fp.

I was among the last to resist, but then I was given a subtle hint that if I won't "improve my productivity and be on par with my colleagues" my work will be at risk. So I started to use Claude Code about a year ago. At first, I'd give it small tasks, review every line it wrote, opened a proper PR, review again, ask questions, ask it to fix stuff I don't like.

But I saw that my colleagues were shipping more, and so I started to ease on my reviews. At first, I would push small features straight to main. But my colleagues were shipping 10x more than me, and I need my job, so I started to push more and rely more on AI. As the agent was doing its work, sometimes 20-30 minutes, I would mindlessly scroll social media, something I tried to avoid for a very long time. But then I saw that my peers are using work trees, running multiple agents. So I started to do the same. Now, instead of mindlessly scrolling, I was launching 4-5 agents, juggling between their output. At some point, I was no longer having mental capacity to understand so much context, so I just started to chose the "Recommended" suggestion by Claude. I no longer know the code, or how things work. If there is a bug, I just copy the user complaint / bug description into Claude and let it figure it out. The good/bad part is that it seems to work. And I'm afraid what's next.

Almost one year later and I'm no longer sure I can write code any more. Hell, I'm even struggling to write this post because AI is very good at understanding wrongly spelled words, doesn't care about punctuation or capital letters. Every single thing that made me think, was taken away from me. I no longer have brain ability to research for stuff, I just let AI do it.

"Well, just do it yourself", "write code by hand" - I heard you scream from your chairs. I wish I could, but after 10 hours and 15 parallel agents, I no longer have the brain capacity to do anything. "Then change your job" you object, and I hear you, but every interviewer I talk to either asks me "please tell me how you use AI in day to day work" or simply states "we like to move fast, so we use AI as much as possible". I feel like a mindless blob, floating around, paying mortgage, trying to survive, while my brain is being destroyed. I never did drugs, but I think this is how it might feel.

No question. Not asking for advice. Just sharing my misery.

Comments

missingpackage•1h ago

Feel the same. Except that for me it's not "after 10 hours...I no longer have the brain capacity"...it's more like "it doesn't really matter anymore if I can write code or not. It means nothing". Quite sad, indeed.

chistev•1h ago

I can't prove it, but I think AI is causing me brain damage

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49424762

AI atrophies the brain. If you don't use a muscle, it atrophies.

You know the solution.

I wrote about this on my blog - How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Making Us Dumber

https://www.rxjourney.net/how-artificial-intelligence-ai-is-...

polotics•30m ago

Well, also screwdrivers can do that...

if you actually do use AI to do some proper research on a fields you don't really know that well, looking for peer reviewed papers, actually figuring more things out thanks to AI, then I don't think brain damage will happen.

about your blog post: You jump from a quote about llms hallucinating articles references in students papers, to the statement "if AI does the thinking for you". since when is inventing falsehoods thinking?

numeri•18m ago

How can a screwdriver do that?

If you're using AI to learn a new field (by which I assume you mean asking it what literature to read, asking questions when you don't understand something, etc.), you are accepting short-term speed in exchange for the long-term growth of research skills. Maybe that trade-off is worth it, if you don't need to master a topic long-term.

If you do need to master a topic, the slow and painful bits are the useful bits. Spending two hours hunting for an answer to something you don't understand increases your familiarity with the available resources, broadens your knowledge base, leads you to thinking of more questions about the subject and to understand your original question more deeply.

Shortcutting all of that with a quick answer from an LLM is not helpful long-term.