Generative AI Is Having Its Herbalife Moment

That is simply not true. It can be better or it can be worse - depends on who directed it.

I understand where the point comes from, but someone who has coded and architected a lot of applications for many years, does get the good side. But a user who see code as an alien language - they are ultimately going to get the bad side of it.

There was a theory floated around by an youtuber (and a tech geek), on how to vibe code better - and how to let agents run the show. I tried, more than once - it failed badly. Not failed at the output or the UI - failed at writing good and well architected code.

> What happens when things go wrong

- this is the most important question - can the human step in?

For me the answer is a unequivocal yes. I may not be able to fix it in 10 minutes, but I know I will fix it in 10 hours or 100 hours - whatever it takes. But when a user who "can't read code" comes in - and asks me to fix their problem, it is going to cost them a lot more than their total subsidized vibe coding tool cost. They're going to be like - the app cost me 100-200$ to vibe-build, but the dev is going to charge me 5-10x for a 2 line fix.

For some the decision will be like - better buy a new phone than repairing the old one, for others - they can't replace things easily.

What used to take 1.5 years to build 10 years ago, and 6-9 months to build 5 years ago, takes 1.5 months or faster to build today (if it is done with the same rigor).

> The GDPR example

How is it different from having a human dev team hired? The CEOs or founders are responsible - they can't go and say "that dev did the wrong thing, fine them" - will you work for such a person?

> the belief that AI can — and will — displace white-collar jobs is a lie

It already is displacing, unfortunately. It has been taking apart both jobs and businesses - one role at a time - within 6 months of AI coming out. Some are experiencing it now, some have experienced it earlier, some will experience it later.

For example - a good tech guy in finance domain and having good domain knowledge - gets fired. After a while, he will end up competing for jobs in the finance domain - because he needs to survive. The domino effect will be seen. And hope it does not become a race to the bottom.

And new roles are likely to come up and stabilize - but the bar will be high and you will need AI all the time. Otherwise you will be seen like ploughing the farm by hand instead of using a tractor.

I’m not predicting it will be fine. I’m saying we have enough evidence to cast the opposite prediction, made on specific timescales in the past, as BS.

The thing is... many prominent figures, both individuals and companies, in the AI industry just lend themselves to being hateable.

Sam Altman personally completely fucked up the RAM market with his double dealing. Every single one of us felt the consequences of that and we will feel it for years to come. And it is why I will call for his arrest, speedy trial and imprisonment every time I have the misfortune of reading his name. I wish to see this person suffer from the bottom of my heart.

Elon Musk, well, there are so, so many valid reasons to hate him. Regarding AI itself, the mechahitler incident and the "undress her in a bikini" CSAM generator are the worst issues. Regarding him as a person, the "pedo diver" incident, the shady stuff surrounding virtually all of his children's mothers, the complete clusterfuck around his daughter, DOGE, the right-arm salute his fanbase keeps denying being a nazi salute, him stoking racial riots in the UK twice, his constant overpromising in all of his ventures (some of which would normally fall under "investor defrauding" claims if there were a functioning legal and regulatory world), the trashcontainer on wheels...

Google has no (notable) individual persons to raise the pitchforks against, but as a company, they severely degraded the quality of their "ordinary" search and have gone to steal clicks and thus money from creators by distilling their work into the AI results box at the top of every search.

Microsoft keeps shoveling AI down everyone's throats no matter if we want it.

Anthropic has literally ripped books apart to scan them for Claude. Google, back when they created the dataset for Google Books, at least didn't destroy the books. Destroying books at that scale is a sacrilege.

Every single AI company is guilty of using questionably sourced materials - either outright stolen or human input based on exploitation.

And on top of that, it's not just RAM that has gotten expensive. The entire rest of the economy - both individuals and companies of all sizes - are priced out of personal and even cloud compute, as the blown-up AI giants scoop up everything they can and the scraps and aged hardware that's available gets fought over by everyone else.

> blatant denials of reality, like claiming that AI is a completely worthless technology or surely the bubble will pop any minute now.

It is undeniable that the entire AI sphere is a bubble, artificially propped up by circular investments and wash trades, and that is now poised to raid pension funds.

It would annoy me more if those AI figureheads were not such hateful people.