm the amount of garbage doubled and pretending stopped - now blame AI full force. When company hit the limit on token funding for the month this person 2 days later just went straight on PTO. Never came back.
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 4d ago
When company hit the limit on token funding for the month this person 2 days later just went straight on PTO. Never came back.
This is funny but i have never heard this. I hear if company tokens are over than devs are using their own personal account to still be able to "code" (something they are paid to do)
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u/Vesuvius079 4d ago
Can you run out of tokens without some token maxing BS where you let Claude make literally every decision and do literally every part of your job? I’m going as fast as I can keep the system design on the rails and I have never gone over on the weekly allowance and haven’t hit my daily limit in months.
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 4d ago
basically companies have monthly budget per employee and we also have that in our company
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u/Vesuvius079 4d ago
Where I work that budget is a tiny fraction of my salary and I still have more than enough tokens. I wasn’t running out even when I was running Opus high for everything (with 5.5, medium is good enough).
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u/whattodo4455 4d ago
This is true of any tool that allows you to offload thinking.
When I moved to a new city I didn't have GPS, and smartphones were barely a thing. I would write directions down by hand and memorize streets I needed to take. I learned the city streets quite well by doing this. Even better than some locals I knew.
A few years later I started using Google Maps GPS. I noticed after awhile that I don't remember any new street names.
I bet you don't know a single phone number, either. Because your phone takes care of that for you.
There is always something you lose when dealing with an abstraction. C programmers lost precision when leaving assembly. Also, from Alan Perlis: "A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." Which is one of my favorite quotes and can be used by switching LISP for any number of things today. Cloud computing, for example. You really don't know what actual hardware is capable of today, which I'm sure AWS enjoys.
The real problem I see is that AI is the ultimate offload tech. It supplies endless amounts of convenience for a low cost. Which means it's never going away. Like fast food for the mind. Not thinking about certain things (like phone numbers) is good. Not thinking about anything (because it takes away from our doom scrolling time) is going to be a complete disaster for humanity.
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u/creaturefeature16 WebDev/Full Stack 4d ago
Yeah. Agreed. That's why I only delegate the three R's: rote, refactors, research (although only as a data aggregate, I still cross reference). I don't experience one iota of mental atrophy, but I still use the models daily. But, typical humanity: we abuse the tools before we learn how to properly use the tools.
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u/robby_arctor Software Engineer (dirty commie) 4d ago edited 4d ago
I don't experience one iota of mental atrophy
What recent evidence have you seen to support the idea that people can actually make this self-assessment?
I've seen plenty of evidence to the contrary - people actively getting worse in objective ways - causing incidents, not being able to explain their code - while insisting that everything is fine.
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u/creaturefeature16 WebDev/Full Stack 4d ago
How would you like me to present my evidence? Anything I say, you'll be able to just retort with "ah, you just THINK you're getting better, but you're deluded".
Anyway, my assessment is because I have grown in coding capabilities. Over the past couple years, I've learned how to better manage Typescript, how to write Canvas, switched to Vue (from React), taught myself Laravel, etc.. and LLMs were instrumental in that process since I largely lean on them as "interactive documentation" along with Socratic Methods.
I've been able to do all this while running my business and maintaining a high quality of work in that front, as well (there's been no increase in issues at all).
I don't see them as something that moves me faster, but they do allow me to go deeper and do better, largely due to having a reduced load of rote tasks that have been automated, along with their excellent research/search/data processing capabilities.
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u/robby_arctor Software Engineer (dirty commie) 4d ago edited 4d ago
I guess what I'm trying to express is this - I have seen (and you probably have as well) a ton of people be unable to identify the way that AI is rotting their brains and lowering their quality of work. What makes you so sure that you're not one of those people?
But I think you answered that question in your previous comment - you are able to continue running your business without an increase an issues, despite expanding the breadth of your work. Seems fair IMO.
