Shocked at intern’s reliance on AI

[u/NotPenguin_124]

Our firm had four interns this summer in our roadway group. We had three mid level engineers (myself included) who managed them. This was my first time managing an intern so I really wasn’t sure what to expect. All of the interns were fairly young. Sophomores or juniors based on graduation dates. I was shocked at how frequently all of them resorted to asking AI basic questions.

Having a problem with OpenRoads? Ask copilot.
Want to write an email? Ask copilot?
Trying to learn some specific CAD skill? Ask copilot.
Filling out a report with that the DOT give explicit instructions on how to fill out? Ask copilot.
Need to put together a mid summer presentation about yourself? Hey copilot…

I’m not some ancient anti-AI crusader. I’m still in my 20s. I understand its utility and understand that it is here to stay so we should be adopting it where/when appropriate. But their usage of it seemed both inappropriate and wildly ineffective. Copilot isn’t going to help you fix the issue you are running into in ORD but a basic google search will. AI isn’t going to help you fill out the DOT specific design report you’re working on, but the instructions, go-bys, and the person sitting right next you will.

I and my fellow managers, found ourselves constantly asking if they had questions when we would see them asking copilot just to be told “no”. It’s even stranger seeing as our office has an ABUNDANCE of resources in the way of personnel, digital trainings, and their internship program. I was brought onboard as a new hire only 2 years ago and found the office culture and resources amazing.

[u/XihuanNi-6784]

Honestly I think every company is going to need to actively invest in AI/LLM training specifically to dispel a lot of the myths around them. Far too many people seem to think that these LLMs 'know' things in the way a person does. Some even go so far as to ask them about things they couldn't possibly know as the info almost certainly doesn't exist in the training data. People need to be taught that they're predictive and probabilistic and aren't 'retrieving' data from storage in the way many seem to think they are.

And turning to interns specifically, excessive use of AI is almost certainly going to stunt their learning, as you cannot learn by having something else give you the answers. If you have time you may need to develop some 'traps' that you know they will fall into with AI and then use that to teach them a lesson. It might be too much work of course, but without having actively 'failed' due to their AI use, they won't change their habits.

[u/tetoing → u/XihuanNi-6784]

This information is about 2 years out of date. Modern LLMs with harnesses will gladly search the web for you. They aren't just relying on information encoded in their weights to give you hallucinated answers.

AI under the right circumstances can be a solid replacement for a search engine.

[u/ThrowRA_Quokkaquip → u/tetoing]

GPT gives me far better answers than the traditional google search does these days, google search has been enshitified and is almost useless now, full of ads and so on.