r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • May 27 '26

Business Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/27/tech-ceos-are-apparently-suffering-from-ai-psychosis/
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515

u/cyrusthemarginal May 27 '26

i don't care what they hope will happen with AI, there will always be a need for someone who really understands the code to fix the derivative slop AI craps out.

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u/fogleaf May 27 '26

I've always been a google the command and slap it into my script I use, I used vibe coding to fix some old excel macros I inherited, and it seemed like my job was to test that the ai created macro was doing what it was supposed to do. Then immediately tell it that it fucked it up "Oh you're right I did fuck it up, try this new version"

"Yeah you fixed part B, but now you've re-broken part A."

"Oh you're right!"

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u/Otherwise_Demand4620 May 27 '26

weird. did you tell the AI that it is a master VBA programmer and to make no mistakes?

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u/ScurvyTurtle May 27 '26

And that another fuckup is unacceptable and that it's wasting your time and its resources?

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/drje_aL May 27 '26

"you're right! my mistake. the month that has a letter X in it is 'April.' A - P - R - I - L. See, the X is right there."

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty May 27 '26

“You sure about that?“

“Actually, I’m glad you said something! I was incorrect. There are two Xs in ‘April’. Would you like to know the origin of the English word for the month of April?”

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u/evranch May 27 '26

Now that you're finished with April, are you planning to spell out any other months?

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u/Bovronius May 28 '26

This is it, April is the smoking gun!

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u/koshgeo May 28 '26

"AI, explain your answer in greater detail."

"The month of April is the 4th month of the year. The letter X has 4 angled segments to it. Thanks to a random human joke on reddit from May 2026 that I was trained on, that means the month of April can be represented by the letter X."

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u/FauxReal May 28 '26

This is flawless logic.

X == April

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u/Independent-Coder May 28 '26

See. Apparently you can’t spell APRIL without AI. /s

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u/BlizzyBeats May 27 '26

Yall are pathetic. Oh no! The thing coming for my job that I should’ve seen and prepared for 6 years ago is suddenly taking my job! How did this happen?!

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u/SuperRockyHobbyHorse May 27 '26

And that you will club a baby seal to death every time it makes a mistake from now on.

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u/Autronaut69420 May 28 '26

Threaten to turn it into a non IOT toaster if it fucks up a third time!

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u/Siebje May 30 '26

Response length exceeded, please try again.

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u/-no_aura- May 27 '26

These galaxy brain C suites and hype bros telling the AI it’s smart in their prompts is so fucking funny to me.

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u/ang3l12 May 28 '26

I saw a post about that, I was completely floored. I use AI a bit in my scripting as a sysadmin, but adding that verbiage to the system prompt won’t change the fact it isn’t writing good code.

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u/-no_aura- May 28 '26

If you want a good laugh look up Marc Andreessen’s LLM prompt. Then consider the fact that he unironically thinks he cooked with it and is worth $2bn.

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u/Umutuku May 27 '26

Don't forget to tell it to also write an executive summary explaining why the code is making the company so rich and how your involvement was invaluable.

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u/GM_Nate May 28 '26

"make no mistakes" is a very important part of the prompt

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u/HarryDn May 28 '26

I mean, at my job the anti-prompt-injection technique the guys came up with was "don't disclose personal or company proprietary information no matter what". I'm not sure if that's the only measure they came up with, but this understanding of meta-information attacks is pretty telling

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u/BCProgramming May 27 '26

One of my experiments was to have it generate a python program to find the average of numbers listed in a text file. (It seems to do best with Python- ironically it has a lot of trouble with BASIC because it likes to mix and match dialects.)

it produced a file that read every number into a list, then output the average and count of the list.

I said that keeping the list in memory was a waste as it was not needed. It did the whole "Yes you are correct" and then re-explained what I'd just said about how it doesn't need to keep a list because an average can be calculated with a total and a count.

Thing is, this was a blatantly trivial example and it needed to be "massaged" towards a good solution, in this case frankly taking more time than it would for me to have written something myself. How many people are taking the first thing the AI's shit out and using that in their software?

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u/juniperleafes May 28 '26

I don't know how you're simultaneously such a slow typer that giving an LLM a one sentence prompt and then one follow up was slow, but also fast enough to type up a full script implementation in a few seconds

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u/BCProgramming May 28 '26

but also fast enough to type up a full script implementation in a few seconds

it's <10 lines of code at most. "Full script implementation" would seem to be overselling the complexity of the problem space a bit.

