Dein Wischsaugroboter reinigt den Boden in deiner Wohnung, für die Fenster kommt ein Fensterputzer, das Bad reinigt die Putzkraft. Die Wiese mäht dein Rasenrobbi. Das Auto steht vor der Tür, in der Firma fährst du mit dem Aufzug zum Büro. Mit dem Elektroroller eliminierst du die letzten Fußwege.
Deine Musik sucht dir Spotify aus, dein Fernsehprogramm kommt per Netflix & Co ins Haus, die restliche Zeit verbringst du mit Youtube Shorts. Wenn du dich aufregen willst, scrollst du durch Social Media.
Und jetzt übernimmt AI noch für dich das Nachdenken. Nur ein paar kurze Anweisungen und deine Emails werden dir zusammengefasst, beantwortet. Deine Präsentationen und Analysen entstehen wie von Geisterhand. Du musst nichts mehr recherchieren, denn AI ist so schlau. AI ist auch dein Freund, dem du alles anvertrauen kannst. Jetzt kommen sogar AI Agenten, die gleich alles für dich erledigen.
Du musst dich nur noch hinlegen und auf das Ende warten. Es ist alles automatisiert.
… Erinnert mich an einen uralten Witz:
In den USA wurde eine Machine erfunden,
die…
– Kartoffeln sät,
– sie wässert und düngt
– ihnen Licht spendet,
– sie erntet,
– sie wäscht und schält,
– sie kocht…
… und sie aufisst!
AI just isn’t that smart, really.
At the start of the century I was building data-driven websites for environmental agencies, charities, and education. Almost all are now run and kept current by other people and companies, as I edge towards a proper retirement, and the sites work nicely where they are still extant.
I also have a bunch of sites I did on a hobby basis, and for friends: on these, all my PHP, MySQL, Ajax and other components no longer work properly on security-upgraded platforms. None of these are crucial systems on which life depends. However, I’d still like to update the whole lot.
I asked advice from a number of tech friends, two of whom work directly in AI fields: one in the sphere of self-drive vehicles, another in digital security and defence against automated systems. All concurred: AI is not yet clever enough to do the job I want done – I’d have to do all the conversion work manually. So it seems, a computerised system is not smart enough to modify another computerised system. I’m still looking for a method though!
I don’t think we are yet at the point where AI governs our lives, or renders our brain-skills redundant. That time may yet come, but it is not today.
Oder… man begreift AI als Werkzeug, das gezielt und ausgesucht eingesetzt werden sollte. Automatisierte Playlisten treffen meinen Geschmack meistens nicht, ich bin old school und suche und kombiniere selbst.
Mails habe ich nur wenige, die schreibe und lese ich selbst. AI wäre mir da nur im Weg.
Fernsehen ist stark limitiert, suche ich auch selbst aus. Granted, YouTube Empfehlungen folge ich manchmal, sonst aber habe ich meine Abos und das reicht. Shorts praktisch nie. Social Media nur Mastodon, sonst nichts mehr.
AI ist nicht “schlau”. AI kann mir Recherchearbeit abnehmen, dafür ist sie nützlich.
Beim Vibe Coding hat AI klar Grenzen, die man aber nur erkennt, wenn man selbst Experte ist. Vibe Coding nimmt mir sehr viel repetitive, rein handwerkliche Arbeit ab. Das macht mich und mein Team deutlich schneller, entbindet aber niemanden vom Nachdenken und prüfen des Codes. Wir nutzen Mistral, keine US Dienste. Mistral bringt uns dazu, über unsere Anforderungen gut nachzudenken und genau zu spezifizieren.
Support-Arbeit wird von AI vorqualifiziert, so dass wir uns nur um das eigentliche Problem kümmern müssen, statt erstmal Informationen zu sammeln.
Ich denke nicht weniger. Ich denke mehr. Weil ich mehr Zeit zum denken habe.
Absolving people from ‘thinking about and reviewing the code’ – absolutely, that is a big issue.
To steal someone else’s Reddit content (since I cannot figure out how best to link to it):
“r/ChatGPT. u/Ambitious-Garbage-73 • 22d
‘I mass deleted 3 months of Al generated code last week. Here is what I learned.
‘Three months of building a side project almost entirely with Al assistance. ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, the works.
Shipped fast, felt productive, everything seemed fine.
‘Then I needed to add a feature that touched most of the codebase. And I realized I could not do it. Not because it was hard, but because I did not actually understand how my own project worked.
‘The Al had generated clean looking code with consistent patterns, but the patterns were not mine. I could not trace the logic from memory. I could not explain to someone else why a function was structured the way it was. Every time I tried to modify something I had to re-read everything like it was someone else’s code. Because it was. So I deleted about 70% of it and rewrote it from scratch.
‘Took two weeks. The result is simpler, half the lines of code, and I actually understand every piece of it.”
Further to that, I’d suggest, while AI is brilliant at creating new code, new systems etc, it remains stupid when it comes to modifying, updating or improving what is already there. I can just about guarantee that the next security update to the platform of that person’s work (python, mysql, php, whatever) would have killed most of that code anyway. AI remains a dangerous place to play.
[sorry Volker, you probably did not want to spark a debate about the merits/failures of AI….]
Actually I did. I believe we are currently creating a mountain of technical debt.
Nick,
that’s all very true. But doesn’t make the way me and my team uses Vibe Coding any bad. It’s how you use a tool 😉
For example: Since I know that an AI coding tool doesn’t have the full understanding of the huge codebase (and never will have), I would never give it tasks that touches many different places in the codebase at once. And I would never just prompt “make this feature and don’t bother me how”. I specify specific steps, one by one, just as I would for a human Junior Dev.
Tasks like “implement new service x based on example y for new datatype z according to this specification” are executed just perfect and saves us humans tons of time to create scaffolding that’s nearly the same every time.
But yes, there is a lot of misunderstanding out there what Vibe Coding (and AI in general) is good for.
It is a new kind of tool. Not more, not less.
I think we are already at the point where AI as a very powerful tool starts to change the society.
Some jobs are disappearing (junior coder), some more complex are more needed (software architect, engineer).
It also gives such great leverage and return on investment to those who know how to use it and can finance it, that the relation between people in power and everyman needs to be recalculated again. Similar to what happened in industrial revolution.
South Korea is thinking of “AI dividends”, Samsung had to distribute part of the profits caused by AI expansion to workers, … In a way we are closer to both new form of feudalism and post-scarcity/universal basic income society. Which will we pick?
Currently those are just predictions and it is still too early to be sure how things turn out.
Of course, those trying to make (but currently just loosing lots of) money by selling AI try to convince everybody those are true. But there are also strong indicators that they are wrong.