The Quiet Guilt of Coding with AI
tomquirk.meDo you feel guilty about using a compiler?
An assembler?
A chip die you didn't design and tape out yourself?
What about a library?
A framework?
An external service or product?
I've looked up opcodes on a little insert and hand entered the hex digits on a little hex keyboard.
I can't say I've ever felt guilty when using MS-Dos debug to "assemble" the opcodes instead. Or MASM or turbo assembler.
What you feel is what you feel. And that might not be rational, but if your feeling is valid about using LLMs, surely the same arguments should apply to using a framework or library?
Maybe you could try moving your focus from the code to the product. Even if you use tools to produce it - the product design and quality are still yours. You chose what tools to use and how to evaluate the product quality and design.
Most of those were not built through the wholesale theft of IP at the bottom of the business model. Let's be honest here. As much as I'm an adherent of IP being an abomination, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, et al crossed a very bright and vibrant line. One they had no small part in painting. While even the most hardcore piratical mofo could motivate themselves to avail themselves of liberties they may not necessarily be socially granted for a personal project, these companies, who were the people to make a big deal in the first place that IP should be commoditizable, took it the extra step and decided to unethically turn around, and build a business off it.
You can have a change of heart. Nobody says you can't; but you don't get to go back. In that sense, I say that guilt on usage of an AI is warranted. There was a way to get there, properly and these people have admitted the only reason these things exist is because they so broke the rules of ethics wholesale. I will not reward anyone for that, and consider any work product reliant on it as indellibly tainted.
The technology I have no issues with. The manufacturing and sourcing process I absolutely do. It was taken, not given and even worse, it isn't given back, but sold back. That's not okay. Consistency matters. If we're just going to ignore rule of law, then all I've really got left to work with is shame. And one who lifts the public good, without asking and erects a tollbooth and cash register around it, is one worthy of being shamed.
Currently, we can't rely entirely on AI for coding. If you do, you'll face chaos when major changes are needed，this is the technical debt AI introduces. So just use it to learn new techniques, and don't feel guilty about that.
Just read the code, bro /i