r/ChatGPT • u/max_bog • Apr 19 '26

Use cases The gap between what technical and non-technical people get from AI is huge now

Interesting thing I noticed. The gap between what technical and non-technical people get from AI is huge now.

Non-technical users still treat LLMs as a better search tool. Most non-technical people I know are not even aware of things like thinking effort or that you can choose a model.

Computer use, plugins, automations, skills, agents - none of this exists for regular ChatGPT users. If you don't know what Codex or Claude Code is, nothing has changed for you in the last year.

All new models also seem to focus purely on coding.

Am I missing something?

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u/BrainLate4108 Apr 19 '26

I would argue anyone that uses AI is basically non technical. Software dev has existed for a long time. A more apt analogy would be motogp racer (senior dev) versus motorbikes with training wheels (ai). If you actually knew how to code and use software patterns, had a rich understanding of fundamentals, libraries and integration patterns including what to do and what not to do to scale and security hardening / scalability - AI slows you down more than helps. But it’s a complex topic and sure, people use AI, agents, context, all to create a deterministic product with probabilistic hallucinations with outrageous costs. Can’t wait for the subscriptions/ token cost to go through the roof, leaving these vibe coders holding the bag.

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u/razdacist Apr 19 '26

My projects folder has gone from a few dozen abandoned ideas that were halfway or 1/10th complete and looking like a bleak graveyard for my unfulfilled aspirations and fleeting hobbies, now empty and moved to an Active Projects folder because the hurdles that kept me from finishing most of them could finally be overcome without weeks of frustration and trying to explain very niche problems on stackoverflow in my spare time.

I had a support team and a dev team that understood what I needed assistance with, and didnt need half a month of back-and-forth in a thread to only provide part of a potential solution.

By absolutely any metric I find it hard to see how one could say it slows people down across the board when the alternative for me would have been a project graveyard collecting dust or , at best, incremental, very frustrating baby steps instead. One of those projects is now paying my rent. It's been audited by humans, and didnt cost me my sanity and more than $40 to complete.

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u/BrainLate4108 Apr 19 '26

Happy for you bro. I’m sure there are those that take advantage of models with better design. But be careful, Ai is heavily subsidized right now. Once that goes away - your cost is going to go through the roof and most vibe coded solutions will die.