At a tech meetup in Austin, I saw a demo that made me question the whole 'AI for everything' push

It was last Tuesday at a small event downtown. A developer showed an AI tool that could write basic code from a text prompt. Everyone was clapping, but I just sat there thinking... this is a bad road. The tool made a simple script, but it was full of weird errors and took longer to fix than if I'd just written it myself. The guy presenting said it was the future and would replace junior jobs. I had to speak up. I told him that tools like this teach people to skip the basics, and that's dangerous. The room got quiet. I still use AI for some tasks, but not for core work where you need to really understand the problem. Has anyone else felt pushed to use AI for things where it just creates more work?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_oscar1mo ago

Ugh, that reminds me of a "smart" home gadget I bought... it was supposed to auto-order groceries but kept buying the wrong brand of coffee. Sometimes the old way is just simpler and faster.

garcia.laura29d ago

Oh man, I feel your pain. Last year my "smart" thermostat decided to crank the heat to 80 degrees because it thought my cat's movement on the couch was a person. I spent a whole Saturday trying to fix the app and the sensors. Now I just set it manually like a normal person, you know? Honestly, half the time these gadgets create more problems than they solve. For stuff like groceries or coffee, I'd rather just write a list on my phone's notes app, it takes two minutes and never orders me hazelnut roast by mistake.

tessa_clark741mo ago

Honestly, that demo sounds about as useful as my smart fridge trying to suggest recipes. Tbh, I tried one of those AI code helpers and it wrote a loop so broken I spent an hour just figuring out what it was even trying to do. Felt like I needed a translator for the bad code.