alt Hacker NewsAI is a tool and using it well takes skill
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If automation can't be a skill, Factorio isn't a game about how well you can automate.
This article probably sums up everything properly
I think AI is an anti-tool.
The AI uses you to get things done. In some workplaces, they are experimenting with having agents evaluate the effectiveness of their users. If the user is not a sharp tool, it recommends to management that you be discarded and replaced by someone better and more efficient at steering the AI.
You are the tool.
This is only true as long as AI companies fail to deliver on their promises.
Of course it takes skill, but we have to learn it. We cannot ignore AI exists
Be sure to read the type checking article linked at the bottom of the web page. TLDR: type checking languages help humans, not so much AI.
It’s a shame I cannot inspect the tool. It’s a shame I cannot modify it as I see fit. It’s a shame that I need to pay $200/month to use it. But hey, I am a 3X engineer and my boss likes it, so I guess it should be fine? Not really, but I still get to pay the bills (for now)
I miss the tools I used in the past (gcc, linux, sqlite,…)
Someone ought to put a "Rich Hickey:" in the title here. One of my favorite writers on software ever.
When books were first given indexes, many complained.
It would erode reading the whole book. After all, you can just look up the proper chapter or even just the page and be done with it.
Critical thinking and reading and focusing would no doubt go downhill.
It turned out to have gone exactly as badly as people predicted.
So maybe we should have stopped there?
No more indexes, and certainly no internet and no Large Lying Machine anymore.
No, it’s not. And that’s what scary with it. People try to cope with their slow obsolescence by saying that “AI needs skill”, while I churn out working code with basically a variation of “please implement this feature and make no mistakes”.
I don't understand the point of this debate. Rich's point is good. Having a mini-army of highly intelligent beings at your fingertips is not an ordinary "tool."
And it minimizes the fact that these things are only getting smarter. Having an entity much smarter than you--could that entity seriously be considered your "tool"? Just your tool? Or are the people on the "just a tool" side of this debate not taking that possibility seriously?
96% AI written article btw
'AI' is a marketing gimmick that often overlaps with machine learning, data science, and UX.
just for a bit of context, “Huahai is an entrepreneur. He co-founded Juji, a company building an AI agent platform”
> AI Is a Tool. Using It Well Takes Skill.
And that skill is? Any concrete verifiable examples? That can be replicated, repeated by others or adopted by others?
> A compiler performs substantial work without the programmer continuously directing each operation.
Yes, and the compiler produces the same output for the same input all the time. And when it doesn't, it's a bug or a specified behaviour [1]
> Picking up a saw does not guarantee a straight cut. Holding a chisel does not make you a sculptor.
Yes, but you can learn the actual techniques that let you make a straight cut 100% of the time. And make you a sculptor.
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The rest of the small article doesn't even begin to approach the premise of the title.
[1] Yes, I know it's not strictly true. But compilers are 100% predictable compared to LLMs.
AI is intelligence. If directing intelligence was an easy task no management book would have ever been written.
Is it groundhog day? I'm sure I've seen this article at least as early as 2 years ago. My RSS feed is just the same cycle:
- New model released, this changes everything (plus thumb scaled metrics to prove it)
- LLMs kinda suck
- The bubble will burst any day now
- Are Plinko machines conscious?
- LLMs kinda rule
- Tech companies doing unethical things
- Someone discovers that, surprise, agents work better when given context (skills! mcp! monorepo! etc)
- Slop that successfully conned its audience and got past the filters
- And so on
This particular article is slop that got past the filters. See the title, see the jargon, see the insufferableness, see the total lack of narrative structure.
I guess that means we're due for a new model pretty soon.
Does Hickey not like AI? figures.
Counterpoint, 2 year old toddlers have this skill "alexa play baby shark"
I predict that harness authoring will become another one of those things that programmers do, like building databases, languages, and operating systems.
I've built a few now, it definitely deepens your understanding and ability to work with this tech. Now moving towards evals, that seems of great import to me.
If I am an expert at using a hammer, no matter which hammer I buy, I know what the result of swinging it will be. If I am an expert at using an LLM, I have no idea what the actual result is going to be, and that's before considering a model update. Unlike being an expert at a tool like photoshop, where even 10 years of updates still lets me go "I know what is going to happen if I crop this image".
