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AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

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728 points freetonik | 1 comments | 21 Aug 25 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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thallavajhula ◴[21 Aug 25 19:27 UTC] No.44976973[source]▶
I’m loving today. HN’s front page is filled with some good sources today. No nonsense sensationalism or preaching AI doom, but more realistic experiences.

I’ve completely turned off AI assist on my personal computer and only use AI assist sparingly on my work computer. It is so bad at compound work. AI assist is great at atomic work. The rest should be handled by humans and use AI wisely. It all boils down back to human intelligence. AI is only as smart as the human handling it. That’s the bottom line.

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tick_tock_tick ◴[21 Aug 25 19:44 UTC] No.44977158[source]▶
> AI is only as smart as the human handling it.

I think I'm slowly coming around to this viewpoint too. I really just couldn't understand how so many people were having widely different experiences. AI isn't magic; how could I have expected all the people I've worked with who struggle to explain stuff to team members, who have near perfect context, to manage to get anything valuable across to an AI?

I was original pretty optimistic that AI would allow most engineers to operate at a higher level but it really seems like instead it's going to massively exacerbate the difference between an ok engineer and a great engineer. Not really sure how I feel about that yet but at-least I understand now why some people think the stuff is useless.

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btucker ◴[21 Aug 25 20:03 UTC] No.44977381[source]▶
I've been starting to think of it like this:

Great Engineer + AI = Great Engineer++ (Where a great engineer isn't just someone who is a great coder, they also are a great communicator & collaborator, and love to learn)

Good Engineer + AI = Good Engineer

OK Engineer + AI = Mediocre Engineer

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aydyn ◴[21 Aug 25 20:10 UTC] No.44977446[source]▶
Is there a difference between "OK" and "Mediocre"?
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BolexNOLA ◴[21 Aug 25 20:22 UTC] No.44977590[source]▶
“Ok” I generally associate with being adequate but could obviously be better. “Mediocre” is just inadequate.
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furyofantares ◴[22 Aug 25 02:47 UTC] No.44980544[source]▶
Some synonyms for mediocre: decent, middling, ordinary, so-so. It can mean inadequate, but it can also mean adequate.
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1. rerdavies ◴[22 Aug 25 15:24 UTC] No.44985751[source]▶
Another common synonym for mediocre: has no place on a software development team. Not technically correct, admittedly, but that's how I read that word in an software engineering context. Adequate is not good enough.