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Everyone who writes enthusiastically about AI already has the benefit of having worked without AI. They have been schooled in the basics. Enough of us know abou

Everyone who writes enthusiastically about AI already has the benefit of having worked without AI. They have been schooled in the basics. Enough of us know about data structures, concurrency, networks, language design etc. from the ground up that the knowledge is passed on. I worry about the world that we will be living in when a whole generation has skipped learning the basics the hard way. Given the attendance rates at various educational institutions, I fear that day is already here.

jansport123 4d ago
Right, I weirdly feel like we are entering an era where industry doesn’t invest that much in training the next generation - it feels like a rich getting richer scenario in all aspects of society
- nxobject 4d ago
  I think mathematics is feeling that concern with training acutely. The average math department pays its way by teaching in all forms and all levels: they don’t bring in the magnitude of grant money that concretely impacts a university’s budget. But they are already dealing with the consequences of that - that’s why universities that are cutting due to “low student demand” are going after math programs.
Razengan 4d ago
> I worry about the world that we will be living in when a whole generation has skipped learning the basics the hard way. Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle? Does your ability to cook good food depend upon your ability to till soil and sow seeds? I don't mean that in ass way but re: what other comments said: > it feels like a rich getting richer scenario in all aspects of society That's a problem with society, not technology. Holding back technology won't fix society.
- ericmcer 4d ago
  The tooling for industrial farming is reliable on the scale of millions though, and the same for any other innovation that has replaced older ways of working. AI is in a weird place because it is not 100% reliable, and we do not know if it ever will be, but we also do not know if it will eventually good enough to where we are irrelevant. If tractors plowed reliably 95% of the time, but unless carefully monitored the other 5% of the time they would blow a big hole in the ground, it would be difficult to abandon your shovel entirely.
- scythe 4d ago
  >Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle? You're equating life skills to professional skills. I was not taught to milk a cow, but my milk comes from someone who was. The topic is whether software engineers in a professional context learned certain things about software.
  - Razengan 4d ago
    > my milk comes from someone who was. Your milk likely comes from an automated milker machine..
- sriram_malhar 4d ago
  > Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle? Does your ability to cook good food ... Pushing that analogy, AI is the equivalent of automating everything from tilling, growing, all the way to cooking. It is as if the human is involved at the beginning in specifying what they want, and at the end, in plating up the food and consuming the product. The next generation will have no clue about the entire farm-to-table chain. It's not there yet, but rapidly making it a reality. Also, there is no one "tech". Different pieces of technology have different levels of effect on the world, and different timelines in which the world can come to terms with it. AI is the thermonuclear weapon introduced to a musket world ... it came upon us suddenly, and instantly flattened the talent/merit based economy. Now everyone has access to the same exoskeleton; the difference between muscles is not important. The second huge difference between AI (and ordinary tech) is that a literal handful of people are in control of its economics. That kind of power breeds fascism. > That's a problem with society, not technology. Semantics. The tech directly enables the incredible power imbalance, and helps seize the means of consensus and debate and reporting. There is no incentive/mechanism left to fix society. An advanced society like the US is weaponized against vaccines, and social media and AI are to blame.
