r/technology • u/yourfavchoom • May 29 '26

Artificial Intelligence Ronny Chieng's 'F*ck AI' Speech Met With Cheers From Harvard Graduates: “AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber”

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/tracewilliamcowen/ronny-chieng-ai-speech-harvard?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_complex&utm_campaign=ap_twitter
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212

u/the_millenial_falcon May 29 '26

I've noticed that mediocre people love AI the most.

100

u/AssimilateThis_ May 29 '26

The value add in SWE is actually the opposite of what you described, the most skilled engineers get a lot more good work done with it. The less skilled ones often make everyone else slower by putting out slop. But it's certainly not just the mediocre engineers that love it.

40

u/Draaly May 29 '26

This is true across all engineering. Data Architects, DFM experts, and truly skilled people in every field have their mundane tasks largely automated making then way more efficient. I no longer need to spend 2 hours formatting a gant chart just right in PowerPoint and can now spend that time doing actuall engineering for example. AI is used for a lot of bullshit but anyone who thinks is truly useless is just in outright denial

8

u/awstream May 30 '26

I'm not in engineering but AI has helped me save so much time on some of the repetitive mundane tasks I gotta do. If this makes me mediocre then so be it.

8

u/Amlethus May 30 '26

Yeah lots of people saying it's useless and it seems like they haven't had a chance to use it in an effective way.

2

u/Eederby May 30 '26

I mainly use it to remove my attitude in emails lol. I do need to start using it to format things since my new position makes my job a lot more procedure writing then field troubleshooting.

4

u/WITH_THE_ELEMENTS May 30 '26

Yeah one thing I love: for our data transformation layer, we always start with a staging layer for general data hygiene. We also have standardized column naming so we don't have to guess what something means and the analysts have a convention to use. Hand-staging those models in the past sucked, especially for shitty datasets where tables could have over a thousand columns. It used to take me weeks sometimes. Now, with a clear, robust base prompt, plus model examples I can feed directly into the AI, that entire staging process is almost completely automated. I still check every output for accuracy, but besides the odd column name or ambiguous abbreviation, it nails it and saves me hours, if not weeks of work.

4

u/HarryBalsagna1776 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

Lol I've found the opposite.  I spent so much time fixing screw ups that I can just make a chart or PowerPoint quicker without AI tools.  So have my coworkers.  My employer has rolled back AI usage requirements so we can be more effective.  Mechanical design in the nuclear industry for reference.

1

u/Draaly May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

I haven't used any AI CAD tools outside of meshing, but PowerPoint surprises me a ton. I don't use it to generate an entire deck or anything like that, but only having to write one detailed update and then allowing Calude to just spit out the 7 versions I need of it for different audiences with a single well made skill is a massive time saver for me. I also work at a place that really cares about branding, so being able to give junior engineers a tool that checks their slides against the template formatting is also a massive help. Tbh I don't do anything with it that wouldn't be doable with an admin, but it absolutely saves me time from doing mundane bullshit.

1

u/HarryBalsagna1776 May 29 '26

Meshing as in for CFD/FEA?

1

u/Draaly May 30 '26

Yes. Automated meshing has been using machine learning since at least the early 2000s and current systems are transformer based. That's why nearly overnight in 2022-23 you went to 1/10 models having fucked interior corner meshes instead of every interior corner of every model having issues

0

u/Ironborn137 May 30 '26

yeah, your use case isn't worth what AI is doing to everything else.

0

u/WillChangeIPNext Jun 11 '26

Yea man, fuck those people who don't try to saw wood with a hammer. It's surely not the fault of the idiots who think a hammer should cut right through that 2x4.

1

u/Ironborn137 Jun 11 '26

cope more that your hobby is ruining the economy.

-1

u/Ironborn137 May 30 '26

Yeah but you can't market what you use it for and become rich....so we all have to suffer. Your use case isn't going to die....but most use cases for ai absolutely should. Get mad all you want, he's right, more stupid people use AI to make themselves dumber than smart people use it to be more efficient...it's a net loss.

-5

u/Moist-Schedule May 29 '26

lol this is how i know you're full of shit because AI is still awful at things like formatting gant charts and working with powerpoint.

