this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026

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Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in — and they’re not good (www.nature.com)

submitted 1 week ago by CAVOK@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Reliance on artificial-intelligence tools degrades the abilities of physicians and software engineers, studies show.

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[–] MirrorGiraffe@piefed.social 30 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Twenty-five years ago I drove taxi for a few years and during training they were very clear that relying on gps prohibits you from learning. Taxi people knew that.

For the last fifteen years I've been a software engineer and in this field, the ability to pick up and maintain knowledge are cornerstones of the job. Having someone do your tasks for you will degrade your abilities to get said tasks done. CS people knows that.

Management however thinks that we will not need those skills in the future.

[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 15 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Because a good chunk of c-suite management jobs are mostly a bullshit job designed to give trust fund kids some sort of career. Their jobs are the most easily replaced by automation since most of what they do is bitching at people via emails.

[–] formation@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 days ago

As someone who's been on both sides we're all just trying to do what's best for keeping people paid. Unless you work in a PE company and you're constantly sucking the boards cocks so you dont get fired.

[–] TimothyOilypants@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 days ago

Do you believe the majority of taxi drivers don't use GPS?

[–] trackball_fetish@lemmy.wtf 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The amount of people blindly trusting a black box word predictor with actual life decisions is terrifying. I'm legit cutting people out of my life due to this shit rofl

[–] Atropos@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Respect. Many opportunities these days for people to show us who they really are.

Also, excellent username.

[–] trackball_fetish@lemmy.wtf 3 points 6 days ago

Respect. Many opportunities these days for people to show us who they really are.

Unfortunately so. Truly I just want the best for those around me but you can only spend so much time trying to help before it becomes detrimental to oneself.

Also, excellent username.

Thanks :)

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 16 points 6 days ago (1 children)

From the future:

AI was the stealthy nail in the coffin. We’d already experienced a century of loss of knowledge. Basic things like animal husbandry, growing crops, mining, smelting, forging…programming. all the things that used to be done by brute human strength or knowledge were now done by computers and AI. But profit was king, out with the old knowledge, in with the new lack of it.

So when the calamity finally happened, nobody was left with any of the knowledge to rebuild.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 9 points 6 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops

[–] LightDelaBlue@jlai.lu 5 points 6 days ago

i mean look at reddit andf dev subreddit. since ai NONE of them look capable to code anything.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 3 points 6 days ago

"our"? Screw you too.

[–] ironycanal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Wait, really? Oh damn. Maybe we should.... Naaaaaah.

[+] SabinStargem@lemmy.today -16 points 6 days ago (4 children)

IMO, this is just the older generations thinking badly of the young. Be it rock n' roll, D&D, internet, smartphones, or AI, the older generations will not understand the priorities, workflows, and conditions of their younger peers.

Opposing AI is like rejecting the bicycle, sickle, or calculator. The thing that people should contemplate isn't whether to use AI, but rather how to use it. Do we want only wealthy elites to have access to AI, or should everyone be able to use it? Should we use AI to teach people, and if so, what subjects? How do we prevent people from falling into poverty? And so forth.

Outright rejection of AI is foolish, and simply means that the peoples who adapt to a world with AI, will come ahead of those who have isolated themselves.

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 17 points 6 days ago

I think you've gone off on a bit of a tangent here. This is less about lack of understanding and more about people utilizing AI to offset their thinking. The less we exercise our skills (be it writing software, medical diagnosis, etc.) the fewer opportunities for growth and reinforcement of skills users of AI have.

The bicycle never replaced walking, it just provided another means of locomotion. People straight up use AI to think for them.

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Did... Did you read the article?

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

No they had Claude summarize it for them

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Some of the "older people" were around in the dot com bubble. It's not that we think there's no future for it (the internet didn't go away after the dot com bubble burst) it's that it's currently unreliable tech. I use it all the time, but I'm not going to put significant effort into integrating it into my workflow until after the bubble bursts. The costs are currently being subsidized by a ridiculous amount of investment dollars so we don't actually know what the price tag will be when they need to make a profit to make a return on the investment. Currently AI is in a similar place to companies like AOL were in the dot com bubble when you look at the finances of this thing.

Also be aware that fraud has been effectively decriminalized in the US. There are no consequences for lying to investors now. And they are lying. The statement that "software development has been solved" is a lie. Some of us know about the Halting Problem and know that statements like that are mathematically false.

After the bubble bursts, the tech will become more reasonable. We'll have actual prices so we can assess where the tech is worthwhile to use and where it's too expensive to use. Choosing where to use an algorithm and where not to use an algorithm is what software engineering has always been about, so it's not exactly a game changer.

In the meantime, yeah I use the investor subsidized service, because why not use something someone else is paying for? It gives me an idea of which problems it's suitable for and which problems it's not good for. When there's actually real prices to the tech I'll know everything I need to know to be able to make more permanent implementations of the tech. But I know from experience that it's a bad idea to become dependent on tech before you know what the price tag will be.

