You know, I was thinking just now that it's not that companies are pushing for AI use (I know my opinions on LLMs may seem anti-AI—but it's not true), it's how they push for its use. In my experience... looking back... I didn't mind that there was push for AI, I was really curious about them. I still think that's still the right move, developers should be using these tools to help them: they can do cool things.

But, you can't ask a developer to go out there and use LLMs and, at the same time, throw around stats and claims about it to motivate them: they simply become perceived as scare tactics. Everyone will start just agreeing with you because they don't want to lose their job, and you won't get accurate feedback.

Encouraging curiosity is the right move. Encouraging experimentation while still allowing developers to make up their own minds about their experience is key. These tools are too new to be making claims and setting expectations. I have always believed in what Steve Jobs said:

It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do, we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.

Right now this holds so true for LLMs and AI: let the developers experiment and remain curious about what helps them and what doesn't—instead of telling them that yourselves. They (and I have to be careful to explain who they are here by explaining who they are not: they are not writers, support team leads, product managers, tinkerers, and especially not founders or CEOs)—they—will find what really works and what really doesn't. The people doing the most of the work to build these things should be dictating/debating/arguing about this among themselves, and others should be listening to the discussion, not dictating it.

I use LLMs all the time, and since I gave up on responding to the scare-tactic rhetoric around AI and LLMs, I have been enjoying using it more and more. And I'm finally free to make up my own mind up about what works and what doesn't. And I'm truly enjoying working with them finally: because I'm not jamming what they are bad at into my workflows because someone who holds my job in their hands thinks I should use it that way.