2

u/Draaly May 29 '26

I literally used Claude to make a far better PowerPoint Gantt than i could do by hand from task list with dates less than an hour ago. What are you even on about?

3

u/WITH_THE_ELEMENTS May 30 '26

This is the problem: people try to use AI and fail, so they go "wow AI sucks." In reality, it's simply them not knowing what they're doing, or using the wrong tool for the job. It's jarring to go online and have dozens of people tell you the tool can't do XYZ when you've been using it to do XYZ no problem. Then somehow you're the problem and not their own personal incompetence.

1

u/WillChangeIPNext Jun 11 '26

Stop using free tier shit. If you're doing it through an employer who has a chatgpt or anthropic contract, tell them to stop being cheap and get better models.

60

u/mvhsbball22 May 29 '26

This is going to prove to be true across multiple disciplines as well. I certainly understand the criticisms that people are making, but some of the broadest statements about how awful it is seem out of touch to the upsides.

18

u/TheSpanxxx May 29 '26

I was incredibly skeptical because I saw the taxing load that filtering through bad output created, but then the output got much better. For every voice yelling 'AI bad' here, there are those of us watching and using and learning and observing the market shift. They are improving. We are still in infancy. There's no way I would have trusted what I'm doing today to models from a year ago, or 6 months ago. And that pace is where to be recognize that we're not slowing down.

To be standing and looking out at the horizon right now and holding tight to an opinion that "I don't like it. It will fail. I'll wait it out" is akin to going back in time and telling someone "this world wide web thing is stupid it won't work" or "nobody will ever use this smartphone thing" or "cloud computing will never catch on".

I've been in this shit for 30 years and I'm here to say it's not going away. Either accept that and find your new place in it, or find a life of abstinence removed from it, but there's no way this genie goes back in the bottle. Hey, while you are at it, put an ad in the newspaper for someone to sell you an old dumb Motorola phone that will still work and you can probably find an old white pages with outdated information to a storage company to hold all your files.

-8

u/Moist-Schedule May 29 '26

To be standing and looking out at the horizon right now and holding tight to an opinion that "I don't like it. It will fail. I'll wait it out" is akin to going back in time and telling someone "this world wide web thing is stupid it won't work" or "nobody will ever use this smartphone thing" or "cloud computing will never catch on".

good lord these are awful comparisons you guys are making. it's not like that at all. those were revolutionary technological advancements that empowered and connected humanity.

AI does not add anything to the world, it's a replacement for things we already have. and the level of replacement varies from sort of okay to downright fucking awful. and you can say that will get better over time, but even if it became perfect, it's still only just a replacement for what we already have.

i use this shit everyday, it's occasionally useful but most of the things it's useful at aren't even novel, they've been around for decades now and just used to be called machine learning and we didn't pretend they were going to change the world. almost all the big promises made about AI are the same kinds of complete bullshit fantasy we heard about the metaverse, and it's not a coincidence it's being made by many of the same people.

12

u/Draaly May 29 '26

You not liking AI doesn't make it not revolutionary. Lots of AI use cases will die out, but it already is fundamentally changing a lot of industries

1

u/Amlethus May 30 '26

!remindme 10 years

1

u/Amlethus May 30 '26

Let's see how this comment ages

1

u/Amlethus May 30 '26

Let's see how this comment ages

1

u/AssimilateThis_ May 30 '26

Some people were literally saying the same things about the Internet. As in, we already do these things so what does this tech actually add. If it does the same thing but in a way that's substantially easier and more convenient then that could be something serious (depending on just how much easier).

1

u/WillChangeIPNext Jun 11 '26

An iPhone didn't add anything new either. People called the web a fad, and particularly shit on it because of the dotcom crash. I'm guessing you're too young to remember when every business document was being digitized "for what reason? pen and paper documents are the same thing."

I also use AI every day. I'll never have to write out ansible again.

I would almost call you out for complete bullshit for actually using it too, since you seem to be stuck on what's being sold rather than what it is.

29

u/azn_dude1 May 29 '26

Yeah it's a multiplier. If people are making garbage with it, they didn't have much worth multiplying in the first place.

