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Feeling Sad about AI

artificialworlds.net

41–50 of 285 posts

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#41
Two things can be true at the same time.

1. It is clear that many people, including the person in the video, has strong identities tied to a certain skill that they have spent years honing and perfecting. The sudden loss of agency and democratization can be confusing, disorienting and frankly demotivating. We need to acknowledge that.

2. Unfortunately, this has played out several hundreds of times over the years in the world. I'll take an extreme example to illustrate the point. Movie stars. There was well trodden path of getting to stardom and adulation, and everthing that comes with it. You move to LA, you work on your acting skills, you take your body aesthetics seiously and with plenty of luck, you might get cast in small roles before you work your way upto stardom. And the riches that come with it, cars, fans, brand deals .. great. And then came internet and YouTube where a guy in basement can garner millions of views, brand deals, fans in millions with little to no effort.

This is the same pattern with an accomplished musician (think a drummer) and someone who uses a drum machine software to drag and drop the "amen loop".

Exact same pattern with broadcasters and internet-journalists.

Yes it is demotivating, yes it is confusing but such is progress. Adapt or die. Its ruthless.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#42

I feel like this is a rational response. Personally, while I'm becoming increasingly convinced there's going to be a wave of SWE layoffs, another part of me doesn't grasp it yet. I don't feel it. I was an AI skeptic for a while but it's literally doing my job for me right now. Every month it needs less of my help. Once they replace SWEs, they're going to turn around and replace every other knowledge worker yet. But m…

> I can't believe the AI boosters were right. Not even sure they can believe it. The AI field has known, but repeatedly ignored, that the knowledge work group would end up first on the chopping block, especially for those where everything they touch is digitally encoded already. I used to joke that we're all really in trouble when robots can sort out your socks, but as of about a year ago I started seeing disturbing…

I was in denial for a long time too. Now I see it everywhere, among very smart people, too.

They say "AI just hallucinates" or "your fear is overblown" or they have a general sour grapes attitude towards it. But I don't think they're prepared for what's coming.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#43
stop calling them AI... those are LLMs so just statistical prediction software trained over other coders code... if no one makes code anymore then LLMs will learn from their own written code that statistically contains errors that will propagate and enter the feedback loop amplifying...

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#44
post #16

My son told me yesterday he wants to program video games for a living. He's 13. He's looking at how it used to be done and seeing the pride people had in doing it. He hasn't seen how it is now. Not sure I have the heart to tell him how terrible the industry has become. Feels like telling a kid 30 years ago that being an astronaut is pointless because they no longer go to the moon.

[deleted]

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#45
The loss of identity is quite destabilizing, and our industry is not doing enough to address it. For example, one thing we could do is move identity to value to the user, in a structured way. It is possible, but hardly any team is thinking about it.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#46

Kudos to the author for being so vulnerable. The video presentation format is quite intimate, and a very different feeling than you'd get from a youtube video.

I take issue with a ton of youtube style articles, and this video is an example of a version of youtube video essays done like a literal essay instead.

It seems very much to me like video essay format on youtube is being used as a crutch. You can pump out your rough draft and hide it behind visuals or whatever else, and you benefit from the longer run time, and the viewer likely hangs around.

You can't do that in an essay, if you lose the reader for a paragraph or two, they're likely gone. To me that is why this reads more intimate, its an essay crafted as a video and an essay which i LOVE, i want the choice, and almost no youtube essay or whatever you want to call them would give that choice because it is so filled with filler content hiding the rough edges.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#47
Using AI I can build more while listening to a conference call than i could with a week of evening coding sessions. Plus, i get to spend evenings with my kids. I kind of like it.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#48
I feel the opposite of sad, I am very very excited. I love programming and I love technology, but the stuff I'm doing now is beyond what I could not do on my own, and now I'm spending a few hours building complete end-to-end stuff. This is the golden age for builders.

I created a fully working house simulator, I made a math test creator for my kids, I fixed up some other side projects that I had and added observability, as well as installed Prometheus and Grafana and built grafana dashboards all using AI. It's wonderful.

I plan on building real-time stock price monitors with personalized alerting, taking images from my security cameras and making time lapse videos, trying to do real time predictions on football games/individual plays by having AI monitor the game and based on previous history predict plays/outcomes specifically for sports betting. I need to find the time to figure out how to do all this stuff but what used to be a pipe dream is now 100% possible and accomplishable within days.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are sad others are very happy

The problem is that in an AI powered future, there is no elite class. In every regime in history, elites have been a threat to state power, but needed to keep things running. If the state can run itself, you don't need elites anymore.

Elites will be the ones that hold the capital.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#50
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any job that requires human working on computers to complete tasks is slowly becoming irrelevant where the computers themselves do the work. How many people now make their living completing tasks on computers?

Let me go ask my brother who works at pwc as a partner - who has yet to lay off a single person in the entire firm since the llm-hype+boom. They’re also hiring more than ever. You guys are so deluded in your little bubble it’s hilarious.

"Look at me, I collected a single data point, I am so SMRT. Fooled U suckers!"

Please at least attempt to have a big more rigor in your standards.

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