[devolving-dev]

Is this a situation where AI will go away and we will regret the loss of skills? At worse, we will be forced to use open weight models instead of the cutting edge, so I don't think it's a big deal. I'm sure people got worse at arithmetic after the invention of the calculator.

[georgemcbay]

I don't think the real threat is at the individual level, but at the societal level.

Building skills over time leads to insights that lead to innovation.

AI does many interesting things, but it doesn't innovate (yet).

The real threat isn't that we'll all lose our skills (possibly) and then lose access to AI (unlikely), it is that AI will remain at roughly currently levels and we'll dull our skills due to reliance on it and innovation will stall because we've offloaded too much of the thinking to the non-innovative machine.

I'm not saying this is what definitely will happen, but it does seem like a very possible outcome.

[bwhiting2356]

The number of people now involved in software development has now increased because of a lower barrier to entry. I know many people who would previously use a no-code tool or hire offshore devs, or simply not have their problem solved, who are now vibe coding. Many of these people couldn't write very much code manually if they had to, but they're closer to understanding software than they were previously.

[kristofferR]

Yeah, this describes me perfectly. I can't really program, but I'm now building a bunch of different projects and submitting PRs that people seem to appreciate.

https://github.com/kristofferR

One of them, a Home Assistant integration for controlling adjustable beds, would be borderline impossible to do well manually - I've vibe-reverse engineered the Bluetooth protocols of more than a 100 Android apps.

[aix1]

> I've vibe-reverse engineered the Bluetooth protocols of more than a 100 Android apps

Impressive coverage, but how do you verify that the reverse engineering matches what the hardware expects? Do you find people who own those beds and get them to test stuff for you?

[kristofferR]

It's hard, but I try to verify it as best as possible by doing multiple independent runs, often one with GPT-5.5 and one with Opus, and then verify that they agree. When I'm as certain as possible I release it and rely on feedback when something doesn't work properly.

[georgemcbay]

> The number of people now involved in software development has now increased because of a lower barrier to entry.

I don't see what this has to do with what I posted.

Yes, AI lowers the floor on software development, and there are positive aspects of that, but that doesn't change the possibility of an innovation stall.

[bwhiting2356]

re: concerns at a societal level. More people are making software than before. People who have been coding for a long time have moved up an abstraction layer and are further from the code. But many people are actually closer to the code than before.

[georgemcbay]

> But many people are actually closer to the code than before.

More people are coding, I wouldn't say they are closer to the code if they are vibe coding. Are any of them going to produce the next breakthrough in computer language/framework/method of development/etc?

The risk of AI is that we dull the skills of enough people at the high end of the state of the art of the nuts and bolts of software development that we slow down innovation on that end. That's the concern.

Previously-non-programmers vibe coding CRUD apps they never could have before is all well and good but really has nothing to do with this concern. They may create wonderful and successful businesses but they are irrelevant to computer science related innovation.

[eecc1]

Congrats you’re the only poster in this whole thread who gets it.

The standard response is ‘Dw AI will recursively improve and that’ll take care of all the emerging issues”.

Lmao ok bro

[bluefirebrand]

> I'm sure people got worse at arithmetic after the invention of the calculator

For LLMs, we can see this sentence but replace "arithmetic" with a variable X

I'm sure people got worse at X after the invention of LLMs"

The problem isn't that X skills atrophy necessarily

The problem is that for LLMs, X is "basically all knowledge and communication skills"

Can we really tolerate a society where "basically all knowledge and communication skills" are atrophying?

[xantronix]

Did the entire history of computing prior to 2023 disappear? Are we really that boned?

[hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm]

At worse you suffer from cognitive atrophy. Become more dumb and lazy.