I’ve been using Gemini to analyse my code this fine evening. It’s mostly Ant with some XSLT thrown in. The AI’s very good at resolving my Ant XML properties and will resolve those properties in a millisecond, something that embitters me because at XML Prague just a week ago, I spent 10 minutes talking about how to resolve those. It does a great job. I was wondering about an Ant script that I wrote, expecting to find a nested properties error.

But it correctly identified my well-formed-only mode, set via a Boolean property, and pointed out my mistake. That property was set elsewhere, which is why I didn’t spot it right away.

So I’m left wondering if my AI aid actually helped me or made me more stupid. I missed that Boolean property. I might have spent up to 30 mins without that hint.

For those ethically inclined among you, those 15 or 30 minutes could make a difference. Did a dozen or so human readers in Africa prepping AI responses just have their lunch denied? Did I kill a baby seal or deny Somalian kids their daily water quote? A mean thing to say, I know, but my question is real. Did that AI make a difference?

Plenty of shitty reasoning to excuse myself, but I don’t want to go there.

The real question is is it justifiable in any way to have me fix a bug because of the 30-minute win I suspect it gave me?