It's kind of an Iceland situation. In Iceland there was a massive influx of money from hedge fund operations. Fishermen became bankers. Then 2008 happened, and the bankers had to go back to being fishermen again. The lesson is, when there's amounts of money that doesn't even make sense being thrown around, it's a good idea to still maintain your fishing boats and nets.

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today -1 points 6 days ago

It is certainly true that AI is in a bubble, alongside the (false) economy. I just have a feeling that people are deluding themselves into thinking AI is useless and undesirable to society, and by doing so, are robbing themselves and the better parts of society the opportunity to steer the future.

Your measured approach is an appropriate response. Familiarity with the technology gives you genuine agency about how you interact with it in the future.

[–] lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

A bicycle will transport me in the same manner every time I use it. A calculator will always give me the correct result of 2+2.

What was your point about AI again?

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today -2 points 6 days ago

That it is useful, and a civilization would be diminished if it doesn't use technology. GLM 5.2, as of now, is able to almost perfectly copy Pac-Man. While this is a model that has a 700gb footprint for a Q6, we can expect future models of this ability to be usable on gamer hardware within a decade. My guess is that DDR6 RAM is roughly where we get to the turning point for local models.

What this means in practice, is that it would be much easier for non-programmers such as artists to have an local AI handle the parts of game development that they can't do. Same goes for programmers who can't draw worth a damn - I watched a video of Touhou EDM music, and the character depictions by an AI were quite nice looking. Individuals, provided they have the hardware, will become able to see many ideas and desires to fruition, as they don't have to rely on acquiring other humans or venture capital.

Depending on how the cards play out, this could go a great way towards destroying capitalism as we know it. A burger flipper wouldn't be able to pay a living salary to another person to create things - but an AI can be a much smaller investment. That same burger flipper might be able to create media or other AI assisted projects, that would otherwise be impossible on their budget or time.

Many humans claim to have imagination, but the luddites of our day seem to lack it.

[–] WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today 58 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Hell, even before AI there were signs. Half the mechanics in our shop can't diagnose shit unless there's an error code shown when they plug in the computer.

[–] Million@lemmy.zip 8 points 6 days ago

I googled the error code and it says you might have "network connectivity issues"

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can't figure out what's wrong. Every time I print a document, it says it prints, but I just get out a piece of white paper. It was getting lighter and lighter and lighter, and now it's just gone entirely.

Lol

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah, no, see if you demonstrate any capacity for troubleshooting printers you fail the intelligence test.

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[–] XLE@piefed.social 45 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's a good thing AI doesn't rely on competent people for training its input and double-checking its output, because otherwise this would be very bad news.

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 38 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (7 children)

I think in five years — if the tools manage to stick around — finding coders that can work without AI assistance will be like finding skilled assembler developers.

EDIT: Yep I'm definitely a bot because I typed an em dash. You can be a bot too on Ubuntu by hitting control+shift+u and then typing 2014 (the last year of semi-sanity in US politics).

[–] formation@sh.itjust.works -5 points 6 days ago

Said the AI comment.

[–] TimothyOilypants@lemmy.ca -2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Isn't the entire point of computers to achieve a result faster than we could without them?

Your argument seems like bemoaning the invention of the paint roller because people won't learn how to use brushes or their hands to paint walls.

Work output isn't inherently more valuable just because the job was harder to do, or took more effort.

[–] L7HM77@sh.itjust.works 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

To stay with the paint analogy, AI is more like a paint roller that can paint by itself.

Just tell it what color you want the room to be, and walk away. Did it remove the original coat properly? Sand, prime, and double recoat? No idea, it looks good at the moment. But we'll find out in a couple years when the cracks and bubbles start showing.

[–] TimothyOilypants@lemmy.ca -1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

...which would be a useful continuation of the analogy if not for the fact that 95% of human house painters rush through jobs, cut costs on materials, and overcharge.

Just like every other new technology before it, those who oppose love to compare the lowest quality output of the new technology to the output of the Top 5% of human craftspeople.

For anything AI can do, there are MILLIONS of lazy humans taking 100 times longer pumping out the same or worse quality work at 10 times the cost.

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Eh, not really, and it isn't really an argument but more of a lighthearted prediction.

I think the big question is whether or not the "frontier" models continue to be available and evolve, because the business model for running them seems very unsound.

I kinda hope the AI bubble busts, and that afterwards some of the efforts turn toward making open source models more performant and powerful.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 27 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Sweet. I'm set for life, and I'll get to be one of those devs that tells the bosses what I've decided to work on.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago

Can I join your dream?

As a senior c/c++ expert I hope it comes true but somehow I doubt it 😔.

[–] jabjoe@feddit.uk 2 points 6 days ago

Or a life of fixing AI slop the AI sloppers generate but can't fix.

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[–] MrKoyun@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago

Breaking News: making robots do stuff for you destroys your ability to do stuff.

[–] Strider@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (5 children)

The intro of Idiocracy on overdrive. Well done.

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