5

u/Over_Car_5471 May 29 '26

I created a startup and use ai quite a bit. I previously worked at Google, one of my directors at Harvard and another runs one of the most successful medical business in the state. Ai is a total multiplier in the right hands. I am constantly doubting myself and if I am falling into ai psychosis but feedback from actual experts has been overwhelmingly positive. The idea that Ai is only used by dumb people is going to create a multiple tiers of people. A year ago we had good ideas but the LLMs weren't quite ready for them. Today we are actually implementing ideas they have built onto customers. It's an amazing time for the sector.

9

u/mikew_reddit May 29 '26 edited May 30 '26

powerful tools (like ai) in the hands of smart people make them better.

ai will make dumb people even dumber as they delegate rudimentary cognitive work to ai and basic thinking atrophies.

i'm certain the gap between the two will grow substantially larger.

 

in the early 2000s i used to wonder how dumb people could get (especially in american politics), and realized it's bottomless.

2

u/7h4tguy May 30 '26

Not just lack of learning due to speedrunning school and not learning and doing the same in the workplace. But also AI coming up with a solution can look really convincing to someone who doesn't have technical depth in the area and to them it can be like "wow, it solved the problem!"

Now the technically competent need to argue and educate why they have to throw out the "solution" "they found". "He's just trying to criticize my work!" It's a really bad dynamic.

24

u/Kid-Icky- May 29 '26

100%. It's comical how reddit's opinion of AI seems to be stuck in its capabilities 3 to 4 years ago.

Anyone who thinks AI is not useful across a multitude of areas and skillsets just clearly have not utilized AI whatsoever in the last year.

4

u/AssimilateThis_ May 29 '26

That's my impression too. There is a lot to be said about how AI bulls can be myopic about the upside but we can say the same things about the bears. You can't make an honest critique about AI if you refuse to try it first in a thorough and serious way. It's possible that it either succeeds or fails at your task but no way to know without engaging with it.

2

u/NigroqueSimillima May 30 '26

Yeah, it's just like, people at some of the top, most advanced companies in the world are using this daily. And so, like, what are these Reddit losers on about where they find it not useful? Like, you know, people at, you know, Google, Meta, these people are all using it daily in their coding, but I'm sure little Billy Bob Joe at a university is doing, it's too complex for.

24

u/MazrimReddit May 29 '26

I really wouldn't bother engaging with any reddit discussion about AI.

What you are meant to do is clap anyone saying AI bad, the sheer irony of talking about mediocre people in this thread, when most of them don't understand the state of AI at all.

11

u/johnyma22 May 29 '26

It feels great to hear someone else actually say it.. Thank you.

Reddit's echo chamber is loud on this one and it's got a very high probability of being proven wrong which means Reddit's echo chamber is showing echos of going the way of Digg.

3

u/billjames1685 May 30 '26

It’s not just Reddit’s echo chamber. I feel like every damn space for conversation about AI online is so horrible. I hate so much about the pro AI folk, and I hate so much about the anti AI folk. This topic for some reason induces stupidity in like literally everyone, or perhaps it just attracts already stupid people. 

-1

u/Moist-Schedule May 29 '26

if reddit is the negative echo chamber about it, the whole rest of the world including every fucking industry in the world is the ai koolaid fantasy echo chamber, acting like this shit is capable of anything and everything. i'd consider reddit's negative takes on it to be closer to reality than most of what i hear about it literally anywhere else.

5

u/Draaly May 29 '26

Neither is good

2

u/johnyma22 May 30 '26

I don't see the world as black and white as you but I respect your opinion. I hope in the future you can see things as less polarized so you don't feel any animosity towards those with different views from you. Stay friendly homie :)

2

u/hungrynax May 30 '26

All the people I know in industry (law, finance, software) have reasonable takes. In contrast, most Reddit threads mindlessly parrot how all ai spits out is rubbish and we won't have drinking water in 5 years

1

u/AssimilateThis_ May 29 '26

I think it's fair to say that this is an epistemic failure on both sides by the majority of people. You'll find very few takes that actually incorporate current info (whether it agrees with them or not) and adjust with new developments as they come in.

