(Begin quote)
You're making a fair point that many people are treating AI like a replacement for thinking rather than a tool for reasoning. And yes — a lot of sloppy “vibe-coded” output is already flooding the internet. But I think your framing misses the deeper shift:
AI isn't just search — it's interactive cognition
Search retrieves.
LLMs synthesize, evaluate, and transform information.
Sure, the most product use cases today resemble "smart search assistants":
But that's not "just search".
It is a general reasoning assistant.
The difference is subtle but huge.
On coding: the bottleneck isn’t typing — it’s understanding You’re right: blindly generating code is dangerous.
Bad developers using AI = more bad code faster Great developers using AI = faster design, better abstractions.
Typing isn't the job.
Thinking is.
The people “switching seats with AI” weren't engineers to begin with — they were people who never understood why software design matters.
AI didn’t create them. It just exposed them.
Review cost vs. productivity
You mentioned reviewing AI work sometimes erases the time saved. True — for now.
But historically, every automation wave has a phase where:
✅ Output becomes reliable
✅ Human insight becomes optional or lighter
✅ Experts move up-stack to architecture and intent shaping.
That is already happening in:
The work shifts from writing code to supervising intent execution.
"AI should only handle things I don't care about"
Respectfully — that sounds like using a sports car to deliver groceries.
Useful, but underestimating the machine.
AI today is an early form of software-shaping intelligence, not just a search upgrade.
If we trap it in the mindset of “autocomplete-plus,” we’ll miss the transition from code we write manually to systems we specify and validate.
The real danger isn't AI coding -- it's AI replacing understanding.
Tools don't remove thinking.
People choosing not to think do.
Good engineers will use AI to accelerate mastery, not avoid it.
Thats on point
People choosing not to think do.
Brilliantly said.
I've been experimenting with some AI tools and techniques in a clinical supply chain organization. The results have been no less than stunning (and a little scary.)
When I talk to others in the organization, many are skeptical; they've worked in an environment where we cultivated expertise over time, tweaking forecasts, understanding clinical trial design, to predicting enrollment patterns, and to optimizing distribution networks. It was knowledge that we never expected to be replaced with AI.
I even encouraged people--"AI will not replace your job, but if you don't learn how to use it, you'll be run over by others who have."
We're still far from issuing pink slips to anyone in our organization, but it's clear to see that we'll need to encourage a new way of thinking about our work. I've been toying with the "Digital Assistant" idea, where people delegate all the challenging work throughout the day and the employee validates the output.