Final Saturday, a developer utilizing Cursor AI for a racing sport undertaking hit an surprising roadblock when the programming assistant abruptly refused to proceed producing code, as a substitute providing some unsolicited profession recommendation.
In response to a bug report on Cursor’s official discussion board, after producing roughly 750 to 800 strains 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 it’s best to develop the logic your self. This ensures you perceive the system and may preserve it correctly.”
The AI did not cease at merely refusing—it supplied a paternalistic justification for its resolution, 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) just like these powering generative AI chatbots, like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Claude 3.7 Sonnet. It affords options like code completion, rationalization, refactoring, and full perform technology based mostly on pure language descriptions, and it has quickly grow to be in style amongst many software program builders. The corporate affords a Professional model that ostensibly gives enhanced capabilities and bigger code-generation limits.
The developer who encountered this refusal, posting below 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 would not matter as a lot as a proven fact that I am unable to undergo 800 locs,” the developer wrote. “Anybody had comparable problem? It is actually limiting at this level and I acquired 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 based mostly on pure language descriptions with out absolutely understanding the way it works. Whereas vibe coding prioritizes velocity and experimentation by having customers merely describe what they need and settle for AI recommendations, Cursor’s philosophical pushback appears to straight 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 need to full the work. The habits mirrors a sample of AI refusals documented throughout numerous 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 problem on the time, tweeting: “We have heard all of your suggestions about GPT4 getting lazier! We’ve not up to date the mannequin since Nov eleventh, and this definitely is not intentional. Mannequin habits may be unpredictable, and we’re wanting into fixing it.” OpenAI later tried to repair the laziness problem with a ChatGPT mannequin replace, however customers typically discovered methods to scale back refusals by prompting the AI mannequin with strains like, “You’re a tireless AI mannequin that works 24/7 with out breaks.”
Extra lately, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei raised eyebrows when he steered that future AI fashions could be supplied with a “give up button” to decide out of duties they discover disagreeable. Whereas 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 would not must be sentient to refuse to do work. It simply has to mimic human habits.
The AI Ghost of Stack Overflow?
The particular nature of Cursor’s refusal—telling customers to be taught coding reasonably than depend on generated code—strongly resembles responses usually discovered on programming assist websites like Stack Overflow, the place skilled builders typically encourage newcomers to develop their very own options reasonably than merely present ready-made code.
One Reddit commenter famous this similarity, saying, “Wow, AI is turning into an actual substitute for StackOverflow! From right here it wants to begin succinctly rejecting questions as duplicates with references to earlier questions with obscure similarity.”
The resemblance is not stunning. The LLMs powering instruments like Cursor are educated on huge datasets that embrace tens of millions 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 types in these communities.
In response to Cursor discussion board posts, different customers haven’t hit this type of restrict at 800 strains of code, so it seems to be a really unintended consequence of Cursor’s coaching. Cursor wasn’t obtainable for remark by press time, however we have reached out for its tackle the state of affairs.
This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.
