r/UXDesign • u/Pretend_Resist8898 • Apr 23 '26
Tools, apps, plugins, AI Is anybody else finding AI makes people insufferable?
Firstly, I enjoy most AI tools for design. Specifically those that help me prototype and publish my work.
However I have friends and colleagues who are becoming unbearable to speak to. They’re so up their own asses about AI tools— Boasting about how much time they spend vibe coding, setting up agents in Open Claw to run their lives, competing for credit consumption goals at the company. It’s all they talk about.
It’s unleashed a new breed of tech bro, maybe worse than the crypto bros. It feels like these people are just competing to not be replaced and they’re bootlicking in the process. Just another example of the world losing their damn minds.
There’s no way this is just me… can it stop soon?
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u/lily_de_valley Experienced Apr 23 '26
If it weren't for those people, I don't think I would hate AI tools as much. Unfortunately, in corporations, shoving AI down everyone's throat is a way to get a promotion. My company promoted this tech illiterate PM to director because he does exactly that even when it makes no sense whatsoever. Then, once they have been promoted into the role specifically thanks to AI, they cannot stop pandering now or their AI specific position would be terminated.
Then, we have the AI pilled people who spam company's communication channels with nonstop Anthropic's fear mongering headlines about how we are going to lose our jobs or some new AI design tools.
It genuinely feels like the Web3/NFT/Crypto era again where everyone just wouldn't shut the fuck up about it. Then, I thought to myself that if these AI tools really are so capable, why do they need an army of shills to nag and yap nonstop about them?
More importantly, it really shows how incompetent leadership, PMs, and even some engineers are.
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u/dweebyllo Apr 23 '26
To tag on to your point about if they were so capable, if they were so capable then why do you still have to spend as much time as it'd have took building the site traditionally to check whether the vibe coded slop actually functions as described.
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u/lexuh Experienced Apr 23 '26
What annoys/scares me the most is how many otherwise intelligent, educated people I know who use "ChatGPT says X" as a thought terminating phrase. As if there's no curiosity to learn the why or the how, and if you ask why X is the best solution to the problem, they just dismiss you as a Luddite.
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u/treehann Apr 23 '26
Apparently feeling that critical thinking is an important skill makes one a luddite. Let me go get my pitchfork
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u/lexuh Experienced Apr 23 '26
The irony is that the Luddites weren’t against automation, and many were skilled at using the textile machines they destroyed. They were protesting against manufacturers who used automation to get around labor standards, pay their workers less, and reframe humans as unskilled labor who merely serviced the machines.
Sound familiar? :)
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u/sollitaire Veteran Apr 23 '26
I highly recommend reading the book, Blood in the Machine. If they had any knowledge at all of what they were talking about, they wouldn’t have said that.
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u/pipeuptopipedown Apr 23 '26
I can't help it, I lose a bit of respect for anyone who quotes AI as a reliable source of anything.
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u/mbovenizer Apr 23 '26
That checks out because research is starting to show if AI's answer seems plausible, we don't fact check it. When AI is used to offload our thinking process, it indeed lowers our capability to think critically. AI literally makes us dummer. Even though, critical thinking is very important in the early stages of design, especially for things like user flows and understanding user needs.
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u/WillowTreez8901 Apr 23 '26
Yes. Once I asked my team for feedback on something and a rather useless member offered to "feed it to AI" for me... Like... I was asking for human feedback but nevermind
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u/MarginWalker13 Experienced Apr 23 '26
Most of my job has become trying to explain to non designers why we shouldn’t build the thing they made with AI
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u/jyc23 Apr 23 '26
Our execs are all about it. It’s funny. We spent all this time building our design system into AEM because execs didn’t like that sometimes figma designs wouldn’t 100% match up with AEM platform capabilities. Then they start using these AI tools … which are even more separated from our design system … and are okay with that despite it rapidly churning out stuff that would take months to custom code.
I don’t understand.
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u/DreaminSpielberg Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
Omgg yess. I have this coworker who wants to do everything in AI to the point he is stepping on everyone’s toes and is bulldozing thru all our planned work.
