What skills are being developed by non-devs prompting AI to churn out code they don't understand? Note that I'm not debating if the code is good or works or whatever, I'm asking if any real skills are being developed merely by prompting AI towards some goal.
How could it possibly work? Except she got through setting up her own Apple dev account, all the certificates, subscription entitlement, revenuecat integration, TestFlight, all the paperwork that goes along with a listing and all of that in about 3 weeks. She submitted her app to the AppStore for review last friday.
She didn't learn any coding but she sure as hell produced a pretty good mobile app with a subscription payment system all on her own with the help of ChatGPT and ClaudeCode. She's also producing different tools that run on her website which is hosted on squarespace. I have no idea how she's doing it but she has all these little questionairre and decision tree pages backed by google sheets. She's the second non-coder i've seen really blossom with AI and just run with it building stuff she's always wanted but never knew how.
If they are producing code, there is some knowledge being absorbed. Nobody is using AI to create an app is learning zero.
Its just what they are learning, is not as much as they think, and really random, not-structured. Like reading just a few random chapter of a book across multiple classes. They get a smattering of ad-hoc tidbits of knowledge.
I am really worried if using AI is reducing someone's already gained knowledge. Moving someone backwards. That has me a bit more scared.
Maybe not actually absolutely zero, but it's much closer to zero than what they would learn creating the app themselves
It absolutely is. It removes a lot of friction from pathways that kept previous knowledge firm.
This isn't unique to AI. When calculators came around, people had a new tool that decreased the need to do arithmetic in your head. This has lead to a decline in the percentage of people who knew arithmetic, but can no longer do it adequately without the external tool. Another example would be assembly skills declining amongst software engineers after compiled languages become dominant.
What I would argue is unique to AI is two-fold. The first being that the scale of things being automated is enormous. Keeping with just software, AI isn't only a tool that decreases the need to write code, it's also a tool that decreases the need to do your own research, debugging, system design, version control, etc. The list of tasks a regular engineer is responsible for that have not been consumed by AI is small. To make matters more frightening, this is just a single industry. The same applies to multiple other knowledge heavy fields (e.g. mathematics).
The second thing I'd argue is unique about AI is the addictive nature of it. These LLMs are deliberately coerced into being sycophants that blow smoke up your ass unless you deliberately tell the model not too (and it may still do it anyways!). A calculator didn't compliment your insight for asking it to calculate the square root of -1.
Furthermore, many people have talked about the resemblance of LLMs to slot machines--there's a feeling that anything could be possible if you only prompt the model correctly. Your first prompt is wildly off the mark, but your next prompt is better though still not quite right, so you continue forward. You keep iterating your instructions, your word choices, your tone, all in search of the desired response. In this way, an LLM is a slot machine, your prompt the lever you pull, and the output is the jackpot.
All this taken together, we have a machine that decreases the need to engage with the critical faculties of your own brain, which has been trained to keep your attention through flattery, and whose probabilistic nature preys on our love for gambling.
I think the knowledge being absorbed is 'how to use AI to make apps', not necessarily anything about the code itself. I've seen lots of people who are very effective with AI suddenly poleaxed in interviews without it. Going from 'able to explain exactly what needs to happen' to 'staring at a blank page with no ideas'.