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Comment by crinkly | Hacker News Reader

When you say progress, I wonder at what cost. The apparatus for original thought isn't used and pushing through a problem and deriving the satisfaction of doing that doesn't happen. That leads to the wrong motivational cues. The brain is lazy and likes to take the easy route. Eventually you become merely a machine operator, which is something a lot of my colleagues are starting to do. And it's very worrying.

The biased behaviour towards just asking for a solution both devalues you and leads to any innovative outcomes disappearing before they had a chance to exist.

I've ended up being the company ideas man not because I'm good but everyone else stopped thinking.

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I agree with you both. I feel LLM kills both procrastination AND capability for original thought.

But! There are some problems that are intrinsically interesting to me and others that are boring as hell but need to be solved.

In 20 years of work I’ve not come up with any way to make those boring tasks psychologically _not_ so disagreeable they are close to painfull.

But now the LLM can do whatever crap it does for those and I _finally_ can focus just on the interesting bits.

So, a boring task - off to the LLM you go - interesting - it’s mine, all mine!

> So, a boring task - off to the LLM you go - interesting - it’s mine, all mine!

Yes! And hell, checking out how the machine solved a boring thing can still be a source of interest in itself, so the dopamine squeezing novelty keeps on flowing all day long.

I use LLMs as a conversation partner but never let it write the code for me and this feels like I get the good parts without the bad.

I enjoy the idea that when programming before AI I wasn't 'merely a machine operator'

I did most of my programming and thinking on paper before I committed to the machine. I still do today.

But why do you use computers at all? Isn’t it intellectually dishonest?

For communication and processing information quickly with determinism?

They aren't the best solution for everything. Thinking is one of those things.

The only time I ever wrote a program on paper was when I was 10 years old, a few months before my 11th birthday when I got my first computer. And that was in the late 1970s.

What is the niche?

I do control systems that have to work first try and after running the plant through its paces I’m out the door never to return

I agree and this is a risk. There is a balance to be found where the AI is power tool, not a black box.

The best use cases for me have been when I know the solution and what it should look like but don't want to write it all by hand myself. The AI can make the code just appear and I can verify it is up to spec.

If you review some shit code and think of a better way to do it on the spot, is that original thought?

Does the answer change if the author is an LLM as opposed to another person?

Climb down from your high horse why don't you.

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