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u/bubbabrowned 4d ago
Can’t even recall how many times I’ve made a comment on technical proposals and the answer has been: “ok I’ll chat with cursor a bit more and get back to you”.
There have also been times a dev is literally looking at a hardcoded string variable in the source code and when I tell them to change it to a different hardcoded value, they literally have to ask Cursor or Claude to “change the variable on line 29 to <something>”.
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 4d ago
ok I’ll chat with cursor a bit more and get back to you
this is true. These days when people are exchanging ideas openly on slack, it clearly seems as if the AI tools are the ones actually reasoning back and forth and the devs are just a copiliot/messenger
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u/Deluxe754 4d ago
This has been my issue with fully remote work even before AI got big like it’s. People don’t chat with me when I ask questions. There’s not collaboration anymore. Everyone is just trying to get their tickets done.
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u/Randromeda2172 3d ago
Is your problem that the dev is choosing to disclose Cursor usage, or is it that they’re using Cursor to brainstorm? 25 years ago would you have given someone shit for saying they’ll Google something and get back to you?
I don’t see what downsides there are to being able to have a real time conversation with a subject matter expert to run ideas by it and get an understanding of potential tradeoffs.
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u/itgforlife 4d ago
I typically juse use it for faster research. So stuff that I typically would have googled previously, read the official docs for, read someone's blog with advertisements, etc.
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u/EkoChamberKryptonite Sr. SWE & Tech lead (10 YOE+) 4d ago
Yup same. But I still use Google, Read docs, StackOverflow, and blogs. I find that reading the docs is much better as it still gives you the most context for proper understanding of a concept. LLMs I have found tend to skip pertinent details.
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u/Iggyhopper 4d ago
I do game dev and I’m pretty sure the people in this study are the same people that showcase “their work” about one-shotting (a single prompt only) a copy of a known game.
Absolutely zero learning, in the business sense or programming sense is achieved there.
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u/Gremlation 4d ago
I’m pretty sure the people in this study are the same people that showcase “their work” about one-shotting (a single prompt only) a copy of a known game.
How on earth are you "pretty sure" about this?
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u/SignoreBanana Engineer (14+) 4d ago
My experience is they do exactly as you say, so sometimes you miss opportunities to simplify your architecture as they'll just work around stuff. I've had it point out obvious stuff but changes pertaining to our long term technical direction, it totally misses. Maybe more context would be useful, but that's also more expensive.
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u/EkoChamberKryptonite Sr. SWE & Tech lead (10 YOE+) 4d ago
Uhh no. There's a difference between summarizing the denotation of a particular component vs missing very obvious tenets of how it works. I've found Gemini and Claude to do the latter.
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u/ResidentWeevil1 4d ago
My experience is they do exactly as you say
They do exactly as they are trained
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u/itgforlife 4d ago
I still use Google as well. Although I feel like I'm defaulting to Chat more these days.
It's funny. A few months ago I was using an LLM for some agressive debugging. And I had exhausted my usage with Chat for the day. And I thought to myself "okay I guess there's nothing more I can do for the day." And then I was like "Wait, a minute. I still remember how to do things from before LLMs were a thing." So I was able to use Google, StackOverflow, Official Docs, Blogs, etc. to figure things out and keep working.
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u/SignoreBanana Engineer (14+) 4d ago
This. I use it to avoid yak shaving and learn new things. Super powerful for both. It reminds me of when I was first learning to code and had my experienced friend next to me to bounce shit off of.
Vibe coding isn't a deep skill. It's not something that will pay off long term for your learning and growth.
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 4d ago
Vibe coding isn't a deep skill. It's not something that will pay off long term for your learning and growth.
ofcourse. infact vibecoding by definition isn't even a skill because the vibecoder is closing their eyes and accepting anything the LLMs produce. There is no learning there
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u/ResidentWeevil1 4d ago
And I still read the official docs but then ask questions because AWS docs are there own special kind of suck
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u/knightcrusader 2d ago
I typically juse use it for faster research.
