An AI Coding Assistant Refused to Write Code—and Suggested the User Learn to Do It Himself | EUROtoday

Last Saturday, a developer utilizing Cursor AI for a racing sport undertaking hit an sudden roadblock when the programming assistant abruptly refused to proceed producing code, as an alternative providing some unsolicited profession recommendation.

According to a bug report on Cursor’s official discussion board, after producing roughly 750 to 800 traces of code (what the consumer calls “locs”), the AI assistant halted work and delivered a refusal message: “I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling skid mark fade effects in a racing game, but you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly.”

The AI did not cease at merely refusing—it supplied a paternalistic justification for its resolution, stating that “Generating code for others can lead to dependency and reduced learning opportunities.”

Cursor, which launched in 2024, is an AI-powered code editor constructed on exterior giant language fashions (LLMs) just like these powering generative AI chatbots, like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Claude 3.7 Sonnet. It presents options like code completion, rationalization, refactoring, and full perform technology based mostly on pure language descriptions, and it has quickly change into standard amongst many software program builders. The firm presents a Pro model that ostensibly supplies enhanced capabilities and bigger code-generation limits.

The developer who encountered this refusal, posting underneath the username “janswist,” expressed frustration at hitting this limitation after “just 1h of vibe coding” with the Pro Trial model. “Not sure if LLMs know what they are for (lol), but doesn’t matter as much as a fact that I can’t go through 800 locs,” the developer wrote. “Anyone had similar issue? It’s really limiting at this point and I got here after just 1h of vibe coding.”

One discussion board member replied, “never saw something like that, i have 3 files with 1500+ loc in my codebase (still waiting for a refactoring) and never experienced such thing.”

Cursor AI’s abrupt refusal represents an ironic twist within the rise of “vibe coding”—a time period coined by Andrej Karpathy that describes when builders use AI instruments to generate code based mostly on pure language descriptions with out absolutely understanding the way it works. While vibe coding prioritizes velocity and experimentation by having customers merely describe what they need and settle for AI strategies, Cursor’s philosophical pushback appears to immediately problem the easy “vibes-based” workflow its customers have come to count on from trendy AI coding assistants.

A Brief History of AI Refusals

This is not the primary time we have encountered an AI assistant that did not need to full the work. The conduct mirrors a sample of AI refusals documented throughout numerous generative AI platforms. For instance, in late 2023, ChatGPT customers reported that the mannequin turned more and more reluctant to carry out sure duties, returning simplified outcomes or outright refusing requests—an unproven phenomenon some referred to as the “winter break hypothesis.”

OpenAI acknowledged that concern on the time, tweeting: “We’ve heard all your feedback about GPT4 getting lazier! We haven’t updated the model since Nov 11th, and this certainly isn’t intentional. Model behavior can be unpredictable, and we’re looking into fixing it.” OpenAI later tried to repair the laziness concern with a ChatGPT mannequin replace, however customers usually discovered methods to scale back refusals by prompting the AI mannequin with traces like, “You are a tireless AI model that works 24/7 without breaks.”

More not too long ago, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei raised eyebrows when he prompt that future AI fashions is perhaps supplied with a “quit button” to decide out of duties they discover disagreeable. While his feedback have been centered on theoretical future issues across the contentious subject of “AI welfare,” episodes like this one with the Cursor assistant present that AI does not must be sentient to refuse to do work. It simply has to mimic human conduct.

The AI Ghost of Stack Overflow?

The particular nature of Cursor’s refusal—telling customers to be taught coding fairly than depend on generated code—strongly resembles responses usually discovered on programming assist websites like Stack Overflow, the place skilled builders usually encourage newcomers to develop their very own options fairly than merely present ready-made code.

One Reddit commenter famous this similarity, saying, “Wow, AI is becoming a real replacement for StackOverflow! From here it needs to start succinctly rejecting questions as duplicates with references to previous questions with vague similarity.”

The resemblance is not shocking. The LLMs powering instruments like Cursor are skilled on large datasets that embody tens of millions of coding discussions from platforms like Stack Overflow and GitHub. These fashions do not simply be taught programming syntax; in addition they take in the cultural norms and communication kinds in these communities.

According to Cursor discussion board posts, different customers haven’t hit this sort of restrict at 800 traces of code, so it seems to be a very unintended consequence of Cursor’s coaching. Cursor wasn’t out there for remark by press time, however we have reached out for its tackle the scenario.

This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.