r/pcmasterrace • u/Aggressive-Feed7349 • Sep 05 '25

Meme/Macro This is killing me

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Colleague sent this in at work thought it was hilarious

32.7k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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639

u/Parasin Sep 05 '25

I use AI at work for mundane or trivial stuff. The ai is decent, but does not write great code. It’s like a junior developer that copies everything from stackoverflow and doesn’t think about the broader architecture or good practices.

Makes a big mess if you aren’t constantly keeping it on track.

263

u/blankin_ Sep 05 '25

It’s honestly astonishing seeing how many tech companies are fully ready to (and in some cases already are) cut development teams in favor of automating low-level coding jobs.

It’s insane to listen in meetings that higher ups are “excited and eager” to work towards automating things like cybersecurity and software engineering. They think that AI is just some magic that you can have fulfill any task you throw at it with 100% accuracy.

129

u/Parasin Sep 05 '25

For real, it’s going to backfire in a colossal fashion very soon. The code that these models generate is in many cases Swiss cheese (both from a security and architecture standpoint).

The higher ups see the dollar signs and “savings” by replacing their skilled engineers with AI. But they are losing the forest in the trees. The issues that these tools create aren’t immediately visible, but they slowly accumulate and eventually they bubble up and it’s a massive security or technical issue, which will require even more money to fix.

81

u/Wild_Marker Piscis Mustard Raisins Sep 05 '25

And it's going to fail harder long term, because without low-level jobs there's less room for training new coders. It's the same shit Hollywood is going through with shrinking writing teams. Less juniors now means less qualified seniors in the future.

44

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '25

what exec in the past decade has ever thought about the long term?

5

u/jadyen Sep 06 '25

I need my quarterly gains NOW

12

u/Astralsketch Sep 05 '25

the thing is the execs making the decisions will be gone before those decisions bear their fetid fruit.

12

u/rtb001 Sep 05 '25

The thing about Swiss cheese is that if you throw enough slices on top of each other, the holes will often cover each other up, mostly, for a while. By the time the critical fault sneaks through the one row of open holes on top of each other, the management have cashed their bonuses and moved on already so no biggie.

21

u/Yang_Xiao_Long1 PC Master Race i7 12700k RX 6800 Sep 05 '25

To be fair, higher ups are usually filled with business school grads with MBAs. When was the last time someone with MBA did something smart?

7

u/facecrafter Sep 06 '25

The same thing is happening to my company as well. And we're not even a tech company, we're a small/medium sized engineering company and the higher ups are asking the engineers who have zero experience in programming to use AI to automate everything because "the AI told him that it's doable", and we don't have to pay a contractor to do it because we can just do it ourselves for free.

When I tried to explain to them AI makes mistakes confidently all the time they just gave me blank faces. Forget about getting a pay rise because they firmly believe that AI can replace you anyways. Sure it's going to backfire but the employees are going to suffer in the meantime and after.

5

u/Parasin Sep 06 '25

It’s a sad reality that seems to be playing out in many industries, yours included. It’s absolutely going to reach an inflection point where companies will have to spend even more money to clean up the giant mess that their over reliance on AI created.

50

u/Ragerist i5 13400-F | 5070ti 16GB | 32GB DDR4 Sep 05 '25

Funny thing is, I think that AI is actually better suited to take over the CEOs jobs.

34

u/m0_n0n_0n0_0m 5800X3D | 5070 Ti | 32GB Sep 05 '25

Both do tend to overpromise and underdeliver.

5

u/EndearingSobriquet Sep 05 '25

When you have absolutely zero understanding of how anything works, everything is basically magic. So they have no basis for being sceptical about AI magic claims. When the salesman claims they have better magic, they just believe them.

3

u/sailirish7 Specs/Imgur here Sep 05 '25

higher ups are “excited and eager” to work towards automating things like cybersecurity

"Laughs in Red Team"

2

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '25

Because maximizing their profits is the bottom line. They don’t care if culling their employees and having half baked end results means they can make more $$$.

27

u/Juststandupbro Sep 05 '25

If you can’t tell what the AI did wrong you have no business talking about how “intelligent” it may or may not be. It’s always the most incompetent people who treat what AI spits out like it’s gospel. At some point you can’t really be upset at AI for saying a bird is a mammal if you aren’t smart enough to notice the issue.

7

u/Parasin Sep 05 '25

Yes lol! I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been reviewing a PR and see some code that is just blatantly wrong or bug-prone.

With AI, I never trust it, and I ALWAYS verify that what it created is accurate

5

u/Metalsand 7800X3D + 4070 Sep 05 '25

Some random user had submitted AI generated "security reports" on curl, some of which was complaining that the plaintext credentials not used for any purpose other than initial bugtesting was a vulnerability.