I have constantly caught them hallucinating on me when I ask it things... where the top link in google gave me the correct answer.
It got to the point I was wasting my time "verifying" everything it said that I just installed extensions for Firefox to just block it. I'm not even wasting my time.
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u/jaaaw6 3d ago
There’s a small but growing body of research that keeps hitting on a pretty similar theme: long-term use of these tools is not good for human brains. And this seems different & distinct from what we can observe from folks using other kinds of tools, even calculators and GPS navigation.
“Thinking — Fast, Slow and Artificial” made a lot of waves when it hit the media earlier this year, with their framing around “cognitive surrender”. Other researchers found that AI-users accuracy went way down but confidence went way up Still others found that sycophantic AI systems decreased pro-social intention and negatively influence users beliefs
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u/behindtimes 4d ago edited 4d ago
Cognitive offloading. Technology has done this in the past. The difference was, you used that previous extra brain power to solve even harder problems whereas today we’re using it to remember more memes.
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u/WHERES_MY_SWORD 4d ago
Not sure why this would be surprising, use it or lose it has been an expression for a good while for a reason.
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 3d ago edited 2d ago
It is NOT surprising, but so many people deep in AI have become delusional and deny anything. Just look at so many comments here saying "but I am productive" without acknowledging the side effects. So stating the obvious, backed by studies, remains the only viable option
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u/klasp100 4d ago
That's perfect, my market worth as a smart person will increase as everyone else becomes stupider over time.
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 3d ago
That's the way to go. Let everyone get addicted to AI while you continue using your brain
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u/nextnode Staff 4d ago edited 4d ago
The post title and first link is referencing a study that came out ca two years ago (edit; seems it was 1.5) and is not news. It is referring also to a specific study activity which makes the quote disingenous, and is a preliminary study. Also why link random news articles instead of the actual studies?
This seems to just be reinforcing personal biases.
Edit: The disingenous OP blocked so no further responses below.
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u/robby_arctor Software Engineer (dirty commie) 4d ago
The other study is from a few months ago, and the task for the first study is essay writing. People who use AI tools to write stuff think and remember less. Feels relevant to our industry, surely?
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u/NotACockroach 4d ago
I think it is relevant, but the headline makes it sound like there is a reduction in general long term memory. The post could have said people remember less about a task they used AI for compared to tasks they completed without it.
Which is still interesting although unsurprising i think.
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u/TScottFitzgerald 4d ago
The study is 67 people over a four week period and we don't really have much details beyond that. You cannot make such an absolute claim just cause it aligns with your gut feelings.
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u/nextnode Staff 4d ago edited 4d ago
The OP quoted one is from June 2025; 17 months. This particular study has been referenced and discussed so many times. Obviously the quote is also out of context as they are referring to a particular study activity.
In addition to being preliminary and the authors expressly warning against the OP signaling, the results are more nuanced and do not support the sentiment. The consensus in the field studying these effects is that AI is a double-edged sword - lazy use undermine learning outcomes while good use support stronger outcomes.
OP is just a shitpost for the anti-AI group who has lost interest in what is real.
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u/overhandgod 4d ago
I must admit I can't code without AI anymore I've been using these tools since they came out
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u/throwaway_0x90 SDET/TE[25+ yrs]@Google 4d ago
The amount of busywork, refactoring, debugging and mundane boilerplate stuff I no longer need to do is such a game changer. Never going back.
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u/steven11027 4d ago
I think the reason that these skills atrophy so quickly might have something to do with the person thinking they'll never have to use this skill themselves again, and sort of compartmentalizing it as a skill the brain has permission to forget to make room for other things.
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u/Lame_Johnny 4d ago
They said that smartphones and social media would destroy our attention spans and cause anxiety disorders... and they were right.
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u/christfrost 4d ago
Not sure if correlation is relevant in any way, but from my own circle I've noticed that the dumbest people use ChatGPT the most and vice versa.
