Petit test
Guess first, no penalty. An AI writes a CSV export as one request that loads every order into memory. It works on your 50 test rows. What should you raise first?
Anthropic's study Labor market impacts of AI puts computer programmers at 74.5% in its Figure 3, and lists their leading task as "Write, update, and maintain software programs". "Covers a task" means AI is used for that task, not that the job disappears.
Deciding what to type is different. These calls stay with you:
- The problem. The model sees the ticket, not the meeting where the real need came up.
- What not to build. Every line is code someone maintains for years.
- The data model and boundaries. These mistakes cost the most to undo.
- Trade-offs between speed, cost and simplicity.
- What happens when a dependency is down.
- Security and privacy. You carry the risk.
Use AI for options. Ask "give me three ways to build this, the trade-offs, and what would make each a bad choice", not "how should I build this?". Then you pick, and write down why. That note becomes your best prompt (the message you send to the AI), because it holds the context the model can't guess.