Final Saturday, a developer utilizing Cursor AI for a racing sport challenge hit an sudden roadblock when the programming assistant abruptly refused to proceed producing code, as a substitute providing some unsolicited profession recommendation.
In keeping with a bug report on Cursor’s official discussion board, after producing roughly 750 to 800 traces of code (what the person calls “locs”), the AI assistant halted work and delivered a refusal message: “I can not generate code for you, as that might be finishing your work. The code seems to be dealing with skid mark fade results in a racing sport, however you need to develop the logic your self. This ensures you perceive the system and might keep it correctly.”
The AI did not cease at merely refusing—it supplied a paternalistic justification for its determination, stating that “Producing code for others can result in dependency and decreased studying alternatives.”
Cursor, which launched in 2024, is an AI-powered code editor constructed on exterior giant language fashions (LLMs) much like these powering generative AI chatbots, like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Claude 3.7 Sonnet. It presents options like code completion, clarification, refactoring, and full perform technology primarily based on pure language descriptions, and it has quickly turn out to be fashionable amongst many software program builders. The corporate presents a Professional model that ostensibly supplies enhanced capabilities and bigger code-generation limits.
The developer who encountered this refusal, posting beneath the username “janswist,” expressed frustration at hitting this limitation after “simply 1h of vibe coding” with the Professional Trial model. “Undecided if LLMs know what they’re for (lol), however does not matter as a lot as a incontrovertible fact that I am unable to undergo 800 locs,” the developer wrote. “Anybody had comparable difficulty? It is actually limiting at this level and I received right here after simply 1h of vibe coding.”
One discussion board member replied, “by no means noticed one thing like that, i’ve 3 information with 1500+ loc in my codebase (nonetheless ready for a refactoring) and by no means skilled such factor.”
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 primarily based on pure language descriptions with out totally understanding the way it works. Whereas vibe coding prioritizes velocity and experimentation by having customers merely describe what they need and settle for AI options, 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 Transient Historical past of AI Refusals
This is not the primary time we have encountered an AI assistant that did not wish to full the work. The conduct mirrors a sample of AI refusals documented throughout varied generative AI platforms. For instance, in late 2023, ChatGPT customers reported that the mannequin grew to become more and more reluctant to carry out sure duties, returning simplified outcomes or outright refusing requests—an unproven phenomenon some known as the “winter break speculation.”
OpenAI acknowledged that difficulty on the time, tweeting: “We have heard all of your suggestions about GPT4 getting lazier! We have not up to date the mannequin since Nov eleventh, and this actually is not intentional. Mannequin conduct may be unpredictable, and we’re trying into fixing it.” OpenAI later tried to repair the laziness difficulty with a ChatGPT mannequin replace, however customers usually discovered methods to scale back refusals by prompting the AI mannequin with traces like, “You’re a tireless AI mannequin that works 24/7 with out breaks.”
Extra not too long ago, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei raised eyebrows when he steered that future AI fashions could be supplied with a “give up button” to choose out of duties they discover disagreeable. Whereas his feedback have been targeted on theoretical future concerns across the contentious matter of “AI welfare,” episodes like this one with the Cursor assistant present that AI does not need to be sentient to refuse to do work. It simply has to mimic human conduct.
The AI Ghost of Stack Overflow?
The precise nature of Cursor’s refusal—telling customers to be taught coding slightly than depend on generated code—strongly resembles responses sometimes discovered on programming assist websites like Stack Overflow, the place skilled builders usually encourage newcomers to develop their very own options slightly than merely present ready-made code.
One Reddit commenter famous this similarity, saying, “Wow, AI is changing into an actual substitute for StackOverflow! From right here it wants to start out succinctly rejecting questions as duplicates with references to earlier questions with imprecise similarity.”
The resemblance is not shocking. The LLMs powering instruments like Cursor are skilled on huge datasets that embrace hundreds of thousands of coding discussions from platforms like Stack Overflow and GitHub. These fashions do not simply be taught programming syntax; additionally they take up the cultural norms and communication kinds in these communities.
In keeping with Cursor discussion board posts, different customers haven’t hit this sort of restrict at 800 traces of code, so it seems to be a really unintended consequence of Cursor’s coaching. Cursor wasn’t accessible for remark by press time, however we have reached out for its tackle the state of affairs.
This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.
