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LLM-generated code is fundamentally different from traditional automation because it's non-deterministic and cannot reason about system architecture or context. While tools like Copilot can serve as autocomplete, outsourcing actual thinking to AI removes accountability and shared understanding from software development. The practice mirrors fast fashion: quick but low-quality output trained on existing poor code. Unlike higher-level programming languages that abstract complexity predictably, LLMs eliminate the critical thinking that ensures maintainable, accessible, and safe software. The author advocates keeping humans in the loop for reasoning while using AI only for tasks you already understand.

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AudreyD.Dev

Hi, can this same article and its endless variations just fuck off and die already?
This is the third or fourth iteration of the exact idea circulating just this month, and the thesis is always “people are replacing thinking with AI”, aimed at an imaginary developer who has turned their brain off entirely because LLMs now exist. Nobody credible is advocating for that.
Then there’s the arbitrary line. The author uses Copilot and finds that acceptable, but an AI-generated PR reviewed by a human is dangerous? What’s the principle? She never states one, because the line is based on her personal comfort rather than anything objective. If you accept AI assistance at any point in the workflow, the question becomes where and how much, not whether. And that’s a nuanced engineering judgment, not a moral panic.
Invoking the Post Office scandal in an article about LLM-generated code is manipulative framing. Those were bugs in human-written software, enabled by human institutional failures. If anything, automated testing and AI-assisted review could have caught the kinds of errors that destroyed those people’s lives. This example argues against her thesis, not for it, which is also a fixture of these lazy pieces.
Every wave of tooling advancement produces this exact rhetoric. The framing is always the same: “I use it correctly, but those people are doing it wrong”. It’s never falsifiable, it’s never specific about who these reckless developers actually are, and it never ages well. This one won’t either.