  - Razengan 4d ago
    > That kind of power breeds fascism. uhmmm and what have y'all been doing to prevent fascism and wealth inequality up until the point -before- AI became a thing? What did you do about the mandatory government IDs required to access the internet? What did you do to reduce police brutality and unaccountability in the USA? AI is the ONE thing that COULD give the common peasantry a chance. ..maybe that's why so many fires are being stoked against it.. *thinking emoji*
    - sriram_malhar 4d ago
      You do realize that the same powers that have bred fascism and mandatory id requirement are hand in glove with the AI oligarchs, no? They gain with rampant use of AI disproportionately more than the peasant. The peasantry stands no chance. Unless there is a French Revolution style uprising
- rwmj 4d ago
  I haven't been schooled in farming, but my understanding of food has greatly increased since we started growing our own vegetables.
  - Razengan 4d ago
    Yes, but that still has little bearing on actual cooking skills, no?
    - rwmj 4d ago
      Knowing how to go from whatever is fresh today in the garden to a meal is a cooking skill, yes. And how to preserve gluts of fruit, also a skill.
      - Razengan 4d ago
        I mean, if I grow my garden and just provide you with the vegetables, does that affect your cooking skills in any way? In fact, if you divide your time between growing your own produce AND honing your cooking, both of those skills may suffer compared to devoting your time to just focusing on one ability. Otherwise if you try to do everything you'll never be as good as a full-time farmer or a full-time chef. or how about another analogy: Say one day your idea for a dish requires softer or sweeter carrots, etc, but oops you spent the last season only growing crunchier and mellower carrots, what're you gonna do now? With external suppliers you always have a wider choice of ingredients better suited to the end product you want at any given time.
        sriram_malhar 4d ago
        Constraints are a good thing. I'll get creative with what I have, instead of having to rely on a supply chain that makes everything available to everybody all the time. I don't have to have apples grown on the other side of the planet.
- watwut 4d ago
  Some people are schooled in farming. Farming is not some kind of lost knowledge people dont practice anymore.
- thinkingtoilet 4d ago
  >Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle? No! And good thing I'm not a farmer!
einpoklum 4d ago
I read your first sentence as: > Everyone who writes enthusiastically about AI already has the benefit of not having worked with AI ... because if you really do, and you actaully a capable developer, you become much less enthusiastic. Anyway, definitely agree with your point, and let us also remember that it is our human output and expression which LLMs are trained on.
rwmj 4d ago
We know that use of AI has a negative result for students: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/09/08/students-who-dont-use-ai-are-ahead-on-every-measure/ https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/09/08/students-who-dont-use-ai-...
hermitcrab 4d ago
Herodotus wrote about finding people living in the ruins of a great city (Babylon) who had no idea who built it or how they built it.
- AndrewOMartin 4d ago
  The city of London was abandoned for about 400 years and fell into ruins after the people who built it left.
- suddenlybananas 4d ago
  I think that anecdote is from the Anabasis by Xenophon and refers to Assyrian city of Nineveh. Babylon was still occupied during the time of Herodotus and was one of the biggest cities in the world at the time. (the book spends some time discussing Cyrus's conquest of Babylon).
  - hermitcrab 4d ago
    I thought it was Xenophon. MSCopilot assured me it was Herodotus. The irony! ;0) (I spent a few minutes checking, but couldn't find the original quote)
    - C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 4d ago
      Given the context of the thread, what you have done here fits so perfectly.
    - nsdkdkdkfk 4d ago
      [dead]

