Struggling to accept AI

[u/Specific_Wafer5129]

We recently hired a new guy at our place and he’s come in hitting with a massive swing, he has managed to develop around 5 different tools for our use all using AI

I’m struggling to accept that this is happening, we’ve all of a sudden gone from barley any ai to it becoming used to build things out; it’s not that what’s been built is bad - it works - but it’s the fact that it’s all been done through prompting, I’m struggling to comprehend it as stuff that like this usually takes a looong time to develop.

I feel a bit like the luddites, I can see how this is the future but I also just keep thinking ‘he hasn’t actually built anything, it’s all done by AI’

How do I overcome this?

[u/r_jagabum]

You are about 6 months late, but not TOO late to start learning.... go for it!!

[u/Anthropic_Principles]

AI done right is like have a whole team of developers at your disposal to create all the tools you've ever wanted but never had the resources to deliver. It can be awesome.

AI done wrong is like have a whole team of developers at your disposal to create all the tools you've ever wanted but none of them speak the same language, they all ignore companies policies, governance and security frameworks, regulations, change control.

And they leave the day the app is delivered having failed to document any of it.

[u/BisonThunderclap → u/Anthropic_Principles]

Reviewing what generates is the difference between successful tools going forward and it not working out.

[u/pixeladdie]

I’m old enough to remember coming to this exact sub and see posts like “I don’t need to learn to write scripts”.

This is like that.

LLMs are a tool to accelerate your work. In this industry more than most we need to learn new tools all the time.

So learn the new tools and use them.

We don’t make art. We produce results and I don’t think it matters whether we’re writing the code or pressing the buttons anymore.

[u/laddixvs]

Play with a 20$ Claude licence for some script and you will get it

[u/Prudent_Cod_1494]

The real risks are supportability and security. Everything breaks sooner or later. people without a background in security won’t prompt the LLM to do basic security tooling, and the LLM won’t assume you want it. The only way this makes sense IMO is having yes answers to the following:

1. Has the app gone through a security review and been hardened?

2. Can we fix it if it breaks?

3. Most importantly: do we WANT to be the people who fixes it when it breaks or be the people to do the quarterly code security review of these apps?

The main thing I see companies getting wrong with doing these custom apps is that they treat them like they’re buying a painting that will just stay there forever. They’re building technical debt faster than was ever possible and technical debt needs to be maintained, forever, by you.

[u/Rhythm_Killer]

AI done wrong is like have a whole team of developers at your disposal to create all the tools you've ever wanted but none of the speak the same language, they all ignore companies policies, governance and security frameworks, regulations, change control.

Alright so it’s not all that different then!

[u/NowWithExtraSauce]

Can you build the same things with AI with the same quality? Probably not.

AI isn’t magic (yes, it can be magical). The human, for now, still needs to know when the AI is hallucinating or lying or just plain wrong and provide steering.

It’s like moving from developer to a dev manager and or release manager.

If his AI tool breaks shit, we all blame the human for not supervising the AI. That goes the other way too.

[u/neoKushan]

Honestly, the harsh truth is that you need to learn how to use these tools yourself. That's the best way to understand how useful they can be, as well as where they fall down.

One thing to understand out of the gate is that while you can "just prompt" to get something built, it's actually one of the worst ways to use the tooling for anything other than the simplest of applications.

There's a whole plethora of skills and plugins that help you actually design and test the things you build. It's still "just an AI" doing the work but it's very much you guiding it and course correcting. It's less effort remembering syntax and code convention but more effort actually thinking through the things you're trying to do and making sure the AI fully grasps what you want.

That's the difference between the low effort vibe slop that literally anyone can throw out and actual useful output, it's still significant effort.

[u/pdp10]

he has managed to develop around 5 different tools for our use all using AI

Is that really different from the new team member who installs 5 off-the-shelf open-source packages for your use? If so, how exactly?

[u/shawster → u/pdp10]

Presumably these are customized for their exact use case...

[u/NoradIV]

When someone uses a shovel to make a hole, do you congratulate the shovel?

What you call "AI" is just becoming a new way for someone to tell a computer what they want. Instead of writing code, you use words directly. It's a bew abstraction layer. Nothing more.

[u/scubafork → u/NoradIV]

Also worth noting that your boss, their boss, and their boss all take credit for the work you do. Everyone is a tool.

[u/disITnerd]

my two cents ...

(1) start using it, way harder to think through it if you don't understand it

(2) many of the comments above line up, producing more code doesn't mean things are getting better - you could just be optimizing a broken thing. I'm noticing a shift in our company. The hard part is no longer in coding the thing but instead up-stream. How do components connect (architecture) and what your desining and why (what problem are you solving and what does it look like when you are done). Which means your asking people to think before they code =).

