It sounds like you enjoy coding more then managing.

Not enjoying something is going to lead to no attention span related to that thing after all.

Which is a pet theory why I think so many software guys and long time Linux users say this.

Fundamentally it's just not fun. It's not interesting. Even if the AI can produce perfectly fine and working code. It's not great cose, but it's also not buggy in a way that gives you challenges to solves problems to understand.

Ai is just mundane. It removes the enjoyment form computers in exchange for mediocrity and functionality. It works "well enough". And that is more of a sin then anything else when it comes to long term engagement.

Personally I can stare at a prompt for 8 hours straight and debug and improve the harness, the system, the thing it makes, manage it, fiddle with its memory set up, make entire new workflows or systems for it.

The actual product it makes tho? Boring and I tend to forget about them a week later.

The process is boring as fuck to most people AND what it makes is boring.

So either you need to find the process fun, or make something with it you actually personally use day to day.

I had the same problem with 3d printers. They are cool as fuck. But the stuff I made was... Meh cause it wasn't useful I just made it cause I could.

While I think studies like this are bunk, I think it’s a mistake to assume that there is no real effect on cognitive health.

We know that using LLMs is addictive. I can’t imagine that long term use is going to be as benign as long term use of a calculator.

It really depends on the usage. Especially people who are already mentally challenged in their normal life will probably just mindlessly use LLMs to get results, while neither understanding the task nor the solution. Had they engaged with the task the natural way, you will see in a longer series of tasks that their ability to solve these will increase, while the people just dumping stuff into chatgpt will learn nothing.

There's a huge difference between someone using agentic ai to solve real problems quickly and someone asking a chatbot for life advice. A lot of people are asking llms for life advice, and don't get me wrong it's a great research tool IF you already posses critical thinking skills and know when to question it, but schools are introducing generative ai to middle schoolers before they even gain any critical thinking skills.

I think the bigger problem is a potential for a loss of morale. We're getting to the point where engineers can do more with less effort but it's also less rewarding. I haven't been this sad about doing my job in 8 years.

AI doesn't get 1 + 1 wrong anymore... but yes it can still be wrong. Most commonly if you ask it the wrong way. A calculator can do the same if you forget the parentheses, or mess them up slightly.
My feel is that the degree to which a wrongly inputed question can get a wrong answer is proportional to the complexity of the question you are trying to get an answer to. Kinda like computers made it possible for a simple mispelling of someone's name to have much more massive consequences than before computers.

AI does get things wrong, but it owns up to it when pointed out, and often self corrects once it has observed that something is wrong with the work. Your characterization is straight-up wrong.

"The bcrypt hooks caught only GOG web traffic (blob_007 is literally plaintext GET /token?... HTTP) — the save crypto never touched bcrypt.dll, confirming it's done inside the exe by statically-linked OpenSSL. That also means the ChaCha state I scanned is likely TLS traffic, not the save. Two parallel paths now: brute-force the record layout against AES-GCM (OpenSSL's default AEAD), and locate the AES tables in the exe to find the cipher code:

No AES tables at all — the game uses hardware AES-NI, so table-xrefs are out (and that also means my earlier AES-schedule scan is the right detector... except it never finished; that was the hang). Let me nail the layout facts offline and check my tooling:"