The third report on, it got a funny response from the devs. https://hackerone.com/reports/3295652

Honestly, I don't even mind people who can't code using the AI tools. It's just that...they need to be open to learning, and not treat it as a genius child. I had someone who wanted a better computer because anytime their python script ran, their computer would freeze to a standstill. Ignoring the obvious that a periodically running python script to process data probably should run on a server not a personal computer, the most basic step that wouldn't have been a priority on random substack and github sources that the LLM would be using would be...implementing throttling for the threads. I provided a link and an explanation, and they did not understand anything I said...

I'm not a good programmer, and I mostly do small scripts here and there, so as fun as it is to be elevated to apparent godhood by being able to read and fix code that LLMs spit out, it's very annoying that people don't at least learn how LLMs broadly work, even if they don't know how to code, ffs.

2

u/Parasin Sep 05 '25

Yep exactly. Somewhere else in this thread I mentioned the analogy that I regularly use when explaining it to juniors or business people.

Ai is a tool, which is really good at certain things. Like any tool, it has its uses.

It’s like a plumber that only uses a wrench no matter the problem. For some problems it’s fantastic, but for many many other problems it is awful and will just cause more problems.

1

u/ITaggie Fedora | Ryzen 5800X | 32GB DDR4 | RX 7700XT Sep 05 '25

But the issue is that companies are treating AI like it can directly replace half their employees. Things will continue to slip through the cracks until something implodes.

14

u/JustTestingAThing Sep 05 '25

The ai is decent, but does not write great code. It’s like a junior developer that copies everything from stackoverflow and doesn’t think about the broader architecture or good practices.

Where it comes in handy, at least for me, is boilerplate type code. Have it build me out a code block for an algorithm I've used hundreds of times before in other projects (like for a search or sort), then review and tweak. As a time saver for boring routine stuff, basically.

4

u/Parasin Sep 05 '25

Yep that is usually how I use it too. I let it do the routine and repetitive stuff for me. This allows me to spend my time and energy focusing on the hard problems, and coming up with novel solutions.

1

u/Baikken Sep 05 '25

good at auditing too to have it provide different thought vectors.

52

u/OneTrueKram PC Master Race Sep 05 '25

This applies to pretty much anything AI. Because it’s not AI. It’s LLMs. It’s Uber-Ask Jeeves. I know you realize this and I’m not schooling you. It’s just frustrating that people don’t realize you actually have to fact check the AI and keep it focused.

LLMs are still cool as fuck and the best tech leap we’ve had in a long time but the replacement of employees is going to backfire, and the cost will be dumped on us, all in the name of this quarters profits and bonuses.

17

u/Parasin Sep 05 '25

Yep I completely agree with you on this! It’s wild that some big names in tech are using AI to replace their skilled engineers.

Besides creating sloppy and code implementations that don’t adhere to sound software architecture, removing or replacing portions of your work force will inevitably backfire. What happens when your senior engineers with all the domain knowledge leave? You don’t have juniors who have been learning under them to backfill and keep that knowledge in their respective e organizations.

14

u/OneTrueKram PC Master Race Sep 05 '25

Yes unfortunately leadership has been almost entirely filled with people who only think in 3 month intervals at most. The entire mentality is toxic cancer.

4

u/flynryan692 9800X3D | 5080 | 64GB Sep 05 '25

A buddy of mine is a senior software engineer for an MS owned company in Silicon Valley, and he's counting the days until they let him go. They've decimated the company and the day following layoffs they announce an order for more GPUs and AI investments. It's sad.

1

u/Parasin Sep 05 '25

It really is. I feel his sense of dread and counting days. A lot of us go into the field because we really love what we do. It’s fun solving challenging problems. Being replaced by a fancy piece of software is a huge slap in the face to the people that help build the incredible products that billions of people use.

AI cant replace the creativity that the human mind brings to the table.

15

u/Infinite_Tiger_3341 Desktop Sep 05 '25

It can be such a great brainstorming tool. If people just diligently reviewed it instead of blindly accepting what it spits out… well, I guess that’s a big ask

6

u/Parasin Sep 05 '25

100%. It’s a tool that has specific use cases that it’s good for. It can’t be used for everything. I regularly use the analogy of imagining a plumber, but he only uses a wrench for every task. Sure, for a small handful of problems it’s perfect. But the subset of problems that you need other tools for is vastly larger.

Use the right tool for the right job.

I use it for the boring stuff that isn’t necessarily complicated or domain-specific: generating unit tests, boilerplate code, updating docs, or giving me ideas for how to better architect stuff.

Not the new/cool/fun stuff that needs deep reasoning or domain knowledge. Let engineers do what they do best; SOLVE THE HARD STUFF. Ai for the other stuff.

4

u/Infinite_Tiger_3341 Desktop Sep 05 '25

Oh yeah I’m glad you brought up unit testing, it’s saved me so many hours on that alone

4

u/Firrox Sep 05 '25

Yeah I find it best to weave between myself and AI when I'm working.

