this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2025
756 points (98.0% liked)

Technology

77090 readers
2827 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
756
I Went All-In on AI. The MIT Study Is Right. (open.substack.com)
submitted 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) by AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
173 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Just want to clarify, this is not my Substack, I'm just sharing this because I found it insightful.

The author describes himself as a "fractional CTO"(no clue what that means, don't ask me) and advisor. His clients asked him how they could leverage AI. He decided to experience it for himself. From the author(emphasis mine):

I forced myself to use Claude Code exclusively to build a product. Three months. Not a single line of code written by me. I wanted to experience what my clients were considering—100% AI adoption. I needed to know firsthand why that 95% failure rate exists.

I got the product launched. It worked. I was proud of what I’d created. Then came the moment that validated every concern in that MIT study: I needed to make a small change and realized I wasn’t confident I could do it. My own product, built under my direction, and I’d lost confidence in my ability to modify it.

Now when clients ask me about AI adoption, I can tell them exactly what 100% looks like: it looks like failure. Not immediate failure—that’s the trap. Initial metrics look great. You ship faster. You feel productive. Then three months later, you realize nobody actually understands what you’ve built.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 167 points 22 hours ago (11 children)

Not immediate failure—that’s the trap. Initial metrics look great. You ship faster. You feel productive.

And all they'll hear is "not failure, metrics great, ship faster, productive" and go against your advice because who cares about three months later, that's next quarter, line must go up now. I also found this bit funny:

I forced myself to use Claude Code exclusively to build a product. Three months. Not a single line of code written by me... I was proud of what I’d created.

Well you didn't create it, you said so yourself, not sure why you'd be proud, it's almost like the conclusion should've been blindingly obvious right there.

[–] AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world 83 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

The top comment on the article points that out.

It's an example of a far older phenomenon: Once you automate something, the corresponding skill set and experience atrophy. It's a problem that predates LLMs by quite a bit. If the only experience gained is with the automated system, the skills are never acquired. I'll have to find it but there's a story about a modern fighter jet pilot not being able to handle a WWII era Lancaster bomber. They don't know how to do the stuff that modern warplanes do automatically.

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago

Once you automate something, the corresponding skill set and experience atrophy. It's a problem that predates LLMs by quite a bit. If the only experience gained is with the automated system, the skills are never acquired.

Well, to be fair, different skills are acquired. You've learned how to create automated systems, that's definitely a skill. In one of my IT jobs there were a lot of people who did things manually, updated computers, installed software one machine at a time. But when someone figures out how to automate that, push the update to all machines in the room simultaneously, that's valuable and not everyone in that department knew how to do it.

So yeah, I guess my point is, you can forget how to do things the old way, but that's not always bad. Like, so you don't really know how to use a scythe, that's fine if you have a tractor, and trust me, you aren't missing much.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)