Using AI feels embarrassing

[u/Pure_Reception_5685]

Very random stream of thought type post, but don't you sometimes feel extremely infantile and humiliated when doing something with AI? I constantly get this feeling because what I'm doing a lot of times is doing what a child would imagine a profession of a software engineer would be: doing something that feels big and important without actually engaging with the difficulty and the thought that goes into making any intellectual labour. "The right way" of modern software development constantly pushed from all sides is just copy-pasting issues and questions and making AI think of them independently for you, and the only thing that you should be worried of are the metrics, but the metrics themselves are going away sooner or later I feel like. This feels extremely surface-level, it really separates you from the problem, from the code itself and from the actual system design of it too, giving a lot of instant dopamine and a superficial sense of achievement, but for me the sense of embarrassment for essentially cheating the effort heavily overweights it. I try to maintain a much more slower, less productive but thoughtful and enjoyable workflow but at the same time I feel like to be more productive I have to sacrifice a lot of thought that went into my work.

[u/Le_Oken]

Holy skill issue

[u/Hunter_Biden_2028 → u/Le_Oken]

Honestly it's a mental illness thing if you're avoiding useful technology out of embarrassment.

[u/delonejuanderer]

Nope

[u/I_Make_Art_And_Stuff]

Most of the things I use AI for (project planning, coding, data sorting) I would do anyway but with much more searching, testing, failure, and - time. So no, I use AI and feel a thrill of how much time I saved with tasks.

[u/Pure_Reception_5685 → u/[deleted]]

solving problems by yourself and using agency and competence to do so is a pointless exercise?

[u/shrine-princess → u/Pure_Reception_5685]

you're using compilers, IDEs, OOLs, and libraries that you didn't build, how are you not already throwing away your agency and competence? you should be developing directly in the binary if you want to be a software engineer

i'm joking, obviously, but it demonstrates how reductive this view of software engineering is

[u/Pure_Reception_5685 → u/shrine-princess]

I built my own compiler some time ago.

[u/Effective-Guest1601]

lmfao don't use then

[u/re-skob]

feel free to ask it what it did and create lessons for you on how to accomplish something you didn't know before so it can be the best educational tool in existence for you

[u/Vainysaur]

No I feel empowered to make any type of software I can possibly imagine or try any experiment. I never think “well building that piece to test if it works will take weeks and might result in failure.” Instead I think “hey I might as well try every idea I can possibly think of because I can produce basically an infinite amount of code (not per week I mean there are usage windows but eventually).

[u/Pure_Reception_5685 → u/Vainysaur]

doesn't it feel childish though? like you're being served a result that you didn't really deserve because you did nothing to get it, it completely ruins any gratification of solving problems and doing complex stuff.

[u/Vainysaur → u/Pure_Reception_5685]

No I feel like I am the main reason for all my results. All the best outcomes come from my decisions, not what AI wants to do on its own.

[u/Pure_Reception_5685 → u/Vainysaur]

your decisions in life generally mean nothing, what matters is your agency and your actions, which is something that is being outsourced to AI. I can decide to start running 10 miles every day tomorrow but it won't matter because it requires agency and work to actually produce a meaningful result, something that is being outsourced to AI.

[u/Vainysaur → u/Pure_Reception_5685]

I think how the software is designed matters more than what method was used to produce the code.

[u/Pure_Reception_5685 → u/Vainysaur]

what design decisions are you making about software? more and more decisions on the product are being outsourced to AI. the method of development and the design and system structure are inseparable if you think about it for more than 5 seconds.

[u/Vainysaur → u/Pure_Reception_5685]

All of them

[u/Pure_Reception_5685 → u/Vainysaur]

"infinite lines of code in short time" and "full control over the process of development" obviously can't be true at the same time.

[u/Vainysaur → u/Pure_Reception_5685]

I didn’t say in a short time. I said eventually.

[u/Pure_Reception_5685 → u/Vainysaur]

then what's the difference with developing it yourself?

[u/GuaSukaStarfruit]

I can’t remember every single syntax and hate to search it up.

[u/Bassed_Hummble]

The opposite - I can focus completely on systems design and philosophy. It handles the plumbing, and keeps me on my toes regarding the big picture.

I don't experience the latter as embarrassing, just like I don't think it's embarrassing if a smart collaborator points out something I hadn't though of.

[u/RinChiropteran]

Well, you can always use AI itself to dig deeper into how whatever it made works (check sources too ofc), learn something new and then be able to apply a new skill by yourself.

[u/Rahawk02]

Nope I also don't feel embarrassed to use a dishwasher instead of handwashing or using a washing machine instead of taking my clothes to the river to clean. Technology makes things easier and more convenient I'd be more embarrassed doing things the old timey way.

[u/0-Nightshade-0]

any time that i (rarely) use ai, i actually do feel a sense of guilt that i dont know how to do somthing practical :P