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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.

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.

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-...

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?

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.

The notion of "peer review" is just an earlier iteration (circa mid 1900s) of the same problem: outsourcing your critical thinking skills. Not all peer reviewed papers are sound; not all "not-peer-reviewed" ideas are invalid. You should be able to spot both.

The brain damage comes from trusting something other than your own brain to tell you what you understand, believe or know. You wind up thinking you hold positions you can't articulate, have skills you can't actually demonstrate, understand things you can't explain, and it's all downhill from there.

I find lots of things are having that effect on people lately. We used to joke about "drinking from the fire hose" but these days it feels like we're heading towards sun bathing in the solar flare.

I know you didn't ask for advice, but I've found that sitting down with a physical book helps. Also listening to music with your eyes closed, walking with no headphones, and working with your hands.

I know exactly what you're talking about. I was lucky enough to have retired from coding as a career before I ever started using Claude Code. Now I write more code than I ever did but I'm less of a coder than I ever have been too. I'm still having fun, it's just a new abstraction level above the coding, it has it's own skills and fun if you really just love problem solving. (and endless tweaking/debugging)

I love writing code most of the time. If that's your fun mode, totally go for it. But otherwise, if it's saving you time or able to help you with stuff you don't actually know, I think it's very useful. I wouldn't try to race the machine for how fast code gets cranked though.

Sorry, my post was unclear. I put the word 'write' in italics but i think I meant to use 'air quotes' because I was trying to make the point that I don't actually write much anymore, AI does it all (but I still say 'I write'). Lol.

I feel the same sometimes. Then I look at it as handing it off to an intern to do the preliminary work. As long as I actually look at it sanity sake then I'm still on the loop. That opens doors for more tasks. If I want to research I can and it doesn't mean I'm dumb because I offloaded. It just means I delegated and had time for stuff I cared to do.

But a senior engineer is only able to effectively delegate to interns because of years spent as that intern/a junior engineer.

If you're a junior engineer or an intern doing this, I think it might be harmful long-term.

It's like the progression from manual labor as a society to mass automation of everything physical. Even construction workers have to go to the gym. You'll have to do gym things with the mind, too, now. But gym things are not actually manual labor - the task is to find something you can do reliably that helps, rather than get productive things done.

I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way, and I'm not a professional, but it seems more like you're dealing with self-identity and depression issues than 'AI brain drain' (Which I do not mean to discredit). The last paragraph atleast rung pretty true to me, who does deal with such issues.

It's the lack of motivation. Why even bother doing something by hand when an LLM can get me 90% of what I want in a few minutes, without much work from me? What value can I provide to this project that Claude cannot?

But even in the age of 3D-Printers and such, people still wood-work and metal-smith and make models. We have Suno but (most) artists are still writing music by hand, out of passion of the craft.

I'd suggest just trying to find something you're passionate about, and work on that. Maybe it's not even programming-related.

Or I'm way off-base, just trying to draw parallels to myself. Feel free to dismiss this

if your agent's software delivers real world value to some people, that's motivation enough I find

For some, sure! Others may find they feel the need to contribute more than a prompt, and that's fine too!

Reminds me of this from 15 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1545774

Yes. I can confirm that AI related burnout is very much like the other kinds.

I find that actually asking the LLM what they've done and why, and pointing out everything that's not quite right, is a good way to avoid that kind of overload. if you're actually managing to have fifteen simultaneous work trees all churning with agents, and all adding real value, on properly abstracted code not mindless copy-pasta or data filling, that is kind of a humble brag anyway, so write a blog post about it!

"Second, he spent some time questioning the Priests of Beauty, who eventually admitted that when the corpses of the [Whispering Earring] wearers were being prepared for burial, it was noted that their brains were curiously deformed: the neocortexes had wasted away, and the bulk of their mass was an abnormally hypertrophied mid- and lower-brain, especially the parts associated with reflexive action."

https://croissanthology.com/earring

It energises me. Finally my ADHD brain has something faster than it to play with endlessly.

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