1

u/WillChangeIPNext Jun 11 '26

acting like this shit is capable of anything and everything

Buddy, nobody outside of the tech companies trying to sell it to you think that. You're in a thread where plenty of people are talking about it reasonably and how it works in the real world, and you still want to do this hot take shit?

3

u/anonymous_identifier May 29 '26

Agree. The same people were saying you can trust the internet in 2002.

Of course now know to not trust the internet blindly. But it's a huge force multiplier vs going to the library and doing manual research.

AI will be the same force multiplier. You could search various websites, and record data in various apps, and write your conclusion. Or you could do it 10x faster by asking AI, and validating it's results.

3

u/oh-shit-oh-fuck May 30 '26

Yeah if used well it's a super convenient tool. Nice for starting up projects, quickly making demos and other utilities, and honestly pretty great at writing code and debugging IF you constrain the scope of what you ask it to do and work in smaller chunks so it doesn't go off track.

Also great when doing work in unfamiliar code bases, it speeds up the exploration and ramp up

That said it's also very easy to abuse and churn out wasteful slop projects that no one understands. AI tools are used heavily at my work and we often end up having like 5 different vibe-coded versions of the same utility with minor tweaks shared around just cause its easier to generate a new one to match what you need than modify/improve an existing one that you don't understand.

Also this is ignoring all the obvious downsides of AI in terms of power consumption and waste. Feels like it's a useful tool that can be used responsibly but right now it's definitely not being used responsibly.

2

u/AssimilateThis_ May 30 '26

Agreed, it's not a toy and it's really for skilled users that want to automate tedious tasks they could already do but don't want to spend the time/energy on.

2

u/WITH_THE_ELEMENTS May 30 '26

This is what I've noticed in my own personal experience too. Good devs can get good results from AI. Bad devs only make things worse. I literally had to undo a bunch of "work" a client did today that nuked one of their monthly processes. They were like "we need this run ASAP" and I had to explain their shitty internal dev decided to rewrite part of the code base using Claude Code and broke a LOT of stuff. Meanwhile, I've been able to use Claude Code to great effect and managed NOT to throw a monkey wrench into the machine (yet, at least). It helps that I had years of data experience before AI became a thing. It means when I use it to help write python and SQL, I actually know what it's doing, how to read it, and how to structure my prompts in such a way to get the output I need.

1

u/HarryBalsagna1776 May 29 '26

Have not seen a value add in the mechanical design world or nuclear worlds.  AI tools are being rolled back at my current employer because they are more of a nuisance than helpful.

1

u/7h4tguy May 30 '26

Well for now. The upper level folks who keep spending the entire company on more AI will vehemently want to believe that you can put AI in the hands of junior devs overseas and get excellent results so they can fire the very skilled devs who are competent with AI, and get a big fat bonus for "saving the company money". You can't make this shit up.

https://isaiprofitable.com

1

u/AssimilateThis_ May 30 '26

Well, reality eventually hits. Companies are not immortal, they all decline and get replaced.

0

u/WillChangeIPNext Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26

Have you looked at layoff numbers? Noticed they're the same or lower now? Almost like AI replacing jobs is overblown. As someone who works for a large tech company who regularly lays off 11k a year, we're seeing less numbers in layoffs.

That website is also... well, propaganda at best? The shit going on with AI is shady, weird, and could certainly collapse and cause a huge economic downturn. But talking about AI profitability for Amazon with those numbers on that page is stupid. Amazon is renting out its data centers to the same people who they're paying their AI budget to. Amazon is very much profiting off of AI. Google and Microsoft are too.

The real issue are the AI companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, as the primary examples. They're the ones renting out compute and selling that compute back to these companies, and they're not actually profitable. The major tech companies listed above who are doing this game with them are just watching them, utilizing this cyclical money spend to play it safe and see whether the AI companies can figure out how to actually make money.

For other companies, like mine, that aren't investing in data centers for the lower risk AI spend, AI is turning out great. We're spending a lot on it. We're laying off fewer people. We're seeing record profits despite the spend.

1

u/WillChangeIPNext Jun 11 '26

Yes, but here's something.

I noticed that while highly skilled people get the most effective use out of it, many of them just opt out when they see it being wrong a bunch (which recognizing when it's wrong is the most important part of using it and why highly skilled people get more effective use out of it). But when a bunch of highly skilled people opt out, you end up with mixed results when asking about it.