LLMs are not a tool, they are something else.
Right now, yes. What a technical/creative/competent person can do with AI blows what a normie can do with it out of the water. But AI also has creative/executive judgement, and it does a lot of good things that I either had hoped it would infer is that was what I wanted, or on occasion, will be good decisions that I wouldn't've even necessarily thought of myself. Would not surprise me if those last 2 categories rapidly expand to the point that there isn't a huge difference between what a normie does vs anybody else.
It almost will turn into a thing where the people that make the coolest things are the ones who are stupid enough to just the AI to do it, and it actually does. Basically Tom Segura's cousin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5drqH5OdETY
Yes, the most grounded take I’ve read on HN so far
How I wish I could divulge details of what we’ve built, nay, shipped in the last 6 months - it would sound completely unbelievable to this audience and come with a host of accusations
But it’s true - the tide hasn’t risen all ships the same though. Some engineers have become absolute monsters - things that used to take a month get done in days. Features that used to be prioritized on the order of weeks are done way faster.
Some engineers though? Even high performance ones have gone productive to bottom 25% by some measures
Why? Because it is a skill and it doesn’t come naturally to everyone
So many may sayers everywhere talking about more code less software, mistakes by ai with disastrous consequences- yet I’ve seen some remarkable stuff with my own two eyes. It’s a crazy time to be in this business, it’s awesome to be wowed everyday by what someone was able to do
Yeah I don't think so. It takes some knowledge today if you want to have control over architectural decisions. But honestly even if you don't the latest models still make fairly reasonable decisions.
I am pretty sure my wife could vibe code website or whatever at this point, or if not she will be able to in 6 months.
I am not sure AI is something I truly want to develop skills around. Though, I suppose I must either swim or sink in today's world.
For the past week, I have tried this whole vibe-coding thing with serious intentionality for the first time. I created a macOS application from scratch based on a project that I started a year or so ago and never finished.
I won't bore you all with my revelations, but I must say, I am both extremely impressed and depressed simultaneously. The code quality is far better than anything I could have produced (yeah, yeah, skill issue).
Although, had I written the code, I would have likely done a few things differently, i.e., far less nested functions and object declarations. From what I can tell by test driving the app, memory usage has been relatively light, no crashes (yet), no apparent major bugs, etc.
The depressing part for me is that once the application was completed, I felt literally nothing on the inside. No sense of joy, pride, nor accomplishment. I was left with a feeling of, "I guess it's good enough to use now?" In fact, upon finishing the application, I have honestly barely used it.
I just cannot help but feel some sense of remorse and shame that I am really struggling to put into words. Almost like a sense of cheating or something? Sure, I have a nice little functional app, but at the same time, I do not feel like I advanced or am bettered in any way for my (minimal) efforts, you know? I need to do some more debugging of my mind to truly figure out why. Have any of you all felt something similar?
The skill used to be called prompt engineering. Now that skill is mostly dead.
Whatever skill this guy is talking about. Give it a year or two. That skill will be dead too.
> code me an app, AI.
...AI codes an app...
> I don't like it. Make it like this.
...AI codes an app...
> I don't like it. See this app? Make it like it.
...AI codes an app...
> I don't like it. Hmm. Draw me an elephant.
...AI draws an elephant...
> I don't like it. This AI is stupid.
# 'AI' is Not a Tool
by Rich Hickey Published Oct 12, 2026
(I keep delivering this as a quip, here's a bit more)
First order of business - is '*tool*' going to have an interesting, distinguishing and thus illuminative meaning or be a mere platitudinous stand-in for "anything useful"?
We'll save tool as "anyone/thing that can be exploited" for the AI titans, for whom VCs, politicians, wannabe-titan-CEOs, software devs, rural towns etc are all 'tools'. The pockets on the front of my shirts are useful (I need to keep my reading glasses handy), but they are not tools. Similarly, fast food drive-thru windows are useful, but are not tools (more later).
