Hello,
This is my first post on Lemmy! Glad to join the Fediverse.
I’d like to ask for advice from people who might have tips on how to do research and learn things without using AI.
I’m starting to get sick of it, it’s very addictive, and I must have spent over €50 developing crap on Cursor.
When I discovered AI in 2023, I was the first person at my high school to discover ChatGPT. In fact, I’d even been playing around with the OpenAI Playground before that.
But over time, I became addicted, it turned into a real drug. I didn’t even use search engines anymore, just ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and so on…
Since I discovered this in high school, can you imagine what it’s like to discover this while you’re in the middle of a specialized digital studies program? Yeah, you don’t learn anything new, you gradually fall behind. I’ve lost some of my Python skills, like how to create classes and stuff like that, even though back in 2021 I built a client for downloading pirated games that I was pretty proud of. I’m really disappointed in myself about that.
Now, I’d like to relearn computer science, learn how to code, use Linux systems, and so on... but how? Not only have I regressed a bit, but what AI has really brought out in me is a reluctance to do things and a tendency to leave everything up to the AI.
Today I’m in college, and everyone uses it in graded group projects; no one follows the university’s guidelines, which require you to disclose when you’ve used AI. There is a climate of mistrust nowadays.
I’d love to hear your tips, how do you manage without AI, and how can I relearn to live without it? I’ve made up my mind: I don’t want to use it at all anymore, except as a translator (I use DeepL, which I don’t think is the same thing as a generative AI).
Thank you for your comment. Sorry, I should have clarified that the learning in computer science was just for fun. I’d love to develop a video game, but since I don’t have enough time because of my communications studies, that’s one of the reasons I got into AI.
The thing is, I don’t want to study computer science or anything like that at a professional level. But when you say I don’t need to understand particle physics to bake a cake, in a way, yes. But if I’m watching videos that walk me through how to code a game step by step, did I make the game, or did the video creator? I had this same problem before 2023 when I watched videos to code a game, I’d listen to the video and copy the code, but I didn’t understand a thing, it wasn’t MY game.
Besides, I’m curious to know how computer science students from my generation (Gen Z) view everything related to LLMs, it must be kind of sad.
When I talk about reluctance, I was really just talking about laziness. At first, I saw AI as a tool, but as time went on, I basically handed over all my tasks to it, and as that happened, we lost our habits and no longer knew how to do things.
If you follow a tutorial: Switch it up to make it yours. Make small changes. For example: If the tutorial is for a shoot 'em up where the camera scrolls top to bottom, make your game scroll right to left. Stuff like that forces you to think differently about the work, which should help you understand and retain the information better.
There are also interactive tutorials like this one from GDQuest for Godot: https://school.gdquest.com/courses/learn_2d_gamedev_godot_4/learn_gdscript/learn_gdscript_app
Thank you for sharing! Let me know if I'm reading into this too much; If you haven't already I would strongly encourage you to do some reading around Marx's theory of alienation and understand that is what I'm referring to by the term "alienation" because it sounds to me like that is your root problem here.
That's called being alienated from a productive activity, computer science, due to economic coercion. It probably is "smarter" to focus all your time and energy on your degree but that will absolutely make you sad, depressed and a perfect obedient automota. Understanding the forces that are you pushing you in that direction will better help you to navigate them.
In my opinion modern tutorials are the absolute worst when it comes to alienating individuals from their creative abilities. From everything you've said tutorials sound more harmful to you than AI usage.
I generally find that within a broader culture of protestant work ethic "laziness" is generally just negative branding for "not overexerting oneself to the point of harm". I would encourage caution around that term.
From what you've shared let me propose a slightly different approach:
Focus on dealienating yourself from your means of production, your creative potential, your sense of self and sense of community.
Do not use any tools you do not control, generally understand and have the ability to modify/configure. Importantly learn to build your own tools. This doesn't mean no AI assistance but it does mean you are restricted to whatever you can run locally, that is is open source, and importantly you can read documentation and understand how it works. A game engine is a tool for defining a game executable which is a tool for turning data into entertainment. Godot, opencode, llama.cpp, blender, gimp and audacity are some good tools to start with.
No tutorials: learn to take an idea you have and design, architect and implement it in your own. It will be hard. The first couple of times will be a frustrating spaghetti mess. Do not be afraid to start over. Do the same with the art and audio.
Learn to listen to yourself and your body. When you get stuck on a problem learn to push through and build up that frustration tolerance. Be lazy where it matters. If your goal is to learn how to design and architect a project then it's fine to delegate the code writing. If your goal is to learn to write code better then it's fine to delegate to architecture and design. Same for art, music, etc.
Lastly you keep speaking very disparagingly of your peers. Stop it. Talk with and work with them. They will likely be going through similar things as you and together you can work to dealienate yourselves. It will be much more fun making a game with others and makes it so you can delegate to a person and help them instead of delegating to an AI.
Thank you this a super interesting!
I think your example of following along with a tutorial is a good one. Why not do that again, but look up everything that's recommended along the way, so that you understand what you're doing? It'll take longer, but it will be more fulfilling and build more knowledge. Plus, you can always deviate from the tutorial a little to make the project your own.