LLMs are great at what they do, but they still require some help.
When you’re manually solving a problem and actively converging to a solution, you’re thinking for yourself (which you should do). This gives you constructive friction which exercises your brain.
When you’re outsourcing your work to a generative AI, you’re trading this thinking (and learning) in for administrative friction. Friction where you’re reviewing and checking the work of the AI and cleaning up the results.
You might not know you’re trading in this friction, or unknowingly do this administrative friction. It might thus creep up on you.
This administrative friction is a type of digital glue work, which might be even invisible and underappreciated.
Some new skills are born
Prompt engineering is a skill and is thus constructive friction.
When you completely remove the friction because you have become reliant on LLMs, your skills will wither just like programmers get worse if they over-use LLMs.