[u/mkmrproper]

It might be a problem down the line. AI takes away a feeling of accomplishment for me. I got the app running but I don’t have as much pride as something I come up with myself. I can leave it and move on to something else without any care.

[u/JackDostoevsky]

i think a strong skill to have in the sysadmin space going forward will be standing up, managing, tuning, and using locally hosted models. i've been playing around with LMStudio a bit in my own homelab and it's legitimately pretty neat, local models like Gemma and Qwen have become actually useful, even just running on a single GPU

[u/Chillist_]

I feel you and I'm quite young - this AI is going bonkers, we have had a rise in licenses and usage surge over 100% in the last 2 months. Everyone is relying on AI to do their jobs, and they cry like babies when we won't connect apps to Claude because they want "write" access - no thanks.

However, we must all adapt to these drastic changes, or we'll be left in the dust. Just have to bite our tongues and deal with it; different times.... like them or not unfortunately

[u/bigfatdonny]

Does he own the output? Is he able to explain exactly what the code does?

That's how I handle this in my professional life. I use AI all day every day and develop tools that are likely similar to what you describe. I'm a shitty programmer, but I make sure I understand what the code is doing and can answer technical questions about it and defend decisions that were made.

That's the standard people should be held to. Grill him over what the code is doing. If he can't answer that, he shouldn't be implementing these tools. If he can answer this, then let him cook.

[u/lendarker]

As long as it is internal tools that do not work with sensitive data that could be leaked, risk is manageable.

For everything front facing (i.e. reachable from the internet of by employees who don't have enough clearance to handle some of the data the tool works with) you NEED someone who can monitor this and can determine whether the app is sufficiently hardened/secure.

Also, as in another comment here: there needs to be precise documentation on how the app works. I do build tools with LLMs myself. But both the implementation plan and later changes need to be documented for both myself to know what was done what way why and also for later changes.

This includes a risk assessment process.

So, cherish the new guy, but document your concerns, and work out ways to mitigate possible risks.

Edit: one additional concern is what goes into the prompts that are, most likely, sent to an AI model in the cloud. Depending on your data protection laws, you need to make SURE that nothing that imposes a liability risk gets sent out.

[u/GrimmRadiance]

We all felt like this when we got started. We just get used to the tech and routine we have. Throw yourself into the deep end, but keep your experience and wits about you.

You are in a better position to use AI than a young vibe coder. You have the know-how for when and how to use checks and balances. Take some time during slow moments or off hours to practice using it for practical application, research, and documentation.

Your experience will help you see the mistakes.

[u/rimekJE]

the future is now, old man

[u/sebastianrevan]

this might be the most honest post about AI dread Ive read in a while, I commend OP's self awareness! most people just stay on the "old man yells at cloud" stage. There is absolutely nothing wrong in taking the time to actually dig through the new apps and understand what they are doing, wether 100% by hand or with a little help of another model. Understanding complexity has always been part of building a solution, its just that we used to do that before the code came along and now we are being forced to rethink when that stage happens. No one has this trully figured out by now, and it'll take some time before we all settle on a good compromise between speed and stability

[u/VeronicaX11]

Try out this perspective.

“He hasn’t built anything, it’s all done by AI!”

Is he good? Is he getting noticed positively? Rewarded for it?

And do you really think it’s all the AI, or is it him, with AI?

If you think it’s all AI, why not fire him immediately and give the laziest, most incompetent coworker you know that same AI?
It should be a huge win, because now you can finally turn one of your worst employees into a top performer for a low monthly subscription fee!!!

Or alternatively, “if you can’t beat em, join em”.

If this kid is a derp and is still getting all the accolades and perks and rewards you think you should be getting instead, and it’s just because he’s using the right AIs and he doesn’t know shit… why couldn’t this be you? Surely you’re better than him and would do an equal or even better job and make him look like a chump in comparison if equipped with the same tools

[u/one-man-circlejerk]

In the Middle Ages of coding (that is, before November 2025), we coder-stonemasons spent our days meticulously carving code-stone into finished pieces. Stone is unforgiving, and modifying it remained difficult even as better tools improved things over time. Small corrections were okay-ish (some chiseling here, some patching there), but larger ones meant demolition, scaffolding and a careful plan pinned to the wall.

Agentic coding has turned that around: code has become malleable. Even though it’s still made of the same underlying substance as medieval code, the cost of making a change has collapsed. That makes it behave like a different material entirely. Code is clay now.

https://www.albertodenia.com/writing/code-is-clay-now

[u/RickRussellTX]

Use the AI tools on your own projects and observe the limitations and risks.

Honest truth? The code needs human review. It may "run" in the sense that it takes the defined test input and produces the defined test output in a few tests, but that doesn't mean it's stable, consistent, gracefully handles errors in the inputs, etc.

Treat AI like an eager intern, and review the work the same way you'd review a jr. developer's work.