“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition.
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Look at it from the perspective of the investors of AI.
1. What is Saudi Arabia & UAE getting for its $100 billion when the consequences are pyrrhic?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/technology/saudi-arabia-ai-exporter.html
Answer: kneecapping a necessity like a fossil fuel phase out.
2. What are the billionaires of Koch Network getting for their $1 billion propaganda campaign pushing AI?
https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/
Answer: permanent rule under a White Supremacist Constitution
@GossiTheDog @Npars01 first link seems to be broken
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“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.”
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
@GossiTheDog I was really (positively) surprised that Anthropic released this. Their results broadly align with my personal experience and feelings about AI usage, though I have substantial misgivings about their methodology (in particular how they controlled for participant experience).
Another issue that I worry a lot about with AI is second-order effects, wherein you use the LLM to write a library and then are expected to be able to evaluate the LLM's ability to use the LLM-written library. I think that this is both a priori very hard (to know all of the details of the library to be able to catch issues) and is lossy (in issues in library design or abstraction factoring that may be identified through use implementation).
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@GossiTheDog @Npars01 first link seems to be broken
Thanks! Fixed it.
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@GossiTheDog this is no different than doing excessive hand holding as a mentor. When you answer questions instead of helping the mentee to fundamentally understand the thing they're asking about, and figuring out the issue for themselves (with your help), you take away from the valuable mental process that develops critical thinking and problem solving.
And a LLM does precisely this. It answers all your questions. You get the result. You never figure out the problem for yourself.
@gabriel @GossiTheDog also not being able to see possible problems with the code generated by a LLM is going to be a major pita down the line. Even before when all the seniors are retired.
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“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.”
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
@GossiTheDog Many behave in herd fashion down the path of outsourcing all they do to devices. The brain LOVES to economise so just lets cognitive functions atrophy as it does with unused muscles.
A systemically alarming state of affairs that is only now slowly being addressed - young children absent face to face spoken words are struggling to learn to read ... etc. etc.
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This is by design. Just like production lines destroyed artisanship for working classes, this will destroy the knowledge-based roles for the middle classes. You are no longer valued if you have wide breadth of knowledge. You are obsolete. You can't even specialize in a particular topic.
@hittitezombie @GossiTheDog just as soon as customers can describe what they want in precise unambiguous terms. I'll wait.
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@GossiTheDog who cares, soon there'll be no need for human coders anymore, whatever remains of the profession will be janitorial in nature. /s
@dukeboitans @GossiTheDog What hurts most in your comment is that you had to put /s on the end. Because this is exactly how some talk and mean it as something good.
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“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.”
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
@GossiTheDog I read the Anthropic article, the most interesting part to me was how different people use the LLM to assist their coding. You can choose to offload the cognitive effort or use it as a tool to help understand, it's up to you.
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@hittitezombie @GossiTheDog just as soon as customers can describe what they want in precise unambiguous terms. I'll wait.
@ehproque @hittitezombie @GossiTheDog
. I hate business rules, and yet that is probably what's kept me around as a developer. -
“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.”
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
@GossiTheDog A really really great reflection on that very paper by @jenniferplusplus
️
https://hachyderm.io/@jenniferplusplus/115990878133999416 -
@GossiTheDog I wonder which impact this will have on society. Not that people become more stupid, etc. but the mental impact - can it lead to bore-out? Depression? Mental illness? Because our brains are craving activity.
The other concern is the erosion of the average jobs. What's left is work for unskilled workers or highly educated specialists. Which is also a problem in the long run. But, I guess, that's what they want. Cheap, unskilled labour with brain rot.This essay puts it better than I ever could. It's not even about the jobs, it's about feeling like the work we do has value
https://sightlessscribbles.com/the-colonization-of-confidence/
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“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.”
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
@GossiTheDog All that $$$ and not a penny's worth of common sense.
JFC what I could do with just 1 month's worth of their budget.
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“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.”
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
@GossiTheDog I watched a thousand machine generated piano concerts, and I’m still not better at playing the piano. Strange.
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@GossiTheDog I watched a thousand machine generated piano concerts, and I’m still not better at playing the piano. Strange.
@GossiTheDog And by ”watched”, I mean ”played them at 10x with the sound off while scrolling on my phone”.
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This essay puts it better than I ever could. It's not even about the jobs, it's about feeling like the work we do has value
https://sightlessscribbles.com/the-colonization-of-confidence/
@sitcom_nemesis @GossiTheDog Completely d'accors with you. I hate LLMs, I hate the void, I hate to read machine written texts or look at AI pictures. I ĺiked the phrase "zombification" of art for this because that's what it is: It's nothing but a monstrous zombie machine that eats brains. It's the same process craftsmen experienced during the industrialization and I hate everything about it.
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“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.”
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
@GossiTheDog There an uneasy feeling about all this. Everywhere one looks, every high level corporate one talks to, it’s all AI. Like a god that is prayed to.
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“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.”
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
> You use AI
> You lose skills
> Replaced
@
> You don't use AI
> You produce less than your colleagues who use AI
> Replaced -
@GossiTheDog Our study, conducted by Professor No Shit and Doctor Obvious, found that when people offloaded their thinking to AI, they put in less effort and were less engaged, creating a barrier to personal development in exchange for a marginal increase in productivity.
@damianwalsh @GossiTheDog Still really nice to have the research to back up the obvious though.
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“Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.”
“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
@GossiTheDog This varies significantly since you can say the same for the internet and youtube and if used correctly it can benefit a novice due to the interaction and being able to ask questions and compare to info gathered in other places. In comparison copying commands from some site wont benefit a novice either.
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@GossiTheDog this is no different than doing excessive hand holding as a mentor. When you answer questions instead of helping the mentee to fundamentally understand the thing they're asking about, and figuring out the issue for themselves (with your help), you take away from the valuable mental process that develops critical thinking and problem solving.
And a LLM does precisely this. It answers all your questions. You get the result. You never figure out the problem for yourself.
@gabriel @GossiTheDog heavily depends on your prompt ask a simple slop question and not asking for explanations and trying to gain understanding and yes then absolutly true it can be used to cheat or it can be used to improve.