Some definitions of '*tool*':
* a device or implement, especially one held in the hand, used to carry out a particular function * an instrument (such as a hammer or saw) used or worked by hand : an instrument used by a handicraftsperson or laborer in their work
What I like best - _A tool is something you *wield*_.
* *wield* - to use (as a tool or instrument) especially with full command or power : handle, manipulate, control
Especially useful in that are:
* Held in your hand - a source of both control and feedback, and an indication of the intimacy of the act of use * Power - force, energy transmission and direction, leverage etc * Control - intention and continuous directing of the course of events
Tools are implements with which *you* do something, they do not do things for you. Tool use builds, rewards, and often requires, expertise and skill. The continuous application of technique and energy, and sensory feedback, are essential to the buildup of *expertise* (from experiri - "try").
Good tools have many properties LLMs lack - they are predictable, reliable, deterministic, of bounded function, hopefully simple etc.
What you learn while wielding a tool is something about the world, the task, the physics, logic etc of what you are trying to do or the situation you are trying to overcome. And often, something about yourself.
As a lifelong tool builder and user, I know what tools are. LLMs are not tools.
Control, sensory feedback, intention, intimacy, continuous direction, expertise etc are all missing from LLM use. LLMs are not wielded. *LLMs are automation*.
* *automation* - (of a device or process) working by itself with little or no direct human control.
A drive-thru is not a tool for cooking, it is automation for avoiding cooking. LLMs are not tools with which you write code - they are automation with which you avoid writing code, to which you abdicate writing code.
You don't direct the action of an LLM - you make requests and it acts on its own, without your energy or continuous direction. This request/automation cycle is not wielding, it's not control, it's not continuous, it's without feedback.
What you are doing while using automation, instead of learning real-world truths, is attempting to divine the details du jour of some automaton. And striving to game them - e.g. ordering a custom burger (no onions) in order to get a freshly made one. Or filling *voodoo.md* with just the right incantations. You are only a software update from everything you've 'learned' being rendered obsolete by the latest algorithm. (A soggy cold burger from which the onions have been removed) You have traded working with the world to working for a capricious robot.
It is a mistake to be haphazard about "tools" being equivalent to utility, e.g. saying - "the LLM didn't write my paper, I just used it as a tool to read and summarize some research papers". But you didn't _wield_ it to read those papers (as you might a Kindle). It read the papers, not you.
What do you miss by abdicating doing the reading? Pretty much everything. First and foremost, you miss learning how to write from those who can. You miss learning how to formulate an argument. You miss noticing things. You miss loading your background mind with fodder for novel ideas. You miss building trust in some authors and suspicion of others. You miss all the jokes. You miss all of the edges. You miss learning how to think.
Tools don't get "misaligned", they don't "go rogue", they don't "escape containment", "conspire" etc.
LLMs are not tools. I know many people use the phrase "just tools" simply to indicate "they are what you make of them". *Except that's not true*. Automation has intrinsic properties and differences from tools that you ignore at your peril.
Rich
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From Rich Hickey via https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-tool-rich-hickey-kjl8e
Flagged and resurrected thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50060269
You can only build skills in things that have consistent rules. LLMs have totally unpredictable outputs, attempting to build skills in prompting them is a waste of time on par with the madness of astrology or daytrading
lol, if you say so.
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It takes skill that you can only acquire by avoiding the use of AI for a very long period. Which means that the current generation of "AI users with the skill to use it effectively" is a shrinking set.
Not that I agree with the statement in the first place.
I thought my father looked like he was a Vietnam draft avoider. I went through a dozen things he did, using a spreadsheet to evaluate the Bayesian evidence. Then I walked through it with Gemini, which did an incredible job. My conclusion was a tally of 12-0 in favor, aggregate odds 4600-1; Gemini added a couple things, tally 10-2-2, aggregate odds 124,000-1. Its commentary along with the patient systematic analysis was a devastating confirmation of my own work. My father's primary motivation was avoiding the Vietnam draft, and that's what shaped our family's history, decisively. These AI's are like steel pliers against hard-shelled crabs, peeling away the defenses of human crabs, inexorably. It's quite terrifying how powerful LLMs can be used like this.
Not for long. Prompt engineering is only a stop gap measure. Its value is decreasing day by day.