Why I banned AI for my juniors

I hate to say it, but I saw something scary last week.

Not scary because it broke.

Scary because it worked.

A junior engineer on a team I advise shipped a feature. Fast.

The demo was smooth. The code looked clean. It was suspiciously elegant.

I'm usually skeptical when things look too good to be true.

I asked a boring question.

“Cool. Walk me through the logic here.”

He froze.

He looked at the code like he was seeing it for the first time.

“Honestly… Copilot kinda wrote that part.”

I smiled. I nodded. But inside, I realized we are in (big) trouble.

We aren't just facing an issue with "bad code."

We are facing a crisis of Cognitive Atrophy.

In my last letter, I told you how AI makes incompetence expensive (the Review Tax).

This is worse.

This is about AI stealing your team’s future.

The "Hollow Senior"

There is a lie floating around LinkedIn right now:

“AI democratizes skills.”

No. It doesn’t.

AI democratizes outputs.

There is a massive difference.

Skill is the neural wiring that gets built when you struggle. When you stare at a blank screen, when you debug a stupid error for three hours, when you write a terrible headline and have to rewrite it 50 times.

That friction isn't a bug. Friction is the feature.

Friction is how the brain encodes expertise.

When a junior uses AI to skip the struggle, they aren't “speeding up.”

They are outsourcing their neural rewiring to a server in Virginia.

They get the result.

But they don't get the competence.

If we don't fix this, in 5 years we are going to have a generation of "Hollow Seniors."

People with senior titles.

Senior salaries.

And junior brains.

They will be passengers, not pilots.

And passengers can't fix the plane when the autopilot fails.

The Solution: Artificial Friction

So, what do we do?

We can't ban AI (forever). That’s stupid.

But we have to stop treating friction like the enemy.

We need a system that balances leverage with learning.

I call it: Licensed to Prompt.

The philosophy is simple: You earn the leverage.

Just like a pilot has to learn to fly manually before they can touch the autopilot, your team needs to prove they can think before they can prompt.

Here is the exact protocol I’m using.

1. The "Manual-First" Mandate

If you are a junior, or if you are learning a brand new domain (e.g., a Python dev learning Rust), you are banned from using LLMs (for your main tasks) for the first 3 to 6 months.

You write the code manually.

You write the draft manually.

You read the documentation manually.

“But that’s inefficient!”

Yes.

I am not paying a junior for their output (their output is usually mediocre anyway).

I am paying for their training.

I am paying them to struggle so that in two years, they are a weapon.

If I let them use AI now, I am paying for them to stay mediocre forever.

2. The Reverse Turing Test

Once they earn the right to use the tools, the game changes.

I don't check for plagiarism. I check for understanding.

If a team member submits AI-assisted work, I pull them into a room and run the Reverse Turing Test.

I point to a random, complex line of code or a specific paragraph and ask:

“Explain exactly how this works and why the alternative was rejected.”

If they say:

“Uh, I don't know, it just worked.”

They fail.

And they lose their AI license for the week.

The Rule: You are not allowed to automate what you do not understand.

Why This Matters

I love AI. I use it every single hour of the day.

But learning = struggling. My students hear this all the time.

I learned to code in Notepad. I learned to write by bleeding onto the page.

I have the taste and the judgment to know when the AI is hallucinating or being lazy.

My juniors don't have that yet.

(This is exactly what we'll need in the next few years—more than ever with AI. If you don't have that, you can't hold a job.)

If I give them a Ferrari before they learn to drive a Honda Civic, they will crash.

And in the business world, that crash looks like unmaintainable code, brand-damaging copy, a high review tax from your best people, and a workforce that's helpless without a prompt bar.

Your Homework

Look at your team. Look at yourself.

Are you building muscle, or are you just wearing a robot suit?

Pick one task this week.

Do it manually.

Feel the pain. Feel the slowness.

That feeling is your brain leveling up.

Don't let the machine steal your growth.

Talk soon.

— Charafeddine (CM)