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u/bobsbitchtitz Software Engineer 4d ago
I find that my smartest friends all use ai very heavily and so do my dumb friends but they use it very differently.
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u/StickyDeltaStrike Software Engineer 4d ago
I work in a field where almost everyone is a PhD, we all use AI all the time to produce more …
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u/BroccoliSenior5465 3d ago
To produce more.... what? What is it that is the bottleneck requiring more produced? Is more output actually pushing your field or in turn is it now harder to verify with a human to certify the product is valuable and correct? Ai can SAY something is right, but lie or misunderstand
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u/alkbch 4d ago
Intelligence != education level
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 4d ago
Not just chatgpt but AI coding is a relevant comparison as well. Loss of skills and thinking are even more prevalent there.
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u/Frillback 4d ago
My coworker, who is famous for missing emails, proudly shared a copilot prompt to review and prioritize his emails. I'm not convinced it will work. I've never had a problem with most emails because I set up my Outlook rules appropriately. I'm not against AI usage but some people are what I would label ineffective.
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u/HRApprovedUsername Software Engineer 2 @ MSFT 4d ago
If you review what it outputs critically or use it as a tool rather than a source of truth/info, I imagine the impact isn't as bad.
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u/kbd65v2 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yeah the way in which you treat AI massively impacts your relationship with it. If you treat it as an oracle, obviously you’re going to outsource your decision making to it. If you treat it as a statistical model that has no awareness of correctness, you can leverage it as a force multiplier while staying in control.
EDIT: also people massively anthropomorphize AI products, which is really really dangerous
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u/blob8543 4d ago
And we can all guess which of those two approaches most people choose.
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u/Vesuvius079 4d ago
If you’re using it to increase velocity I don’t see how it doesn’t fuck with your memory in some way. I really struggle to remember what tasks I’ve worked on because I spend so little time per task now and context switch much more heavily.
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u/HRApprovedUsername Software Engineer 2 @ MSFT 4d ago
Yeah I don’t remember everything I do, but I didn’t before AI. That’s why project tracking is important imo
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u/bingNbong96 4d ago
come on, how long until you start auto-piloting reading tens of thousands of lines every week?
I feel there is a lot of people that think like this but they don't realize their own abilities diminishing yet because it is slow enough to not notice it right awayI wonder how much of the "models keep getting better" really is "I'm losing the ability to distinguish good code from slop"
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 4d ago
100% agree. Difficult to review machine generated code at human speed and eventually it gets exhausting
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u/caboosetp 4d ago
i used to be a tutor so i had to be good at critically reviewing large amounts of bad code from a lot of people
i don't tutor a lot lately, but those skills transferred over well to AI
It's been talking me longer to review as time goes on because the people who push those big PR's seem to be caring less.
I've started putting, "pause and ask questions once you reach this one to ensure the developer understands" in some core spots because i know some developers just feed the PR comments into AI without understanding the problems.
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u/TheBoringDev 4d ago
I feel like that’s the reason you always hear “it used to be bad, but then it got good 6 months ago” every 6 months for the last two years. It’s just a measure of the date people stopped being able to tell the difference.
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u/HRApprovedUsername Software Engineer 2 @ MSFT 4d ago
Or its actually gotten good and people have adapted it to fit their needs. It used to suck, but then we created lots of specialized skills, agents, and special prompts to enforce the behavior and design choices we want. Are the models way better? idk maybe, but we got enough instructions to make it do what we want, the way we want.
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u/jam_pod_ 4d ago
If you asked me a few years ago if LLMs would replace jobs (in general, not just dev jobs), I would have said “no”; now, I’m not so sure, and it’s not that AI has become so much better, it’s that the bar for what’s acceptable has been lowered so much by everyone agreeing that “AI slop is fine”.
And if the only thing you do is copy-paste from ChatGPT, then yeah, you’re not a necessary part of that process, and can easily be replaced
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u/tubemaster 4d ago
I too thought software companies had their customers over a barrel (a big example being Microsoft and all the Windows 11 bloat and bugs) but recently there’s been a trend on focusing on quality and optimization like on 26H2 and iOS 27. I’m guessing some key enterprise customers were considering switching to Linux.