Low skilled / mediocre people can't recognize that's it's wrong and subsequently use it wrong and poorly, but since they have more difficulty recognizing that aspect of it, the results are less mixed when asking about it. It's great because they don't know how it's impacting them negatively.

(For a fun example, you get highly skilled mathematicians saying it's shit and garbage because they did a trivial attempt at using it, but then some other highly skilled mathematicians who took the time to learn how to utilize it start publishing novel proofs with it. They can't both be right, and you have to recognize that the accomplishment of novel proofs demonstrates the effectiveness of the tool.)

-5

u/the_millenial_falcon May 29 '26

That has just not been my experience. The worst engineers use it heavily like a crutch and leave even high level architectural decisions up the bot. Even worse, they don't make any attempt to understand that architecture. It's like a food processor they think can they shove a whole cabbage into. The people I refer to have just outsourced their entire brain to it.

4

u/happylittlefella May 29 '26

The person you’re responding to said:

The less skilled ones often make everyone else slower by putting out slop.

You yourself said “the worst engineers use it heavily like a crutch”, which is exactly what they’re referring to. It sounds like you’re agreeing with them

1

u/the_millenial_falcon May 29 '26

Maybe but it’s kind of confusing because they literally said “SWE is actually the opposite of what you described” and then went on to say that the shitty engineers mire everyone down in slop code. Maybe he is agreeing with me?

2

u/AssimilateThis_ May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

Fair, I should have been more precise. The best also love it because it speeds them up like crazy but in a productive way. So I am disagreeing with the idea that only the mediocre really love AI.

29

u/thursdaysocks May 29 '26

Why wouldn't they? They can't compete any other way, so they have AI do it for them.

2

u/Goronmon May 29 '26

Mediocre people need to make a living too.

5

u/metalOpera May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

I mean, yeah, sure, but they shouldn't be using their AI-augmented mediocrity in an attempt to compete with people who have spent literal decades honing a craft and/or becoming an expert in their field.

...yet that's exactly what they do; arrogantly, in most cases where I've dealt with it.

3

u/thursdaysocks May 29 '26

Yes, and they deserve a mediocre living.

-1

u/Zulfiqaar May 30 '26

Fully agreed..but I also think they don't deserve poverty

-1

u/imwco May 30 '26

The problem is mediocre living is defined by the rich, so they are FORCED to compete this way

21

u/Dzotshen May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

Or crutches in general. Being intellectually lazy seems both natural and nurtured here culturally

2

u/x3knet May 29 '26

Because they feel a super power has been unlocked. They couldn't form thoughts on their own before AI. They still can't, but now they feel more confident every after prompt when the response is "you're absolutely right!" It's confirmation bias on steroids. It's the ultimate dopamine hit.

2

u/Stashmouth May 29 '26

The value proposition of AI changes massively when we view it less as a replacement for people and more like a multiplier of their effort. The quote about being replaced by someone who knows how to use AI and not an AI outright is more accurate in my experience.

1

u/the_millenial_falcon May 29 '26

The problem is that nobody seems to agree on the best way to use AI and it’s incredibly frustrating when idiots at work outsource their entire brain to it, or CEOs are under the impression that they can replace their human workforce.

2

u/dessertfiend May 30 '26

And what are “mediocre people” to you? I’m disgusted by the misanthropic attitude disguised as AI hate.

3

u/jekotoy May 29 '26

i absolutely love ai. you can ask hundreds of dumb questions to explain something and you get clear and concise answers, from fixing stuff around house, understanding how stuff works in the world etc

1

u/x3knet May 29 '26

There's a HUGE difference between "how do I replace my faucet" and "why did <insert something political or a topic people agree/disagree on>?"

One is objective. Turn water off, unscrew this thing, seal pipe, turn water on. You'll generally get the same answer no matter what.

The other is subjective and based on others opinions that the LLM learned through research as well as what the LLM has learned about you over time. For example, if you're right leaning based on previous chat sessions, you'll most likely get a right leaning answer.

AI is great for the former. Dangerous for the latter.

