You know it's random nonsense, and yet you still take it on faith that it "gives you answers". That's what makes me despair about all the AI nonsense: it's the death of intellect. Not the death of deep thinking, but of common sense.

I can't wait for the day until all these people collectively snap out of it, and go "what the hell were we thinking with these chatbots".

AI can give good answers to design/architecture problems.

Have it do research (HN, Stack Overflow, technical blogs) and summarize.

Why do you think this wouldn't work?

You'll still need to be capable of understanding and judging the output, and it might miss some options, but it is certainly no worse than pre-AI.

If AI nonsens is doing the work I ask it to and I confirm it works and is useful .. then what exactly should I snap out of it?

It is just a tool and a useful one. Your loss for not making use of it, but .. you seem to live on a different timeline. I am reminded of old Japan, where the Samurais banned gun powder, so they could continue to fight with swords and not change their ways of living.

When I say it gives me an answer I mean an answer purely in the sense of it is a response to a question, whether or not the answer is correct is for me to decide and I put no faith in whether or not the answer will be correct. I treat the output like an opinion that can sometimes give me an idea for how I can better tackle the problem I am trying to solve.