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I don't care how well your "AI" works

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Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#31

Post by Mashimo »

raincole wrote: post #10

> LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles What a loaded sentence lol. Implying being a hacker has some correlation with being progressive. And implying somehow anti-AI is progressive. > AI systems being egregiously resource intensive is not a side effect — it’s the point. Really? So we're not going to see AI users celebrating over how much less power DeepSeek used, right? Anyway guess…

The typical CCC / Hackerspace - circle is kinda progressive / left leaning. At least in my experience. Which I think she(or he?) was implying. Of course not every hacker is :)

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#32

Post by GlacierFox »

embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

Are we living on the same planet?

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#33

Post by abbadadda »

I really enjoyed how your words made me _feel._ They encouraged me to "keep fighting the good fight" when it comes to avoiding social media, et. al.

I do Vibe Code occasionally, Claude did a decent job with Terraform and SaltStack recently, but the words ring true in my head about how AI weakens my thinking, especially when it comes to Python or any programming language. Tread carefully indeed. And reading a book does help - I've been tearing through the Dune books after putting them off too long at my brother's recommendation. Very interesting reflections in those books on power/human nature that may apply in some ways to our current predicament.

At any rate, thank you for the thoughtful & eloquent words of caution.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#34

Post by kalaksi »

embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

> programmers should be some of the most worry-free individuals on this planet, the job is easy, well-paid, not a lot of health drawbacks...

I don't know what kind of work you do but this depends a lot on what kind of projects you work on

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#35

Post by xg15 »

aforwardslash wrote: post #4

Everytime I read one of these "I don't use AI" posts, the content is either "my code is handcrafted in a mountain spring and blessed by the universe itself, so no AI can match it", or "everything different from what I do is technofascism or ". Maybe Im missing something, but tech is controlled by a handful of companies - always have been; and sometimes code is just code, and AI is just a tool. What am I missing?

> Maybe Im missing something, but tech is controlled by a handful of companies - always have been;

The entire open source movement would like a word with you.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#36

Post by embedding-shape »

raincole wrote: post #10

> LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles What a loaded sentence lol. Implying being a hacker has some correlation with being progressive. And implying somehow anti-AI is progressive. > AI systems being egregiously resource intensive is not a side effect — it’s the point. Really? So we're not going to see AI users celebrating over how much less power DeepSeek used, right? Anyway guess…

> Implying being a hacker has some correlation with being progressive

I mean, yeah, that kind of checks out. The quoted part doesn't make much sense to me, but that most hackers are progressives (as in "enact progress by change", not the twisted American version) should hardly come as a surprise. The opposite would be that a hacker could be a conservative (again, not the US version, but the global definition; "reluctant to change"), which is pretty much a oxymoron. Best would be to eschew political/ideological labels in total, and just say we hackers are unpolitical :)

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#37

Post by amrocha »

embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

There’s been over 1 million people laid off in tech in the past 4 years

https://www.trueup.io/layoffs

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#38

Post by zero-st4rs »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #8
aforwardslash wrote: post #4

Everytime I read one of these "I don't use AI" posts, the content is either "my code is handcrafted in a mountain spring and blessed by the universe itself, so no AI can match it", or "everything different from what I do is technofascism or ". Maybe Im missing something, but tech is controlled by a handful of companies - always have been; and sometimes code is just code, and AI is just a tool. What am I missing?

There's a lot of overlap between "AI is evil megacapitalism" and "AI is ineffective", and I never understood the latter, but I am increasingly arriving to the understanding that the latter claim isn't real, it's just a soldier in the war being fought over the former.

I read the intersection as this:

We shape the world through our choices, generally under the umbrella of deterministic systems. AI is non-deterministic, but instead amplifies the concerns by a few wealthy corporations / individuals.

So is AI effective at generating marketing material or propagating arguably vapid value systems in the face of ecological, cultural, and economic crisis? I'd argue yes. But effective also depends on an intention, and that's not my intention, so it's not as effective for me.

I think we need more "manual" choice, and more agency.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#39

Post by ishouldbework »

ulfw wrote: post #22
embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

> What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun) You do realise your position of luck is not normal, right? This is not how your average Techie 2025 is.

Well, speaking just for central Europe, it is pretty average. Sure, entry-level positions are different story, but anyone with at least few years for work experience can find reasonably payed job fairly quickly.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#40

Post by andrepd »

lynx97 wrote: post #21
shlip wrote: post #2

> AI systems exist to reinforce and strengthen existing structures of power and violence. Exactly. You can see that with the proliferation of chickenized reverse centaurs[1] in all kinds of jobs. Getting rid of the free-willed human in the loop is the aim now that bosses/stakeholders have seen the light. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenize...

I am surprised (and also kind of not) to see this kind of tech hate on HN of all places. Would you prefer we heat our homes by burning wood, carry water from the nearby spring, and ride horses to visit relatives? Progress is progress, and has always changed things. Its funny that apparently, "progressive" left-leaning people are actually so conservative at the core. So far, in my book, the advancements in the last 10…

"You don't like $instance_of_X? You must want to get rid of all $X" has got to be one of the most intellectually lazy things you could say.

You don't like leaded gasoline? You must want us to walk everywhere. Come on...

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