Why is using AI in your work bad?

Probably you are using AI tools in your daily life. Maybe, to generate images, for getting recipes, for learning foreign languages or just to discuss with AI or something else.

One day you wanted to ask AI for a solution for your work. For example, you are trying to make a new website for yourself or for your client. You have a problem with your code or you never created websites before and you ask AI about basic knowledge or you are trying to use a new library for React or anything.

Of course you can use AI for your work but you need to remember and understand some important things when you use AI tools. This article describes really important consequences for you and your life in the future.

I tried to collect the important information about AI, research, my observations and my practice work with AI.

Preface

This article is only my point of view. This article may seem controversial for most people and may not like it.

I don't forbid anyone to use AI.

I hope this article will help you understand more and will give more ideas and thoughts about AI technologies.

Thanks for your understanding.

The beginning of the use

ChatGPT (from Open AI) was released on November 30, 2022. At this moment people started to use AI tools in their life.

When ChatGPT was released a lot of people talked about this technology especially on YouTube.

At that moment many people thought that this tool can do everything! So ChatGPT was a crude version. I remember there were a lot of mistakes in responses. But in 2023-2024 years ChatGPT became better. Many interesting features have appeared: image generation, working with links and files, improved work with texts, subscription on ChatGPT + and other things. Then large companies began to do AI tools for their services. Microsoft (Copilot), Google (Gemini), Yandex (YandexGPT) and others.

Most people know about these tools:

• ChatGPT
• Murf
• Midjourney 
• Copilot
• Deepl translator 
• Gemini
• DALL·E 3

Nowadays a lot of companies integrate AI tools in their services. Began to appear titles on the websites, the most popular title is AI-POWERED. This title says that this website uses AI tools or just has AI technology.

Now, you can see plenty of AI tools in the common websites. For example: google docs, google mail, google search, bing, loom recorder and others. Most existing AI tools use Open AI (ChatGPT) technology. But some AI tools use their own technology.

If you asked somebody in 2021 about AI or ChatGPT most would say - “What does that mean?” or “What are you talking about?”.

AI technology was before ChatGPT and other AI tools. The 1940s and 1950s were the time when artificial intelligence was born.

AI technology is used in video games, general-purpose CPUs, personal computers and more.

AI just got to the internet on websites!

So AI technology was known by fewer people, usually its narrow specialists. And when AI got to the internet on websites people began to use this ability and now if I ask someone about AI, probably most people will say - “Yech, I know, I use, It’s a cool thing”.

Certainly, this event is so important, because with the emergence of AI tools in our browser our life became different. Now a lot of people use AI services and do many things with the help of AI.

Trends and forecasts

Not long ago I read an interesting research from Stack Overflow about coding, the technologies and tools they use and want to learn, AI, and developer experience at work. But here we are only interested in this research about AI.

Most developers use AI tools and ready use in the next year.

Look at this for example:

The developers note benefits AI (top 3):

• Increase productivity (81%)
• Speed up learning (62.4%)
• Greater efficiency (58.5%)

AI in the development workflow (top 3):

• Writing code (82%)
• Search for answers (67.5%)
• Debugging and getting help (56.7%)

More categories you can find in their research. It’s so interesting because in these answers there are answers from professional developers. I hope these answers really belong to professional developers. For me it is so strange why professional programmes use AI tools so much. "Increase productivity" and "writing code" these two things are the most popular in their research.

So, it turns out that developers are writing code with AI. I hope these developers check answers from AI, because the quality AI answers are so bad. Need to check more, each time when you use AI. It is really important because I have encountered many errors in answers from AI when I tried AI tools. You should be careful and check for everything.

If you use AI when you are writing your code, please check, check and check each answer from AI. Of course, if you write code with AI, maybe your performance will be better because you can solve more tasks and therefore faster to complete deadlines and take a rest. But remember about the quality of your code.

I know that the main thing for some programmes it’s just complete their project and write to the client or boss and say that I’m done. Especially for freelancers. Because many clients can’t check their code and just apply and pay for their work.

The same situation is observed in the case of part-time and full-time employment. I know these cases personally. So I want to say that this situation is really bad. But we talk about it in the next part of my article.

Also developers agree to use AI tools in the next year even more.

The consequences that await us

Now, I’d like to talk about consequences using AI tools. We are talking about AI tools when we use them for work. I found some studies about AI but these studies still don’t open global problems, only some of the little things. I think right now we have a little information about consequences using AI tools, but already now we can assume some negative consequences.

When we use most AI tools we get used and we hope that AI will help us with any problems. Unfortunately if we use AI tools each time and so often we start deteriorating.

Maybe you can ask me, why are we deteriorating? And my answer is very simple.

When we use AI tools we are thinking less about a problem or a task and we are thinking only about how to write a prompt for AI so AI can understand us right and get a good answer from AI.

Also I know about a lot of programmes, especially junior programmes which use AI tools just copying an answer from AI and pasting it into their code and even not thinking about what is the code they pasted? It's the biggest mistake!

At this moment people who use AI don’t study, don’t remember, just copy and paste or simply ask and read and close. Instead of documentation, programmers use AI and AI often gives answers with old information because knowledge is limited by years. And if you try to explain this moment, AI will probably try to give you fictional answers.

As well, AI can use information from sources which have't credibility.

Let’s give a situation when we are trying to solve a problem. When you will use documentation as a solution to your problem it will be a good idea. Because when you read the documentation or try to find solutions in special websites, stackoverflow something like this gives you more knowledge, confidence and more understanding under your problem. Of course this approach may be long, but this process is better. Don’t rush!

Also when we use someone's answer we can check this answer right now, because we can probably see ratings, comments etc about this answer, this increases the confidence.

Sometimes we can't find the answer we need and even in this situation we don't need to give up. Giving up and starting to ask AI is the simple decision.

In each situation we must have common sense. It’s so significant. For us as people the main thing is development. We should not rely on those who will help us, especially AI. Better ask your friends, colleagues or ask your answer on special websites. If you have more time you should decide your problem yourself. Of course, this process takes more time.

It’s my short list of consequences:

• Lack professional development;
• Memory degrades;
• Mistakes that you don't know about;
• The educational process is slowing down;
• Hope is only in AI (is addictive);
• Thought processes are reduced.

Of course it’s only my point of view, nothing more.

How to use AI tools?

We definitely can use AI tools for some things and so we need to use it right. Try not to use AI answers in your professional work. Or better yet, don't use it at all. I think we can use AI tools for general and simple things. For example: recipes for cooking, generating images, writing texts, ideas for business, learning foreign languages, voice-over by announcer, etc. Even if you use AI in general things, use less AI and try to do something yourself.

Conclusions

Finally let’s talk about the results. Remember that AI often has unreliable information that should always be verified.

If you decide to use AI tools in your work, be sure to double-check every point in the AI's answers and check the same information online, for example, using Google. AI still is not as good for many tasks.

Of course you must remember that excessive use of AI leads to a decrease in human mental and intellectual abilities. I think that as the years go by, more and more research will emerge about AI, and over time, people will realize how harmful AI is to their professional lives and their lives in general.

By the way, I made images for those who are against AI in their professional work. I want to note this applies only to AI tools which are used for professional work because using AI in our professional work is such a big problem among others.

You can download images from my Google Drive

Also remember that we don't need to take the work from others. I say it again, if you use AI tools, please, use them less. If you find a specialist for your work or for a service please ask people for help.)

You don't have to trust AI 100%. We must use our minds.Dmitrii Balakirev - Senior React / Next.js Engineer, Team Lead | 12+ years | Web, Mobile Products