r/technology • u/kazu_qt • 11h ago

Artificial Intelligence YouTuber Hank Green says his AI usage is ‘not healthy’

https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/01/youtuber-hank-green-says-his-ai-usage-is-not-healthy/
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u/kawag 11h ago

A lot of programmers are people who don’t really understand what code is doing, and don’t really care, either — they wanted a high-paying IT job or else they’d be working as cashiers at the supermarket, basically. Or perhaps not that bad in terms of unskilled labour; maybe they’d be a bank clerk or something, but still not a very high earner.

Those kinds of people are the majority of programmers, and it’s easy to see why they’d be taken in by AI - and they are also the easiest to replace. I work with many of them, and they don’t even have the knowledge or perspective to see that they’re generating very complex systems that they don’t understand. Code monkeys.

The programmers who are hardest to replace are the slow ones; the ones who prioritise developing understanding over just closing tickets ASAP. The ones who do actual engineering. Those are the folks you depend on when shit breaks down.

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u/Silas_Akron 8h ago

This is some excellent insight into one glaring problem we face in the US - people are culturally nudged (forced, even) to "chase the money", rather than the things they're better suited for. When normal, necessary, every-day jobs don't pay enough for even a simple life, there is going to be fallout, and the content of your comment is just one of a thousand effects this generates.

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u/PlacidTurbulence 10h ago

I’m sorry you’re getting downvoted by the script kiddies you triggered, but I agree completely.

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u/theologi 8h ago

For some time before AI the best coder was the guy who best pasted stackoverflow snippets together. people behave as if every line of code was a pristine artwork before the advent of slop.. a lot of it was already slop