"People who don't use AI will be left behind"

panny

Yes, I will be left behind. Left behind with my copyrights, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47932937 Left behind with my money, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47933355 Left behind with my intact data, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47911524 Oh, the horror. I am being left behind.

Muhammad523

If that's the case, so be it.

dudisubekti

Black-and-white thinking like this is not healthy. You can still do creative thinking while using AI as a powerful tool at your disposal. Some mathematicians like Terence Tao are comfortable doing this, for example.

FiReaNG3L

Weird fallacy that if you use a tool you can't use your brain anymore

mempko

The author makes a great point about learning. Learning is what increases your intelligence and if we substitute learning for AI lookup we will literally get dumber. That said, AI models have a lot of information and can assist in learning. It's a tool, how will people use it? My fear is they won't use it to help learn.

simonw

> "People who don't use AI will be left behind", they say. I can't emphasize enough how much I hate it when I hear/read shit like that because I'm pretty sure, in fact, that what will happen is the exact opposite. > [...] they'll forget how to fucking LEARN. I think that's the part that makes me the saddest. What a beautiful thing it is just to learn stuff. I love learning. My life of self-education is so much richer with LLMs to help me. There are dozens of other arguments for not engaging with AI. If your reason is "I love learning" I recommend at least dipping your toes in before you declare that AI is a hindrance, not a help, to people who love to learn new things.

furyofantares

Some people who don't use AI will be left behind - those who work on things where LLM's are capable of a substantial amount of the tasks will be left behind if they just refuse to leverage the superhuman properties that LLMs have. I don't think it's hard to catch up if such a person changes their mind, though. Some people who do use AI will be also left behind - those who use it to replace their skills without developing new ones themselves, and those who use it to do the same or worse work more cheaply. They will be left behind in a competitive world where others will work out how use it to do more or better work with no reduction in effort.

jojomodding

I sympathise with the author and the argument. I know the text is a rant. As such, I can understand that the proposed consequences might not make sense. Yet still, there is a fun game you can play, where you replace AI by "chess engine" and you get a text that would be fitting for a late 90s chess grandmaster but seen as totally anachronistic today: "Chess players who don't use engines will be left behind", they say. I can't emphasize enough how much I hate it when I hear/read shit like that because I'm pretty sure, in fact, that what will happen is the exact opposite. People who rely on engines are the ones who will be left behind. They'll forget how to think, how to move the pieces, how to solve a simple straightforward mate in 3, how to tell victory from stalemate... they'll forget how to fucking LEARN. I think that's the part that makes me the saddest. What a beautiful thing it is just to play chess. If you think Deep Blue can do better than you, why would you just let it? Why wouldn't you aim to be better, to learn how to be or do something that a chess computer would never do?

voidmain

When on the road to hell, it's OK to be left behind.

gdulli

Trading practice of primary skills for indirect skills like AI is like a writer deciding they should stop writing directly and get really good at Microsoft Word.

chapz

"People who drive cars will forget how to walk".

gedy

Maybe it's a generational thing, but I'm old enough to remember when personal and office computers were really hitting mainstream in the late 70s and 80s, the messaging was a lot more friendly and how they will save you time, help you, etc. Even though practically speaking it reduced a lot of manual jobs. This AI/LLM push from leadership is so damn tone deaf, like "you better do this", "ai layoffs", etc. I feel like they are jumping way too hard and fast into the "post-employee" thinking and deserve every bit of scorn from laymen.

heliumtera

Just like every single trend that came before, they said you would be left behind: If you didn't embrace OOP Test driven development Behavior driven development Events driven development Pants in head driven development SOLID DRY Cloud first Virtualization everything Microsservices Serverless Everything js Everything ts Everything Microsoft This will never stop. You either let someone be in the middle of you and what you want to accomplish, or you will be left behind. Think about the most mediocre person you know. Now remember 50% of people around you is dumber than that

tsukurimashou

I agree with OP it's the other way around, while some will gradually lose basic skills by relying more and more on AI for productivity sake and laziness, those "people who don't use AI" value will go up by choosing to simply keep "learning the hard way"

spamizbad

The statement is absurd because the skill curve for AI tooling is so small you can can mess around for a day or two and get "caught up" with the zeitgeist. And what you need to know to get started is actually far less these days than it was 1.5 years ago thanks to all the product refinement that took place in the space. The only real risk is that today there's an expectation from employers that you've got some AI experience under your belt you can articulate. But you can get that experience today.

feverzsj

It's always obvious that LLMs are bullshit. It's blockchain, but far far worse. US invests too much in it and the collapse has already begun. Half of planned data center builds have been delayed or canceled across the country.

mgaunard

I find that good people get better with AI, but I'm not sure more average people really do. I've seen some produce stuff without really understanding it, barely review anything, and pretty much suffer from imposter syndrome.

freejazz

Doing fine so far, thanks!

stevenou

I think not using AI is a manifestation of one's inability or unwillingness to LEARN. To your point, if you can't learn, you will fall behind.

beepbooptheory

I just don't get even the presumed risk here. How can something be so revolutionary in its capacity to increase productivity but still so esoteric or specialized that there is a risk of being "left behind"? Like all these things people talk about are, at the end of the day, products that want you to use them; they aren't gonna make it hard for someone to onboard in the future. Sure if all coding became ecommerce overnight and I'd never "learned" Salesforce, there might be brief friction there, but I could still just, like, learn Salesforce. It's gonna be a lot easier than learning good software engineering in general. Why spend your life "learning" something whose whole deal is about not needing to learn? Even if you gamble incorrectly, its not going to be hard to get into! Like, what, if I don't start practicing now I am not going to be able to... express concepts with natural language as well?