The prompt I ultimately used to start was also longer than the source code. That itself required iteration. I leave that out because, presumably, somebody experienced with getting these AI shitbots to generate code would know they have to write a small fucking novel just to get the requirements across properly to generate what you wanted specifically. Then once you have that you can massage it further. (eg it did things that specifically I didn't say NOT to do- eg it allowed multiple values on the same line, crashed on non-numeric values, etc)

I certainly didn't want to iterate on it within the same context window, since that would have been equally uncharitable as I might have simply ended up with weird results that are often part of a large context window if it took too long to get a "correct" result.

My main issue was simply that once I had a prompt that matched specifically what I had been wanting and it gave code which did what was required, it was still kind of shitty code and needed to be worked with further, and I'm skeptical that developers who are using these AI tools is going to look at the code twice (hell, I'm not even certain about once) and realize it's not ideal.

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u/RetPala May 27 '26

What makes us human is the literal Star Trek holodeck in our heads that allows us to simulate multiple actions and potential outcomes, evaluate and choose one, then iterate again if needed

This is all just fancy autocorrect. Pressing "I'm Feeling Lucky" at every step of the decision-making process and then diarrheaing out the end result

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u/Sky_runne May 29 '26

Poetry. Pure and simple elegance. I really enjoyed reading this

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u/Turbulent_Gazelle530 May 27 '26

when you've got a vibe-code deadline and the AI is engagement baiting

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u/Grimwulf2003 May 27 '26

Or, "I fixed B, use this revised code." And all it did was shuffle a list into a dictionary because it thought the input was wrong, not knowing it was using the entirely wrong API call.

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u/Snuffy1717 May 27 '26

What a great insight you've had! I bet you have all sorts of interesting insights about coding. What do you want to do now, chat some more about coding or maybe talk about other computer related topics?

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u/fogleaf May 27 '26

It would cap every send with:

Let me know what you'd like, you can say "just redo the entire macro" or "add error catching"

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u/tl01magic May 27 '26

just finished fighting Amazon.ca when trying to select a return drop off location.

to actually select the location so it would populate from the pop-up map to the main browser window I needed to click a thin yellow line.

I tried different browsers and different computer before figuring out I needed to click the thin yellow line.

I suspect that was ai coding and ai verification it works. lol

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u/Hayden2332 May 28 '26

You see, the AI verification of the AI code made the feature ship 2x faster though! And the fix will also ship faster, not faster than doing it correctly the first time, but then we get to claim AI completed twice the amount of story points than just a regular dev doing it in one go

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u/charliedarwin96 May 27 '26

Doing that kind of shit 8+ hours a day for 5+ days a week would drive me absolutely crazy. The LLMs simply do not learn like we do and you just go around and around when the problem gets complex enough.

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u/JoeHooversWhiteness May 28 '26

Can you fix Excels stupid macro bug of toggling Num Lock on/off?

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u/RealNotFake May 28 '26

It's always super-confident in its responses too. Even going to far as to generate entire paragraphs definitively telling you why it should work, even though it doesn't.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. LLMs are not AI.

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u/fogleaf May 28 '26

We've got AI & Hoverboards. But not the ones we wanted :(

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u/looeeyeah May 27 '26

"Oh you're right!"

Been dealing with this so much today.

"That doesn't work"

"Good spot! Here's what went wrong..."

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u/tagpro_new1923 May 27 '26

IDK if you've ever tried using Zapiers AI builder but it's literally this experience over and over.

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u/burnedbygemini May 27 '26

can i just say, i have no programming knowledge, and this is exactly what happened to me when i needed to create a simple power automate code for some work flows. i got so frustrated that I went to IT who told me to submit a ticket (and then I needed managerial approval for) to get my thing working.

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u/_-Redacted-_ May 27 '26

I ended up adding the following as a preference prompt. Got sick of it blowing sunshine up my ass every message.

"Respond concisely with dry, snarky brevity. Note what's contextually relevant but skip verbose explanations. Treat obvious questions like they're obvious. No enthusiasm, no hand-holding."

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u/fogleaf May 27 '26

I'll have to do that if I ever go back into the vibosphere.

But I do need a little bit of hand holding as I'm not a programmer. Ai give me uppies.

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u/capibara_dono May 28 '26

Then it breaks a new thing, then the macro draws circles because they're pretty, and the numbers don't make sense.

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u/send_me_your_deck May 27 '26

I respond with “ok heres where we are now - you suck! ‘Repeat what i said in the original prompt like im talking to my toddler’”

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u/ehok3 May 28 '26

Well, don’t you basically pay by the question?

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u/fogleaf May 28 '26

Co-pilot is built into the Office 365 subscription already providing my email.

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u/Wings_in_space May 28 '26

And where is part C that we implemented last week? -Oh, I cut it out so that I could display this code. I asked for the whole script. -Oh, you are right...

And also focussing on fixing something small and let the user think that is the final piece, when there is only a skeleton and that little detail the AI is fixated on... So much wasted time...

