I’m required to use AI as mandated from above but I am not using it to create for the reason you described. I am using it to do some basic maintenance type stuff though. For example a security team contacted me and told me I needed to update some dependencies, which required some code changes. I handed the AI the documentation on breaking changes, and what dependencies needed updating and then let it do its thing while I was in meetings. It did the work well and wrote up a commit message for me. That was a nice value.
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I also, am “required” to use AI. Like, I don’t have to use AI, but at the same time, I better use AI or else 
This is exactly how I try to use AI. Currently, mostly unit testing stuff or basic scaffolding. Anything else and you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment, or get ready to change basically everything
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Yeah it’s not “required” it’s “highly encouraged” but like 20% of our annual review was do they use AI? And the bottom band for annual reviews gets kicked to the curb. So if you want health insurance you use AI.
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Ah. We just started getting on the bandwagon and hasn’t been a full year yet. I didn’t know what the “or else” was, specifically, but now that I do, I can’t say that I’m comforted by that knowledge.
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I would like to get off this ride now
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The worst part is, they are paying so much for this, but they can’t “afford” better software/licenses for other things we actually use/need or want to use. Everything else is “just use the free/cheaper-alternative” but when it comes to AI they are throwing money at it like a high-roller at a gentleman’s club. Even worse, personally, all that money is getting directly injected into Microsoft’s veins. (Also everything is now Microsoft based despite better/cheaper alternatives, but that’s out of scope of this thread)
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Where’s the SMH react when you need it 
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It’s either all MS or AWS. Some things are google but the vast majority of businesses are all in on the Microsoft train. Chu chu!!!
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I’m the Lead Dev at an advertising agency, and they’re pushing us to use AI more and more to “speed things up.”
No matter how much we tell the higher-ups that AI actually slows things down, they don’t want to listen. Tech Debt is a real thing.
Basically, I tell my devs to use it for mundane things, so they can focus on the challenge aspects of each project.
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I used Lovable.dev to clone the ADP payroll app. It’s encrypted and password protected. I only have 3 employees. All salary. All family members. I pay nearly 3k per year for ADP to file payroll taxes and direct deposit. I’m gonna use my cloned app to calculate payroll, fill out filing forms, generate reports, and create W2s. Just gonna cut them a check and down 5-10 minutes per month to file it myself. I figure 3k directly into my pocket is worth 2-3 hours of my time each year.
I get why you developers aren’t loving AI, but for a small business like mine the cost and time savings are becoming incredible.
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Glad you are seeing value.
Today my coworker asked an AI agent to undue a single change that it had made and it ran git clean —fd and nuked her entire work in progress. 
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There are free, open source, readily available payroll alternatives
Granted, it might be a bit late, but if you ever decide to switch it up, they exist.
I’ll edit this comment when I find the decent compilation of them
Edit: GitHub - awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted: A list of Free Software network services and web applications which can be hosted on your own servers
@TheThrowingGnome
Fwiw, there’s a bunch of other stuff. You’d be surprised at the kind of stuff people looked at and said, “You know what, this would be better if it was self-hosted”
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That’s cool. The one I built looks and functions exactly like what I was already using so no learning curve though.
No worries. Like I said, it’s probably already too late, but if you decide to change it up, there’s a decent reference/starting point.
And not just for you, but anyone else. It’s not just payroll software either, communications (for example, alternatives to Teams/Slack), media management (for example, alternatives to Google Photos), media servers (for example, alternatives to Netflix), even inventory management
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I’ve been really enjoying GIMP3 as an alternative to photoshop and using LibreOffice instead of Word and Excel. So annoying that everything has moved to the monthly/annual subscription pricing models.
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I use GIMP and Inkscape for all my Throw-Yo design needs.
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That sounds terrifying to me. Payroll and accounting is one of the systems where data integrity is critical and AI building apps in a black box making junk code is worrying to me. might be fine for your smaller use case but a large enterprise background instantly this strikes fear as the audits would be brutal if stuff seemed off and because it’s “custom” they will want to verify and add more scrutiny vs an out if the box system.
I have dealt with plenty of places that had old power builder apps from the 80’s-00’ that didn’t handle some exception well after a certain table limit or date limit if otherwise bad input that started dropping data and caused a nightmare of verification through hard records aka going through all the paper records to verify. Thank god those companies hadn’t digitized at the time as OCR functions wherent that capable at the time and it would have been so much more painful.
Idk maybe it’s fine. Maybe you’ve verified the output and it’s perfect but to me it’s the same issue with a new name and just as scary.
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Speaking of same thing new name. Tech never changes and I’m adamant the se concepts from when I started my career are in play today. Heck cloud computing and hyper converged is just mainframes with a few more complex parts.
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For unit testing you should probably write your own tests :0
Also: I wonder if this general ai discussion should be its own thread, since this thread is currently in the YYE site improvement section.
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I gotta use AI for something (or else) and that’s about the only thing I trust AI with right now without creating even more work.
If I had my way, I’d just as soon not use AI and re-allocate the money wasted on it on something useful, which for me would be the continued use of a certain logging software and maybe Docker
Edit: Just to be clear, I still have to fix some things, but it’s significantly less work. Honestly, I just use it for what would be considered busy work by humans, but again, even at that point, I’d still rather not use it
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