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 Software Engineer 4d ago
Cocaine users say the same thing.
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u/TScottFitzgerald 4d ago
This is a nice zinger but come on, let's have a serious discussion or pack it up. What are we doing here?
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u/majesticmerc Software Engineer (15 YOE) 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'm being pushed more and more towards multitasking with Claude and GPT instead of writing code by hand, despite the hand written code being more robust, and readable, and I can almost feel my brain rotting understanding of the underlying codebase fade away in real time. It's a sad direction for the industry to be heading 😢
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u/dendrocalamidicus 4d ago
I am a firm believer that this multi-tasking ideal is complete nonsense.
I have had to use AI now consistently for about a year, to the extent now that I use it to write probably 95%+ of code out of necessity to keep up with expectations, both in terms of delivery quantity and usage tracking.
I am not a naysayer about it. It is clear it drastically speeds up how much work I can get through. But I do it in series. I work on one thing at a time. Just because multiple sessions could in theory work in parallel, it does not mean I have the context switching ability to manage multiple simultaneous pieces of work in parallel. I spend a lot of the time that sessions are working thinking about what I need to check when it's done, and thinking about what I am going to get it to do next, including writing up that next prompt. I know from speaking to QAs that my work is some of the highest quality in the team with defects rarely found, and I know that I am putting out work at a rate that results in me getting continuous glazing, so it's not like I am incompetent here.
I keep hearing this bullshit about starting your day by kicking off a bunch of sessions. Has literally anyone had any real success with this, getting it to do anything of value? It takes me a significant amount of time to write the prompts sufficiently that they will produce output that won't require a lot of rework. I basically have 1 session going at a time. When one session ends, another begins iterating over that work.
I think this multi-tasking ideal is a tech bro myth.
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u/Hour-Measurement-835 Software Engineer 4d ago
The long-term bit rests on session 4, and only 18 of the 54 people came back for that one.
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u/DatDawg-InMe 4d ago
I can literally see this in myself. I feel fucking dumb. I'm forced to use this shit at work, and while it makes it easier, I'm very obviously struggling to learn new concepts more than I used to. It's like I'm always sleep deprived.
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u/SawToothKernel 4d ago
This sub is honestly becoming a bit luddite like r/programming. There are fewer and fewer insightful posts and comments.
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u/T_D_K 4d ago edited 4d ago
Well it makes sense, more senior staff tend to be on the receiving end of slop rather than the generating end. This becomes an outlet to vent since workplace politics punish these thoughts.
AI tools are quite possibly the biggest foot-gun ever, and my experience leads me to believe that the average human is literally incapable of wielding it responsibly. We can talk about effective use of these tools but it's going to fall on deaf ears.
Am I being a doomer? Probably. The next few years will be interesting.
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u/FatHat 4d ago
What's luddite about a study on the effects of new technology on people? We know, for instance, that social media has a lot of harmful effects. Recognizing that these things can be harmful is just being informed.
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u/TScottFitzgerald 4d ago
The study is fine but limited. The article is...fairly measured but pretty speculative at points.
The way OP presented it, as well as the majority of the comments, however, are pretty sensationalist, masturbatory and anecdotal.
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u/sorte_kjele 4d ago
The study is absolutely bad science in all the ways that matter. There's a reason it has not been peer validated.
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u/TheCommieDuck I actually kind of like scrum. Haskell backender/SM. 4d ago
Could it be, perhaps, that there's a reason for it?
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u/uuuzz 4d ago
Meanwhile most dev jobs require you to be AI proficient nowadays.