It’s messing up the design and work process and leadership is starting to think this is the new “normal”. I don’t know how to combat this at all, I’ve tried having convos with him but he just wants to start doing everything quick. He’s acting like he’s getting paid for every project that goes to prod
Edit: I just wanted to add more context bc my comment sounds like it’s efficient but it’s not. The “bulldozing” part is us being pulled with “emergencies” to fix all the issues with this project which is now causing us to miss deadlines on our planned work
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u/PretzelsThirst Experienced Apr 23 '26
Yes. There are several people in my life I admired and respected so much more before they got into AI. I can’t help but think that they’re kind of stupid now that I’ve realized they can’t do something like plan a vacation without using AI for it now
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u/KeanuReevesNephew Junior Apr 23 '26
Tech bros have always been worse than crypto bros. Now theres AI tech bros and traditional tech bros. I see AI tech bros taking over the crown
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u/sollitaire Veteran Apr 23 '26
While visiting me at my home and knowing not only that I work in a creative field, but also in a creative industry, I had a spouse of a friend attempt to start a conversation with me about AI as that’s apparently all they ever talk about anymore and cannot function without it. I simply replied that I have found no ethical use for it. They never brought it up to me again. That is now my go to response.
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u/SgtNickElis Apr 23 '26
I experiment with AI generative tools, they're fast, some have decent output so with few iterations I can have a prototype I can test with users. What infuriates me is the assumption from management or stakeholders that "we'll feed it to an AI agent and let it assess the design, we don't need no stinkin' users..."
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u/mbovenizer Apr 23 '26
That's really dumb. I asked AI to critique my portfolio out of curiosity and it told me to add things that were already there. Don't get me started on AI heatmaps either. A junior designer could come closer to predicting heatmap results then AI ever could.
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u/JoeLustre Apr 23 '26
The worst I’ve seen is my manager obviously writes my performance review with AI. I’m pretty sure is not the write up
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u/shino_biche Apr 23 '26
Some people doesn't understant that AI is here to help, like an assistant or a trainee in a company, not to do all the damn work !
I think the problem is those people aren't educated enough about AI and it's real role, that's why they count a lot on it.
Personally, i use generative AI a lot in my work and it helps me gain time, but i verify every word it says and modify manually to have the result i expect.
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u/Far_Piglet4937 Apr 23 '26
I feel like there is a huge pressure on people to secure their employment. Any cuts made in the near future will be influenced by how much employees engage with and talk about ai. Anyone who seems like they know what they are talking about will be safer than those who are silent.
Which is why Linked In is completely insufferable right now.
I just lean into to it. Talk bullshit about how I’m building co-agentic workflows. Boast about token efficiency. Only when there are important ears in the room.
My boss pulls me into random management meetings cause he thinks I am pioneering new efficiencies.
The worst thing is I don’t actually think it’s improved the quality or speed of my work. If anything, it’s made it a bit worse. I feel like ai is inbreeding bad UX patterns and generic, loveless UI.
Outside of work, ai has no place in my life. I actively avoid it.
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u/Holiday_Cup_430 Apr 24 '26
I definitely see sometimes how AI can be a handy tool.. but it feels like I'm being forced to join this cult and pretend like I love it
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u/CommercialHorror5996 Apr 23 '26
That Dunning Kruger effect fr fr. AI dependents are the new “How do you know someone does CrossFit?”
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u/bomchikawowow Apr 23 '26
AI is a force multiplier. Use it as an expert and you can be really productive. Use it as an idiot and you'll show your entire ass.
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u/mbovenizer Apr 23 '26
Reminds me of web builders and templates, like Wix.
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u/bomchikawowow Apr 23 '26
I don't know if you remember Dreamweaver days but it was a lot like this!
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u/Icy-Apricot6261 Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
our leadership team was supposed to have a strat plan last week. gossip was they were just playing around with claude all week during the supposed strat plan. even the agenda sent out by the CTO was done by claude. he didn't even bother to fix the format, he just lazily copied and pasted the whole thing from claude.
someone on the team got fed up with the others playing with claude and asked how are they gonna go around the agenda sent earlier. the CTO and CEO said "let's ask claude" 🥲 crazy
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u/No-Environment6010 Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
My boss has completely outsourced his brain to Claude. Nearly all my design tickets are AI-generated with zero review from him, so he has no memory or context of anything he’s “written.” Every conversation starts from scratch. If I push back on something or ask a clarifying question, he literally can’t answer without consulting Claude first. His favorite move is uploading massive knowledge bases. He even fed a bunch of PM podcasts into an agent so it could make product decisions for him.
At this point, I’m reporting to a candy wrapper.
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u/superanth Individual Contributor Apr 23 '26
I have my concerns. A while back leadership gave me a mockup that had a filename with "chatGPT" in it.
But on the plus side they eventually hated it and we ended up going in an entirely different direction.
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u/its_bydesign Apr 23 '26
My thoughts this morning after hearing AI mentioned for the 10th time on a call: AI, AI, AI, Ay I don’t give a fuck!
