> Each of these 'phases' of LLM growth is unlocking a lot more developer productivity, for teams and developers that know how to harness it.
I still find myself incredibly skeptical LLM use is increasing productivity. Because AI reduces cognitive engagement with tasks, it feels to me like AI increases perceptive productivity but actually decreases it in many cases (and this probably compounds as AI-generated code piles up in a codebase, as there isn't an author who can attach context as to why decisions were made).
I realize the author qualified his or her statement with "know how to harness it," which feels like a cop-out I'm seeing an awful lot in recent explorations of AI's relationship with productivity. In my mind, like TikTok or online dating, AI is just another product motion toward comfort maximizing over all things, as cognitive engagement is difficult and not always pleasant. In a nutshell, it is another instant gratification product from tech.
That's not to say that I don't use AI, but I use it primarily as search to see what is out there. If I use it for coding at all, I tend to primarily use it for code review. Even when AI does a good job at implementation of a feature, unless I put in the cognitive engagement I typically put in during code review, its code feels alien to me and I feel uncomfortable merging it (and I employ similar levels of cognitive engagement during code reviews as I do while writing software).
I still find myself incredibly skeptical LLM use is increasing productivity. Because AI reduces cognitive engagement with tasks, it feels to me like AI increases perceptive productivity but actually decreases it in many cases (and this probably compounds as AI-generated code piles up in a codebase, as there isn't an author who can attach context as to why decisions were made).
https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...
I realize the author qualified his or her statement with "know how to harness it," which feels like a cop-out I'm seeing an awful lot in recent explorations of AI's relationship with productivity. In my mind, like TikTok or online dating, AI is just another product motion toward comfort maximizing over all things, as cognitive engagement is difficult and not always pleasant. In a nutshell, it is another instant gratification product from tech.
That's not to say that I don't use AI, but I use it primarily as search to see what is out there. If I use it for coding at all, I tend to primarily use it for code review. Even when AI does a good job at implementation of a feature, unless I put in the cognitive engagement I typically put in during code review, its code feels alien to me and I feel uncomfortable merging it (and I employ similar levels of cognitive engagement during code reviews as I do while writing software).