From 92e5ceb2a0ca574bbf2cfef0d1b1685edbda774c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: brib Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2026 11:52:16 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Add information on deskilling and AI psychosis I did a writeup on this topic for my [slopfree list](https://codeberg.org/brib/slopfree-software-index) and a user thought this would be good to integrate into the open-slopware list. Here is the writeup, mildly edited to fit the format of this list. I also added information about cognitive surrender, and a linke to an anecdotal report of deskilling. --- README.md | 12 ++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 7940536..721c63f 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -368,6 +368,8 @@ There's been a number of high profile incidents that have resulted in endangerme +[LLM use has also been linked to new-onset psychosis](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12863933/). + ## Maintainer Fatigue Having to deal with the onslaught of many LLM written pull requests and issues, causes real maintainer burnout that stagnates projects as maintainers become overwhelmed with half baked, poorly written, insecure code. Here's some examples: @@ -376,6 +378,16 @@ Having to deal with the onslaught of many LLM written pull requests and issues, * [Godot maintainers struggle with 'draining and demoralizing' AI slop submissions](https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/godot_maintainers_struggle_with_draining/) * [An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me (matplotlib)](http://archive.today/2026.02.19-045842/https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/) +## Deskilling + +There is increasing evidence to show that LLMs negatively impact developers' coding abilities: + +* [Brains show less activity when completing tasks with LLMs](https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872) compared to completing tasks with search or completing tasks without digital help. +* [Developers who use early-2025 LLMs reported higher subjective performance](https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/), but were measured to have lower objective performance. This gap between subjective and objective performance was considered notable. +* [In an Anthropic study](https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills), learners using LLMs demonstrated lower learning rates on average compared to learners not using LLMs. +* [A recent study uses the term "cognitive surrender"](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6097646) to describe the way humans tend to offload key critical thinking skills onto LLMs, even when the output is wrong. +* There are [anecdotal reports of LLM users forgetting how to code](https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/767973/vibe-coding-ai-future-end-evolution). + # License This repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International license. Please see [LICENSE.txt](LICENSE.txt) for more information.