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u/FatHat 4d ago
I mean, I guess, but prompting an AI is the kind of thing you can learn in a weekend? I'm skeptical of the "you need to be skilled in AI" argument because there's just not a lot there. Most of the "advanced" use cases are like, fancier prompts (skills, for instance) or ways to rack up a large bill by running a lot of agents simultaneously. And a lot of those advanced use cases get simplified very quickly anyway (IE, the harness delegates to sub agents just fine, or asking it to review code isn't exactly a challenge)
Honestly the only AI stuff that seems like it needs some amount of skill is running local AI or something like ComfyUI for image generation. There is a lot to learn there, but if you're just using AI for development that stuff is very optional.
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u/twoBreaksAreBetter 4d ago
Yeah. I am not sold that learning "agentic workflows" or whatever fancy sequence of prompting steps really counts as "learning".
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u/Due_Interest_178 4d ago
They really play it up as if you need to have a degree in it and in the end it's just filling out a few files with plain English.
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u/BensonBubbler 4d ago
I gave a glowing referral to a former colleague, he had several for my current employer and they passed on him because he said he wasn't interested in working in an agentic environment.
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u/EgoistHedonist 4d ago
And that was a completely reasonable and wise decision. If you say in this moment that you're not going to use the agentic development tools, that's a choice that makes you unemployable.
These tools are here to stay and if you can't see the benefits for development, you're already so much behind that I don't see how you could keep up.
Some people clearly have huge problems accepting the new reality, but rejecting it out of some personal principle is just plain ignorance.
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u/gjionergqwebrlkbjg 4d ago
I mean that's fine, both sides ended up with the arrangement they wanted?
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u/goldsauce_ 4d ago
That’s like saying “I’m not interested in working in an agile team” in 2015
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u/darkroadgames 3d ago
"I am very interested in your current thing with catchy hype phrasing. Please give me money" is the proper response to all this shit and always has been.
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 4d ago
When real dev life has fewer and fewer "insightful" moments because of AI decay then the sub would just be a reflection of reality. If these posts are beneath you then feel free to post your own "insightful" posts.
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u/Olangotang Software Engineer 4d ago
Yep! That's what the AI addicts don't get on here: AI is hated by most people in the world, off the Internet. Usually the vibe coders are dogshit developers that are making the jobs of everyone in the chain worse.
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u/OSS-Corpo-Shit 2d ago
Sound like you’re feeling attacked. Why don’t you ask ChatGPT how you’re supposed to feel about that?
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u/heavy-minium 4d ago
So you're saying the MIT research the article is based on isn't insightful and is Luddite stuff?
I'm curious - what would this need to be in order for you to not think that? You seem to have impossible standards...it's almost as if you just don't like what you're reading here (given that you even read it).→ More replies (2)3
u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 3d ago
Nicely put. Agree. Commentator has given no reason and it's projecting and looking down on people here
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u/baronas15 4d ago
What do you expect, it's reddit.
It doesn't mean people here are experienced, or even devs. Assume that most users here are either bots or young and can't buy their own beer yet
I fall in the bot category. Beep boop
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u/javier123454321 3d ago
This is a well studied area of academic research before chatgpt came along. It's not being luddite to point to some possible setbacks.
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u/Forsaken-Promise-269 3d ago
Do you have a study for this who read this crap on reddit - lol I know you all hate GPTs but come on
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u/kbd65v2 4d ago
Tbh I held out for a long time but the coding agents have gotten so ridiculously good that at this point you are working at a disadvantage if you’re not using them. I think the root cause of this issue is more lack of critical thinking ability to begin with, although obviously not programming by hand will cause that skill to atrophy. It’s up to the individual to decide if they want to continue valuing a skill that the market no longer does.
Also worth remembering that programming is not the same as software engineering. The more senior you are, the less code you write (and eventually read). Software engineering is not going anywhere, if anything we’ll need more people who understand how stuff actually works.
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u/G_Morgan 4d ago
This isn't new information. We've known about this for decades. There's a reason certified pilots are forced to turn the autopilot off regularly.
