“They All Use It”, 2024-11-20 (; similar):
Last week, at a conference, I had a random hallway conversation with another engineer. We ended up talking about [the text editor] Zed and he told me he’ll try it, but does it have any AI features? If so, can you turn them off?
I told him that, yes, you can turn them off. Sensing what made him ask, I added that if you do turn them off, it’s all deactivated, no AI in the background, foreground, underground.
Curious now, having a chance for more nuance than a GitHub issue usually allows, with this being a real conversation in the Real World, I asked: so you don’t use AI? Not at all?
No, he said. With a shrug, he added: I tried it once, it was completely wrong, so I stopped using it. Never used it for coding, he said.
What’d you use, I asked. Claude? ChatGPT? Have you tried GPT-4?
Not sure, some website, he said with another shrug.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
There wasn’t any doubt in those shrugs. A couple of shrugs saying: I don’t care about all that AI stuff, I’m not interested, I just want to turn it off.
And I keep thinking about it and… I don’t get it.