zetalyrae's 'Taking AI Seriously': programmers' AI advice keeps retreating like a losing war
zetalyrae · x · 2026-11-15
- In a new post on borretti.me, zetalyrae argues that programmers' advice on integrating AI fails because it assumes the technology will freeze at writing time. Laid on a timeline, the takes retreat steadily: "tab completion is useful but you need repo-wide context" → "agents are useful but produce slop" → "you still need to review code" → "code was never the hard part" (where we are now) → eventually "writing code by hand is malpractice."
- He likens it to a losing state's wartime propaganda: each tale of heroic victory lands closer to the capital.
- The failure mode is not "taking AI seriously." He notes "AGI-pilled" conflates short timelines (weak evidence) with transformative consequences (easy to believe). Citing Borges's Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, he concludes: taking AI seriously means considering it possible that the world will be remade by AI.
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