Are AI tools actively trying to make us dumber?

Alright, need to get this off my chest. I’m a frontend dev with over 10 years experience, and I generally give a shit about software architecture and quality. First I was hesitant to try using AI in my daily job, but now I’m embracing it. I’m genuinely amazed by the potential lying AI, but highly disturbed the way it’s used and presented.

My experience, based on vibe coding, and some AI quality assurance tools

• AI is like an intern who has no experience and never learns. The learning is limited to the chat context; close the window, and you have to explain everything all over again, or make serious effort to maintain docs/memories.
• It has a vast amount of lexical knowledge and can follow instructions, but that’s it.
• This means low-quality instructions get you low-quality results.
• You need real expertise to double-check the output and make sure it lives up to certain standards.

My general disappointment in professional AI tools

This leads to my main point. The marketing for these tools is infuriating. – “No expertise needed.” – “Get fast results, reduce costs.” – “Replace your whole X department.” – How the fuck are inexperienced people supposed to get good results from this? They can’t. – These tools are telling them it’s okay to stay dumb because the AI black box will take care of it. – Managers who can’t tell a good professional artifact from a bad one just focus on “productivity” and eat this shit up. – Experts are forced to accept lower-quality outcomes for the sake of speed. These tools just don’t do as good a job as an expert, but we’re pushed to use them anyway. – This way, experts can’t benefit from their own knowledge and experience. We’re actively being made dumber.

In the software development landscape – apart from a couple of AI code review tools – I’ve seen nothing that encourages better understanding of your profession and domain.

This is a race to the bottom

• It’s an alarming trend, and I’m genuinely afraid of where it’s going.
• How will future professionals who start their careers with these tools ever become experts?
• Where do I see myself in 20 years? Acting as a consultant, teaching 30-year-old “senior software developers” who’ve never written a line of code themselves what SOLID principles are or the difference between a class and an interface. (To be honest, I sometimes felt this way even before AI came along 😀 )

My AI Tool Manifesto

So here’s what I actually want: – Tools that support expertise and help experts become more effective at their job, while still being able to follow industry best practices. – Tools that don’t tell dummies that it’s “OK,” but rather encourage them to learn the trade and get better at it. – Tools that provide a framework for industry best practices and ways to actually learn and use them. – Tools that don’t encourage us to be even lazier fucks than we already are.

Anyway, rant over. What’s your take on this? Am I the only one alarmed? Is the status quo different in your profession? Do you know any tools that actually go against this trend?