There's AI slop and anti-AI slop
Posted May 31, 2026 3:32 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)In reply to: There's AI slop and anti-AI slop by Cyberax
Parent article: Nesbitt: Protestware for coding agents
Do you think that AI might just help some people to do great stuff that was impossible before because they never had the technical skill or ability to master some of the "low level" prerequisites?
No, probably not. As a 3D designer, your friend still had to learn and master all the fiddly and annoying aspects of 3D design, and spend time getting good at it.
AI makes it far too tempting to skip the boring learning phase and you end up with people who can produce... something... but don't really understand how they made it, how to improve it, or how to reliably produce more and more good work.
When we invented machines to do our physical work for us, it was great... no more sweating in the fields. But we became more sedentary as we outsourced physical labor to machines.
When we invented calculators, it was great... no more tedious arithmetic. People's skills got weaker, but it didn't really matter because a calculator was close by.
When we invented phones with contact lists, it was great... no more memorizing phone numbers. I bet now most people outsource that to their machines.
AI is different. AI learns. If we outsource our learning to machines, then that's a problem. Because while we can get by doing less physical labor, less arithmetic, and less phone-number memorization, learning is an important part of what makes us human and what helps our brain to develop. There's already research showing that AI harms cognitive development and harms critical thinking.