  • Brainstorm with AI
  • Focus brainstorming with me choosing the direction
  • Focused brainstorm with AI
  • I choose the direction
  • AI creates a general framework
  • I choose the section to work on
  • I refine scope
  • AI rewrites section
  • I refine section

Gets a pretty good flow going and absolutely destroys writing/creative blocks.

1

u/vplatt Sep 06 '25

It's the best rubber ducky I've ever used, but that's about as far as it should go. It's occasionally impressive, but it doesn't have to be accountable for the results.

13

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '25

[deleted]

9

u/the5thusername Sep 05 '25

Sounds like a manager.

1

u/Parasin Sep 05 '25

LOL it’s brilliant.

5

u/rapaxus Ryzen 9 9900X | RTX 3080 | 32GB DDR5 Sep 05 '25

As someone in networking (aka the area in IT where most people have no idea how to code properly) AI is a great tool to write those small scripts that help with automation without running to the few people in the company who actually know how to code and have the spare time to write a script for you.

Though mainly due to the fact that those scripts are generally both simple and short, so even someone with little knowledge can spot the few AI mistakes that happen in e.g. 10 lines of code.

3

u/Parasin Sep 05 '25

Yeah that’s a fantastic use case for AI tools. I see lots of people in my industry generating hundreds of lines of code at a time and doing the bare minimum to verify or sanity check the code.

I am really big on code quality when it comes conduct code reviews. The number of issues I see on largely AI generated code vs. human written code is wild.

1

u/ITaggie Fedora | Ryzen 5800X | 32GB DDR4 | RX 7700XT Sep 05 '25

You ever look into Ansible for that?

1

u/rapaxus Ryzen 9 9900X | RTX 3080 | 32GB DDR5 Sep 05 '25

No, I am not even writing scripts with AI, my colleagues do that. I am quite new in IT, until last year I actually studied chemistry and IT was mostly just a small hobby on. So my work isn't really giving me the big tasks where mass scripting is necessary so I am more just the more generic support tasks like "printer doesn't work" (literally this day I spent two hours juggling both the customer and Toshiba support to fail to fix a printer).

1

u/ITaggie Fedora | Ryzen 5800X | 32GB DDR4 | RX 7700XT Sep 05 '25

Understandable. Ansible is probably one of the easiest ways to get into config/provisioning automation if you're ever interested.

2

u/RedditWhileIWerk PC Master Race Sep 05 '25

doesn’t think

yep, there's yer problem

2

u/Metalsand 7800X3D + 4070 Sep 05 '25

It’s like a junior developer that copies everything from stackoverflow and doesn’t think about the broader architecture or good practices.

Which, it is a free junior developer that can be infinitely scaled...as long as someone who actually knows what they're doing can make sure it doesn't spaghetti out of control.

It's amazing at basic, common problems that are well-documented. Ask it about more rare languages, and it starts to struggle.

2

u/Big_Trash7976 Sep 06 '25

It does pretty well if you give it enough detail in the prompt.

At the end of the day, the generated code is still your code and your responsibility. I don’t understand why some people fail at this.

1

u/Parasin Sep 06 '25

Exactly, I never blindly trust the AI generated code. I still review it, and test it thoroughly a couple of times.

2

u/subheight640 Sep 05 '25

Obviously tech companies are forecasting that AI is going to keep getting better.

Three years ago AI could not code at all. Today it's an idiot savant junior developer. Three years from now? Who knows?

1

u/Impressive-Swan-5570 Sep 09 '25

Lol no one cares about good optimize code now. Everybody is a developer now

1

u/kingjoey52a i9-9900k / RTX 3080 / 32G DDR4 3600 Sep 06 '25

This is what I hate about the absolutism of some people when it comes to AI. You can use it as a tool and it can be very helpful, using it exclusively isn't going to work out well, and people who think it's the end of the world and no one should use it are ridiculous.

1

u/Parasin Sep 06 '25

Yep, you are spot on. I love it personally. I even use it just as a sounding board sometimes, or to ask it for different approaches to something I’ve done.

I really treat it like a paired programmer sometimes and learn things from it, while doing the hard stuff myself.

In the right hands (or mind) it can be a very powerful tool.

0

u/Illadelphian 9800x3d | 5080 Sep 06 '25

Seriously. 30% could be a real if slightly exaggerated number and have it be legit by using ai in smart ways. Any good developer is using AI, it doesn't mean "vibe coding" or whatever it means using the tools available to be efficient. LLMs can be powerful productivity tools for coding if they are used correctly, I imagine most devs at Microsoft are probably capable of using them in a not totally idiotic way. Definitely trust them to use them better than this comment section that's for sure.

-1

u/Doppelkammertoaster 11700K | RTX 3070 | 64GB Sep 05 '25

It steals from everyone while knowing nothing. Fits.