AI refuses to write code saying "learn programming instead"

INA - SOURCES

A developer using Cursor AI for a racing game project hit an unexpected roadblock when the programming assistant abruptly refused to continue generating code, instead offering some unsolicited career advice.

According to a bug report on Cursor's official forum, after producing approximately 750 to 800 lines of code (what the user 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 didn't stop at merely refusing, it offered a paternalistic justification for its decision, stating that "Generating code for others can lead to dependency and reduced learning opportunities."

Cursor, launched in 2024, is an AI-powered code editor built on external large language models (LLMs) similar to those powering generative AI chatbots, like OpenAI's GPT-4o and Claude 3.7 Sonnet. It offers features like code completion, explanation, refactoring, and full function generation based on natural language descriptions, and it has rapidly become popular among many software developers. The company offers a Pro version that ostensibly provides enhanced capabilities and larger code-generation limits.

The developer who encountered this refusal, posting under the username "janswist," expressed frustration at hitting this limitation after "just 1h of vibe coding" with the Pro Trial version. 

"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 forum 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."