AI coding assistant gives unsolicited advice

As reported by Ars Technica:

On Saturday, 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.”

The reason?  Also from the report:

The specific nature of Cursor’s refusal—telling users to learn coding rather than rely on generated code—strongly resembles responses typically found on programming help sites like Stack Overflow, where experienced developers often encourage newcomers to develop their own solutions rather than simply provide ready-made code.

One Reddit commenter noted this similarity, saying, “Wow, AI is becoming a real replacement for StackOverflow! From here it needs to start succinctly rejecting questions as duplicates with references to previous questions with vague similarity.”

The resemblance isn’t surprising. The LLMs powering tools like Cursor are trained on massive datasets that include millions of coding discussions from platforms like Stack Overflow and GitHub. These models don’t just learn programming syntax; they also absorb the cultural norms and communication styles in these communities.