Stop Helping Me AI!

I suppose I will sound like a luddite but so far I’ve found AI to be more of a hindrance than a help! I’ll explain why.

Lately I’ve been playing with both Zed and Warp. If you’re not familiar Zed is an editor and it’s pretty nice. Warp is a shell replacement for Linux, Windows and Mac OS. Both of these apps are trying to stay on the cutting edge by incorporating AI to help a user to use them. And this is where I’m starting to lose patience with AI.

For example, just this morning I typed cd ~ into the terminal (in Warp). Rather than just changing to my home directory, Warp asked me if I wanted it to run the change directory command for me and show me the results. I mean seriously? By the way lest anyone think I’m just griping and not trying to fix the issue, I have reached out to Warp to give them my feedback and if they share any sorts of suggestions about how to make it behave more intelligently (no pun intended) then I’ll try their suggestions and follow up.

Likewise with Zed. I start to type some code and Zed immediately tries to guess what I’m doing and fill in the next 30 lines of code for me. It’s like trying to golf with a golf instructor standing right behind you to guide your swing. If I ask for the help then fine—but maybe wait till I ask for help before you try to fill in 30 lines of code for me.

I want to like AI and I want to find ways to use it to increase my productivity but I have to say so far it only seems to make things more clumsy and ungainly for what little assistance it provides to me.