jansport123 4d ago

Right, I weirdly feel like we are entering an era where industry doesn’t invest that much in training the next generation - it feels like a rich getting richer scenario in all aspects of society

nxobject 4d ago
I think mathematics is feeling that concern with training acutely. The average math department pays its way by teaching in all forms and all levels: they don’t bring in the magnitude of grant money that concretely impacts a university’s budget. But they are already dealing with the consequences of that - that’s why universities that are cutting due to “low student demand” are going after math programs.

Razengan 4d ago

> I worry about the world that we will be living in when a whole generation has skipped learning the basics the hard way. Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle? Does your ability to cook good food depend upon your ability to till soil and sow seeds? I don't mean that in ass way but re: what other comments said: > it feels like a rich getting richer scenario in all aspects of society That's a problem with society, not technology. Holding back technology won't fix society.

ericmcer 4d ago
The tooling for industrial farming is reliable on the scale of millions though, and the same for any other innovation that has replaced older ways of working. AI is in a weird place because it is not 100% reliable, and we do not know if it ever will be, but we also do not know if it will eventually good enough to where we are irrelevant. If tractors plowed reliably 95% of the time, but unless carefully monitored the other 5% of the time they would blow a big hole in the ground, it would be difficult to abandon your shovel entirely.
scythe 4d ago
>Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle? You're equating life skills to professional skills. I was not taught to milk a cow, but my milk comes from someone who was. The topic is whether software engineers in a professional context learned certain things about software.
- Razengan 4d ago
  > my milk comes from someone who was. Your milk likely comes from an automated milker machine..
sriram_malhar 4d ago
> Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle? Does your ability to cook good food ... Pushing that analogy, AI is the equivalent of automating everything from tilling, growing, all the way to cooking. It is as if the human is involved at the beginning in specifying what they want, and at the end, in plating up the food and consuming the product. The next generation will have no clue about the entire farm-to-table chain. It's not there yet, but rapidly making it a reality. Also, there is no one "tech". Different pieces of technology have different levels of effect on the world, and different timelines in which the world can come to terms with it. AI is the thermonuclear weapon introduced to a musket world ... it came upon us suddenly, and instantly flattened the talent/merit based economy. Now everyone has access to the same exoskeleton; the difference between muscles is not important. The second huge difference between AI (and ordinary tech) is that a literal handful of people are in control of its economics. That kind of power breeds fascism. > That's a problem with society, not technology. Semantics. The tech directly enables the incredible power imbalance, and helps seize the means of consensus and debate and reporting. There is no incentive/mechanism left to fix society. An advanced society like the US is weaponized against vaccines, and social media and AI are to blame.
- Razengan 4d ago
  > That kind of power breeds fascism. uhmmm and what have y'all been doing to prevent fascism and wealth inequality up until the point -before- AI became a thing? What did you do about the mandatory government IDs required to access the internet? What did you do to reduce police brutality and unaccountability in the USA? AI is the ONE thing that COULD give the common peasantry a chance. ..maybe that's why so many fires are being stoked against it.. *thinking emoji*
  - sriram_malhar 4d ago
    You do realize that the same powers that have bred fascism and mandatory id requirement are hand in glove with the AI oligarchs, no? They gain with rampant use of AI disproportionately more than the peasant. The peasantry stands no chance. Unless there is a French Revolution style uprising
rwmj 4d ago
I haven't been schooled in farming, but my understanding of food has greatly increased since we started growing our own vegetables.
- Razengan 4d ago
  Yes, but that still has little bearing on actual cooking skills, no?
  - rwmj 4d ago
    Knowing how to go from whatever is fresh today in the garden to a meal is a cooking skill, yes. And how to preserve gluts of fruit, also a skill.
    - Razengan 4d ago
      I mean, if I grow my garden and just provide you with the vegetables, does that affect your cooking skills in any way? In fact, if you divide your time between growing your own produce AND honing your cooking, both of those skills may suffer compared to devoting your time to just focusing on one ability. Otherwise if you try to do everything you'll never be as good as a full-time farmer or a full-time chef. or how about another analogy: Say one day your idea for a dish requires softer or sweeter carrots, etc, but oops you spent the last season only growing crunchier and mellower carrots, what're you gonna do now? With external suppliers you always have a wider choice of ingredients better suited to the end product you want at any given time.
      - sriram_malhar 4d ago
        Constraints are a good thing. I'll get creative with what I have, instead of having to rely on a supply chain that makes everything available to everybody all the time. I don't have to have apples grown on the other side of the planet.
watwut 4d ago
Some people are schooled in farming. Farming is not some kind of lost knowledge people dont practice anymore.
thinkingtoilet 4d ago
>Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle? No! And good thing I'm not a farmer!

einpoklum 4d ago

I read your first sentence as: > Everyone who writes enthusiastically about AI already has the benefit of not having worked with AI ... because if you really do, and you actaully a capable developer, you become much less enthusiastic. Anyway, definitely agree with your point, and let us also remember that it is our human output and expression which LLMs are trained on.

rwmj 4d ago

We know that use of AI has a negative result for students: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/09/08/students-who-dont-use-ai-are-ahead-on-every-measure/ https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/09/08/students-who-dont-use-ai-...

hermitcrab 4d ago

Herodotus wrote about finding people living in the ruins of a great city (Babylon) who had no idea who built it or how they built it.

AndrewOMartin 4d ago
The city of London was abandoned for about 400 years and fell into ruins after the people who built it left.
suddenlybananas 4d ago
I think that anecdote is from the Anabasis by Xenophon and refers to Assyrian city of Nineveh. Babylon was still occupied during the time of Herodotus and was one of the biggest cities in the world at the time. (the book spends some time discussing Cyrus's conquest of Babylon).
- hermitcrab 4d ago
  I thought it was Xenophon. MSCopilot assured me it was Herodotus. The irony! ;0) (I spent a few minutes checking, but couldn't find the original quote)
  - C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 4d ago
    Given the context of the thread, what you have done here fits so perfectly.
  - nsdkdkdkfk 4d ago
    [dead]