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My Friend Feels Guilty When Using AI
The story
Today, my Gen Z teammate asked me a surprising question.
Teammate (A): “I have a question — are we supposed to use ChatGPT in our work as developers?”
Me: “Of course! Why not? If it helps you be more productive, then go ahead.”
A: “Well, I have some concerns. I’ve seen people use it in the office, but I won’t. It just doesn’t feel right.”
Me: “Why? Are you saying that if you use it, you feel like someone else did your job for you and you did nothing?”
A: “Exactly. I feel guilty and even ashamed to take code from AI. We’re paid to write code, aren’t we?”
This response made me pause.
A smarter abstraction to do our work
Me: “Good question. Let me ask you this — do you ever take code from Stack Overflow?”
A: “That’s different. I only use it to look for solutions. I still figure out how to apply it myself, instead of just directly asking for an answer.”
Me: “Fair enough. But think back to before Stack Overflow and GitHub. Developers used to solve the same problems over and over. Everyone wrote their own ‘datetime helper,’ ‘SQL helper,’ or ‘email regex.’ How many versions of these do you think exist?”
