Hmmm 🧐 I’m annectodaly not convinced so-called “AI”(s) really save time™. – I have no proof though, I would need to do some concrete studies / numbers… – But, there is one benefit… It can save you from typing and from worsening RSI / Carpal Tunnel.

@prologic@twtxt.net Yes, although I have a feeling that speech recognition or other means of entering text could be better and much less computationally intensive. 🤔

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I guess I wasn’t talking about the speed of interesting text/context, but more the “slowness” of these tools. I think I can build/ solutions and fix bugs faster most of the time? Hmmm 🤔 I think the only thing it’s able to do better than me is grasp large codebases and do pattern machines a bit better, mostly because we’re limited by the interfaces we have to use and in my ase being vision impaired doesn’t help :/

@prologic@twtxt.net Ah, I see. Yeah, you might be right. (Still a fragile process due to the general AI wonkiness, but it can help to some degree, yes.)

@prologic@twtxt.net AI is slot machines for coders:

• “Before starting tasks, developers forecast that allowing AI will reduce completion time by 24%. After completing the study, developers estimate that allowing AI reduced completion time by 20%. Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19%–AI tooling slowed developers down.” https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/
  
• “Stack Overflow data reveals the hidden productivity tax of ‘almost right’ AI code”: https://venturebeat.com/ai/stack-overflow-data-reveals-the-hidden-productivity-tax-of-almost-right-ai-code
  

The same intermittent reward operant conditioning that gets people addicted to gambling and thinking that if they follow certain rituals they’ll win “next time” drives people’s beliefs that AI tools are making them more productive when they’re making them less productive. I’m going to guess that a side effect of this is that people think they’re typing less when in the longer term they’re typing the same amount or more when you factor in the productivity loss (as far as I’ve read the studies don’t measure this so I’m only guessing).

People are also being rapidly de-skilled by this technology: the more they use it, the more their actual skills atrophy. “Continuous exposure to AI might reduce the ADR (adesoma detection rate) of standard non-AI assisted colonoscopy, suggesting a negative effect on endoscopist behaviour.” (science speak for saying that radiologists get worse at seeing tumors in scans once they’ve used AI): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1253(25)00133-5/abstract

Nobody who cares about the future should be using this stuff for anything.