> Agents weaken the social fabric of engineering teams by reducing interpersonal communication, increasing self-reliance, and hindering skill expression.
I have a feeling that this is true and it's a bit sad.
What's been driving me nuts recently is when coworkers send me clearly AI-generated blocks of text in otherwise-human conversations. Like I'll ask in a chat window "hey, Jim, what's the difference between these two deployment pipelines," and I'll get back a block of text with markdown and headings in the style of our team's AI, and I get this sad feeling where I thought I was going to be having a conversation with a colleague, but instead my colleague was just playing as a chinese room.
And the response back will be "If you could've asked the AI, why did you ask me then?"
In some cases, it may even be the appropriate response. Interrupting somebody to ask something that could be cleared up by an AI is in the same ballpark as asking them something that could be cleared up if you read the docs.
chanux · · focus · HN ↗
I have a feeling that this is true and it's a bit sad.
CobrastanJorji · · focus · HN ↗
timdiggerm · · focus · HN ↗
v64 · · focus · HN ↗
In some cases, it may even be the appropriate response. Interrupting somebody to ask something that could be cleared up by an AI is in the same ballpark as asking them something that could be cleared up if you read the docs.