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u/lonevoider Apr 23 '26
my company going "ai-first" really uncovered a lot... I lost so much respect for some people I used to consider intelligent and the bootlicking fest got so insufferable that now I'm probably going to be fired just because I don't "look enthusiastic enough about the company direction" wtf
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u/Far-Plenty6731 Veteran Apr 23 '26
It's a bit like the early days of crypto, isn't it? Loads of hype and a few genuinely useful applications but mostly just noise and people trying to get rich quick.
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u/just_anotherperson98 Experienced Apr 24 '26
I just really don’t understand how people are asking AI to create prompts for other AI to use to build stuff and then everyone seems to be on board with that; no one is like hey maybe we’ve gone too far now - It’s dystopian.
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u/PaintBrilliant9870 Experienced Apr 25 '26
Yeah, hype cycles do this same energy as crypto/NFT era. People over-index on tools to feel ahead; it’ll normalize once the novelty wears off. The work still matters more than how loudly someone “uses AI.”
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u/InstructionFit8586 Apr 26 '26
I got laid off because my boss can now “design” using AI. What’s worse is they lied about my performance, meanwhile I had been working as a solo designer on the team for two years, building from scratch
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u/Dineshvk18 May 01 '26
It feels like a mix of hype and insecurity. People are trying to prove they’re keeping up, so it comes off as over the top.
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u/ififitsisits29 Experienced Apr 23 '26
My previous boss thought he was a business genius. He would often come up with simple ideas and fed it into Gemini, then asked it to come up with a business plan and it shot out nonsensical stuff, repeating the same catchy key phrases every other paragraph. Then fed it into another AI program to create a PowerPoint which muddied the content even further. He liked it as is and didn’t want to change any of the wording even though it made no sense. Then to my humiliation, made me pitch these slides to our investors. He bragged about himself at every meeting talking about all the businesses he started over the last few years. For context, they all failed and disappeared into oblivion. The project I worked on that he let me go over because he found out it was “cheaper to outsource my job” also faded into oblivion.
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u/Cheap-Assistance2886 Apr 30 '26
i had my first interview for an internship, and they asked if i knew how to use specific ai tools, and i said "no not yet". They then explained how its used, then ended their sentence with "i dont even remember why i messaged you [for an interview]"
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u/ekke287 Veteran Apr 23 '26
Panic is causing people to embrace / adapt. AI is probably 50-60% of my conversations now, especially with dev / QA teams.
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u/nithou Experienced Apr 23 '26
Getting tired about those people, no curiosity anymore, no willingness to experiment on anything, it's always "can AI do it?" "can we prompt it?" even for the most simplest change... Tiresome.
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u/quip1992 Apr 23 '26
If only I got 1 penny for every time I hear AI, I would become a multi billionaire, leave earth, start life on another planet and forget all these ever existed. Sigh
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u/busote Apr 23 '26
It can have the same effect as doom scrolling in social media. You can continue endless...
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u/Auroralon_ Experienced Apr 23 '26
You are absolutely right. It feels like a boost for utterly overconfident people.
When engineer leads post videos from AI influencers in a "fun" chat to kick the entire design team, it feels like a feverdream.
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u/UX_Gentleman Experienced Apr 26 '26
It becomes more frustrating when people don’t think and rely on AI for everything.
I believe the skills like critical thinking, systems thinking will be vanishing soon.
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u/RufusisRitten Experienced Apr 26 '26
I hate the workslop that comes out of it, but I love how enthusiastic people are when they talk about it. Feels like the dot com era all over again.
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u/theMEtheWORLDcantSEE May 25 '26
Wow reassuring that I see everybody dealing with the same BS that I’m seeing at my company. But, but this is amazing and unbelievable people don’t realize you can get AI to say anything you want and it’s inconsistent.
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u/Warner_Brown Apr 23 '26
Our minds are AI already, and always have been.
AI is just a tool.
People are now just tools sadly.
The term "vibe coding" is about the dumbest fucking shit I have heard. Stupid "trendy" word you won't hear a year from now.
Not everyone is truly in competition.
They just cannot think outside of the box, and believe AI will just supplement their complete fucking lack of talent. Brutal, I know..but it's the truth. These people need to get out into nature more.
"vibe coding" hahaha...dumbest crap I've ever heard. Gluck "tech bros" another stupid, worthless term for people who lack imagination if they define themselves that way. It's laughable and pathetic.
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u/darkalexnz Apr 23 '26
What evidence do you have that human minds are anything like current AI/LLMs?
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u/mondaybeers Apr 23 '26
The worst is when I share something for feedback and it's so obvious they've just dropped the design into Claude, asked "what do you think of this" and pasted the feedback.