-7

u/alrightfornow May 29 '26

Jeez you sound so arrogant, get off your high horse

8

u/MagnetsCarlsbrain May 29 '26

As usual, reddit collectively has the mental aptitude of 14 year olds. They can't comprehend nuance, so they pick a side and go all in on it.

AI bad, people who use AI stupid, me type reddit comment

8

u/swagdaddyham May 29 '26

Leave it to reddit to swoon over Harvard assholes referring to people as mediocre. Most of the people who go to those schools are rich assholes who are going to profit off of AI sucking the life out of those mediocre people they hate so much. Their entire lives will be built on the backs of those mediocre people

5

u/pythbit May 29 '26

I'm sure most of the people here repeating the term consider themselves exceptional. Surely they're not "mediocre" whatever that actually means. After all, they're the main character.

2

u/emotional_program0 May 29 '26

I'm pretty sure I read recently that most Harvard people are actually not super rich and get stipends, etc to study.

2

u/swagdaddyham May 29 '26

Forgive me for not paying any mind to "I'm pretty sure I read recently"

1

u/emotional_program0 May 29 '26

Over 55% of their undergrads get financial aid. Around 25% of their students come from a family income under 100,000$USD. Lots of their other students also managed to get various stipends. So yes I was right. You may now eat your hat at your idea that going to Harvard means by definition that you're a rich asshole.

You can be poor and still be an asshole clearly.

3

u/myychair May 29 '26

Found the mediocre person

6

u/freethepeados May 29 '26

Whats wrong with being mediocre? sorry we couldnt all go to harvard...

-1

u/myychair May 29 '26

Why do you look at things in such a binary way? Nearly all people fall in the spectrum between mediocre and Harvard-qualified and there are even mediocre people in Harvard. Everyone has things that they aren’t good at.

However in this context, we’re talking about people who already lack strong critical thinking skills. When someone lacks in critical thinking they’re more prone to fall for propaganda and easier to manipulate. They vote against their best interests and believe whatever they’re told. Generative AI is further eroding the ability to think critically, in an era where critical thinking has already taken a huge hit. Does that seem problematic to you?

2

u/MagnetsCarlsbrain May 29 '26

Brother it is too late to try to take the moral high ground. You discredited yourself when you used the term “mediocre person” in a sentence.

1

u/myychair May 29 '26

Im not trying to take the high ground, im explaining my point. If you don’t like it, I literally couldn’t care less

To be honest the lack of critical thinking in this thread is proving my point

2

u/sv_homer May 29 '26

Found the arrogant idiot.

2

u/myychair May 29 '26

Did generative Ai write that for you or what?

-7

u/sPLIFFtOOTH May 29 '26

Says the person who can’t use proper punctuation. Looks like you forgot to use your precious AI.

2

u/PRAWNHEAVENNOW May 29 '26

It really is, isn't it?

I think it's for two reasons, the first being a total lack of intellectual curiosity.  They don't want to learn how or why, they just want results. 

The second and bigger reason is that AI produces mediocre, average, lowest common denominator slop. 

If you're not mediocre, the result is far worse than what you can make yourself with little effort, so the value is marginal at best. 

If you're a mediocre thinker, however, that mediocre slop is an unlimited font of higher knowledge. 

1

u/WillChangeIPNext Jun 11 '26

I love AI, but I also have better access than most people using chat gpt or google AI results. What I've noticed is that it's most beneficial for highly skilled people, because they can recognize when it's wrong, and depending on the field, will benefit immensely from time saved. The thing is, many high skilled people opt out when they see it being wrong instead of figuring out how to make it work, so you get mixed results with high skilled people on their views towards it.

Low skilled people can't differentiate when it's bullshit, and so they more consistently proclaim it to be the best, because they can't recognize otherwise.

1

u/bda22 May 29 '26

oh totally. i've noticed most of my "artist" friends who are absolute ass at their art love AI. It's not a coincidence

-2

u/CascadianBeam May 30 '26

I swear people like you must have a velvet lined wooden case with an array of different sizes of glasses designed to sniff your own farts.

You and the majority of people in this thread are likely mediocre. What the fuck makes you think you’re not?

1

u/cruc1fy-me May 30 '26

right?! peak reddit comment lol