Are We Having the Wrong AI Dreams? | The JetBrains AI Blog

Anton Bragin's opinion piece, reflecting on insights from the NeurIPS 2025 AI research conference, explores the evolving understanding of AI's role and capabilities, particularly in contrast to human intelligence. It highlights Zeynep Tufekci's argument that society often misinterprets the impact of technological advances, focusing on familiar risks while overlooking new challenges. The piece emphasizes that AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), represents a distinct form of intelligence that excels in structured tasks but struggles with practical, real-world applications due to its fundamentally different learning process. This distinction necessitates a shift in perspective, where AI is not seen as a substitute for human intelligence but as a complementary force requiring changes in workflows and development environments. As AI continues to advance, the software development ecosystem is expected to evolve to better integrate AI's unique strengths, ultimately leading to new practices and tools that align with AI-driven processes. The article also references Richard Sutton's "bitter lesson," which suggests that more general AI methods outperform human-designed shortcuts over time, implying the need for development processes that maximize AI utilization to avoid bottlenecks as technology scales.