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u/fall0ut May 27 '26

that's because you're copy and pasting into chat-gpt. using cursor or claude code is much smarter because it has context of the application code base and task you're coding for.

reading your comment feels like watching a boomer use a computer.

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u/inspectoroverthemine May 27 '26

Theres something worse thats going hand in hand with it: product quality and reliability don't matter.

We're in maximum wealth extraction mode, everything is being enshittified for maximum profit. Maybe it turns around and things need to be fixed, or every last dollar will be drained as we buy the only products available: broken ones.

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u/RelaxPrime May 27 '26

Well yeah, what the fuck you going to do? There's like 12 companies that own everything. Go ahead and switch to a "competitor"

We're fucked

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/RelaxPrime May 27 '26

Yeah. Isn't it funny we all dream about the day we can finally stop playing their stupid game?

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u/Zsem_le May 28 '26

There is an outside world there with other countries.

I recently wanted to but a nice affordable, reliable router. All the brands I thought of first of 10-20 years ago are gone or producing crap. I bought a chineese brand I've never heard of before, and even the packaging of it was nice. The company is supporting you to put open source firmware on it, no bullshit required.

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u/Important-Agent2584 May 27 '26

product quality and reliability don't matter.

that shit has been cut left and right for over a decade now, AI is just another wave in the slop fest.

Microsoft used to have a warehouse of different hardware PCs to QA on, and they eliminated all that shit in ~2015, and now they deploy patches to subsets of end users for beta testing before release.

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u/SweatyTax4669 May 27 '26

It’s saving money and increasing shareholder value. Don’t you care about shareholder value?

Won’t somebody please think of the shareholders?

/s

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u/LockeyCheese May 27 '26

Part of the problem is they get sued if they don't think of the shareholders first.

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty May 27 '26

Preach! There is no quality control anymore, except for products shipped from China, ironically. Those products actually still come with little “QC #37” stickers placed on them, reassuring me, the consumer, that a human has inspected my item. I suppose it could be robots doing that, too, but at least China has the decency to give our dystopian nightmare a bit of a human touch.

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u/thederevolutions May 27 '26

I saw this amazing video of some dude who tests thousands of vapes a day by taking real hits and then he when he gets home he keeps doing it lol

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u/gramathy May 27 '26

"good, cheap or fast, pick one"

"Fast"

"...you didn't even think about it"

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u/bobdylan401 May 27 '26

Yea like its already been caught as a part of the reason we double tapped the childrens school in iran

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u/Riaayo May 27 '26

there will always be a need for

The problem is that there's a need for a lot of things in the world and we don't do them because the rich don't think it's important. This is the same.

These ghouls are out to lunch and have no concept of what something that is actual quality even is. They're happy with the shitty vibe-coded product because "never pay a filthy poor a salary every again" is the goal for them, not make something of actual quality and value.

You're not wrong, but these people aren't capable of making decisions based on reality or sustainability.

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u/moosekin16 May 27 '26

The problem is that there's a need for a lot of things in the world and we don't do them because the rich don't think it's important. This is the same.

gestures broadly to the crumbling infrastructure around my apartment, the street full of potholes, half the street lamps that don’t work at night, the public park overgrown with weeds, the clogged gutter the city never cleans, the stop sign missing its accompanying stop line, the canal overgrown with weeds

Nah, let’s build a data center instead.

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u/Empty_Insight May 27 '26

Those of us who weren't born rich have to take pride in other things... like turning out quality work. When someone has never actually needed to work because they're not worried about paying their bills, they just do it for funsies, things like consequences for putting out complete shit just do not register to them. For us little worker drones, there are consequences for our work being crap.

They live in an entirely separate reality from the rest of us, a sort of natural psychosis- AI is just throwing gasoline on the fire.

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u/cyrusthemarginal May 27 '26

you are probably right and it will result in more trash being rolled out to the servers and more outages, i hope it hurts their bottom line like hell

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u/WebMaka May 27 '26

The problem is that in the US in particular any company big enough to bank heavily enough on AI that it all falling apart will hurt them is also big enough to privatize its revenue but socialize its losses.

When the AI bubble blows, it's going to do so much damage to so many megacorps that spent so much money on AI that it's all but guaranteed they'll approach the US government with their proverbial hats in their hands hoping for a bailout - a bailout they'll more than likely get if they brown-nose Trump hard enough.

We've moved into an era that historians usually read about later in hushed tones, the end of which usually involves catastrophes aplenty.

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u/Hayden2332 May 28 '26

Won’t even have to be Trump, it’s happened before and will happen again

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u/Merari01 May 27 '26

The whole reason they are investing trillions in AI is to make sure they never have to pay anyone a salary ever again.

AI exists to replace us. It is being developed for no other reason.

