Original Reddit post

I’m an early-’90s kid who grew up with computers, got into web development as a teenager, studied software engineering, and watched technology change from dial-up and static websites to cloud computing, smartphones, and now AI. One thing that bothers me about the current AI debate is how often people reduce AI to LLMs, and then reduce LLMs to either “magic” or “slop.” In my own commercial web-development work, projects that used to take me 3–4 weeks can sometimes now be done in 1–3 days. Not because AI replaced the engineering, but because it accelerated the implementation. Planning still matters. Architecture matters. Testing matters. Security matters. Knowing when the model is wrong matters. That’s why I keep saying: AI is as smart as the person who uses it. I also think there’s a lot of hypocrisy around the “AI slop” conversation. Some people use AI themselves and then go online to mock anyone else who uses it. And sometimes people who don’t know shit about software development see an indie developer ship something quickly and immediately dismiss it as “AI slop.” There absolutely is AI slop. But AI-assisted work and low-quality work are not the same thing. The bigger reason I’m optimistic, though, is science. We’re already seeing AI used in mathematics, research, specialized decision systems, and increasingly autonomous tools. To me, the interesting question isn’t “will AI write my emails?” It’s: What happens when useful intelligence becomes cheap enough to put everywhere? That’s the idea behind the article I just wrote. It’s part personal history, part software development, part science, and part “please keep your fucking brain switched on.” https://moomean.com/blog/ai-is-as-smart-as-the-person-who-uses-it/ Curious where people here land: do you see AI mostly as replacement, augmentation, or just another tool that’s being overhyped? submitted by /u/moonean712

Originally posted by u/moonean712 on r/ArtificialInteligence