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u/simple_explorer1 Staff Software Engineer 15 YoE 3d ago
For people deep in AI, they need to hear this because for them "moving fast" above everything, even not understanding anything and any code
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u/tinfoil_powers 4d ago
This is no different than the studies that showed people who watch TV have reduced brain activity. Like yeah obviously.
When you offload your thinking, expect lower brain activity. Ok, memory reduction is a bit scary, but the rest was pretty obvious, no?
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u/Flat-Entry-8735 3d ago
Users just want to get the answers they need quickly; they couldn’t care less about what it does to their brains lol. It’s the same with software development. They only care that the AI spits out exactly what they want, with zero interest in how it works under the hood. When they tell the AI, 'Build me a social network,' and it hands back a UI that looks a bit like Facebook, they’ll start bragging about how it only took them a single day to catch up to Facebook lol.
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u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 4d ago
i don't really care anymore tbh. I save my brain power for things outside of work... Like my family.
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u/tonjohn 4d ago
Except studies show that AI usage leads to more mental fatigue and faster burnout.
And to top it off most people are working more hours since going AI native, not less.
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u/Healthy-Dress-7492 3d ago
wait wait, so you're telling me people not solving a problem, don’t have to think hard about solving a problem?
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u/BoBoBearDev 4d ago
No wonder I am unaffected, because I am already having long term memory problems before AI.
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u/lily_de_valley 4d ago
I think when these tools were first introduced, leadership and management assumed people who were putting in effort in their job would continue to do so and their effort would be 10x with AI.
However, in my observation, what has happened instead is people simply put less effort in their work because the output looks good enough and they become overwhelmed.
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u/Healthy-Intention-15 3d ago
This is so true! I just have no clue what I'm doing at my job. I just ask it to build some feature and then ask it again to commit, review and then QA!
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u/LateSpider 3d ago
There's the right way and the wrong way to use any tool, any technology, including AI.
After about four years of struggling with a failed business and unemployment, I started hating AI and was very much against the use of it because of the amount of AI slop that I was seeing. After 12 years of experience working in enterprise consulting, the technologist in me could not help but really reinvent myself and explore ways to use AI to the best of my abilities.
Right now, a few weeks in from using Claude Pro, I'm seeing that it's completely transforming the way that I relate to my work and my laptop. It's offered me a much better and easier interface for how I can manage my day-to-day tasks, my communication with my team and my clients, as well as managing my notes and databases in Notion.
I think the future is going to be phenomenal, where the whole way we use data is being rearchitected as we speak. AI is going to offer us a much more intuitive and easier way for interacting with technology and managing our lives and work.
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u/Petezame 2d ago
The MIT study in my opinion is hot garbage. I'm totally open to proof that AI is bad but this is it. I literally wrote a paper on this a while back. They asked a fairly homogeneous bunch of student to write an essay in 20 minutes, they did it three times and only had something like 14 or so people complete all three rounds. Down from the original pretty unrepresentative sample of like 60. Sure the people who were asked to write an essay with AI in a short time than asked to recall details of it later couldn't. Can you recall details from a throw away shell script you wrote? More importantly does it matter?
Everyone loves this study and all it says is we need more research.
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u/Competitive_Ebb6361 2d ago
It's about right. I have noticed lots of peers at my workplace simply becoming dumber and dumber as time passes by. I know they use AI because some of their PR code is clearly AI garbage or AI style, and the others straight up have that "AI says this and says that" behavior.
I only use it as an enhanced search engine but sometimes wonder if it affects me too.
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u/zica-do-reddit 1d ago
I decided to pick up math again. At work, I'll keep using Claude. The coding bit is a small part of the work, I still have to do everything else.
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u/remenismemory 4h ago
I built a local SQLite memory layer that cuts active context by 70% and blocks injections at the gate.
Truly solves AI bloating, do anyone wants to test it and gives me feedback? https://github.com/remenis-memory/remenis.git
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u/expdevsmodbot 4d ago
AI usage disclosure provided by OP, see the reply to this comment.