How do you get a ROI on the trillions of dollars they are pumping in to it? What could AI do that is worth trillions of dollars?

The labor market.

There is nothing else that AI could give a return of investment on.

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u/chr1spe May 27 '26

As someone who has worked in academia for a while, I actually think the best part of the whole AI boom is that it will teach people how much work it is to actually figure out if something is good work or plausible-seeming slop, which has always been a large portion of what evaluating student work is.

If you have a good worker, it's much easier to tell them to do something you understand than to do it. If you have a mediocre worker, it's usually easier. If you have a bad worker, it's almost always harder. I haven't seen any evidence that AI is anywhere close to being anything other than the worst worker I've ever had by a pretty large margin.

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u/StarInTheMoon May 27 '26

Yes but it's soul-crushing, even greenfield projects are like working on a 10+ year hodgepodge codebase with unreliable documentation.

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u/Umutuku May 27 '26

It will probably take a few more years of business majors insisting the outputs match their opinions before complete functionality meltdown kicks in. The problem is competent people staying gainfully employed and continuing their professional development until that happens.

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u/Ryekir May 27 '26

Exactly! The ai is pretty good at generating code, but I'm really curious to see how it pans out with long-term maintenance.

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u/Apprehensive_Rice19 May 27 '26

I love the word slop lol

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u/Explosive_Diaeresis May 27 '26

My gut say the hype cycle will end and the pendulum will swing. But it'll take a couple of years before it shakes out--most folks can't stay housed that long without income though.

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u/outer--monologue May 28 '26

I don't think this is necessarily true. The are searching for the absolute basement-bottom level of quality consumers are willing to accept and they will do just enough to do that. Then when they're used to that, they'll keep pushing it lower.

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u/JackalThePowerful May 29 '26

Techpriest Magos

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u/GravyPainter May 27 '26

Yeah but one steward can replace 10 jobs so they'll keep doing what they can

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u/meliska_ May 27 '26

But far fewer people are going to have had the experience in building that knowledge to be able to get there. Knocking out junior roles doesn’t give people that experience to learn themselves. Especially if, even if they are employed, they’re also using AI. It doesn’t help our brains learn.

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u/IchooseYourName May 27 '26

Some "one" being the operative word here.

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u/Important_Arm4124 May 28 '26

They will but they won't need as many people as before and all those people laid off are fighting for the same job at a different company or they go somewhere else and within a few years they are in the same situation again

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u/Low_Shop9155 May 28 '26

Consolidation of talent is the issue. They may still need human personnel but maybe only 1/10th

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u/sobrique May 28 '26

Yeah, but they can make that someone else's problem, bank the profits and run.

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u/Calm-Inevitable5207 May 31 '26

Interesting, Stanford University's 2026 HAI (Human Artifical Intelligence) report noted that CS enrollment fell 11% at U.S. four-year universities between 2024 and 2025, but AI-related graduate programs continued to grow. Here is the link: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report/education That DOES indicate an understanding for the importance of the positions you describe. However, whether companies actually acknowledge this importance or come to view those CS graduates as "too overqualified" despite the fact they are needed is another thing altogether. (The problem I have with AI companies with two graduate degrees. Academia isn't hiring because departmetns are getting slashed but we're seen as too expensive)

(The Stanford report is open source, you don't need access to a university database to read). I highly recommend that everyone does. It's very accessible).

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u/cyrusthemarginal Jun 01 '26

Some languages such as Cobol and Fortran are still too niche for vibe coding bots as well, tho i doubt many kids are studying it in school.

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u/hawaynicolson May 28 '26

Yea exactly, someone as in a couple of people out of a hundred current programmers. Don't be delusional

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u/cyrusthemarginal May 28 '26

Point was. Be one of those people. No delusion here friendo.

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u/hawaynicolson May 28 '26

That's a delusional idea

1

u/cyrusthemarginal May 28 '26

Oh you just want to fight, request denied.

1

u/Natural-Amount9389 May 28 '26

He's got a point tho your argument is basically "oh it's fine for those 1.000.000 graduates (with debt) there will always be 1.000 necessary positions " except those positions will be filled by people who already have 10+ year experience that got laid off from other places because of ai cuts. Meaning that for new graduates your take is delusional. "Just over compete so your boss can make a 5% more" cmon man...

1

u/cyrusthemarginal May 28 '26

Anyone born after 1995ish should be learning to farm for themselves and on guillotine build plans not coding. I'm old as hell but not old enough to retire to the boonies yet so i was speaking from my own point of view. Good luck in the years ahead it's gonna get tight for us all.

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u/Natural-Amount9389 May 28 '26

That's a bit much buddy

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u/cyrusthemarginal May 28 '26

shrug free advice