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Feeling Sad about AI

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Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#171

Post by simonw »

erqtw1 wrote: post #120
simonw wrote: post #66

I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side. The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well , is to be very disheartened by it. Once you come to terms with the idea that translating an exact spe…

The web developer who wrote some early parts of Django and has reserved the top comment spot tells us to surrender to the inevitability. There are other areas of software, and given the multitude of horrible websites that use 100% CPU and look ugly AI does not work even for web development! This is defeatist propaganda.

> given the multitude of horrible websites that use 100% CPU and look ugly AI does not work even for web development!

Yes, that's my point. You need taste and engineering skill to build websites that are good even with AI assistance.

My comment here is meant to be the opposite of defeatist propaganda! I'm arguing that those of us with skills and experience are becoming more, not less valuable.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#172

Post by notpachet »

simonw wrote: post #66

I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side. The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well , is to be very disheartened by it. Once you come to terms with the idea that translating an exact spe…

There's a larger existential crisis still in store for you. Our global civilization is collapsing. We are choking to death on the unchecked negative externalities of our own progress. It is our species' Achilles heel. Whether or not an individual developer adapts to this temporary capability blip (agentic coding) will not matter in the long run. The systems necessary for supporting these capabilities are too brittle to survive the century.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#173

Post by xp84 »

ijidak wrote: post #114
flyingshelf wrote: post #24

This is basically me in 2026. Life has no meaning and I'm waiting for my money to run out before I end it. Hopefully I can find a job that doesn't bore me but I'm not positive.

No. Please don't think that way. I don't know how to reach you personally, but please take a look at this article: https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/suicidal-tho... I pray it helps you. We're much more than any economic system. The sun still shines. There's a lot out in the world to see. Even in the worst case scenario, that we're all jobless. There are mountains to explore. Beaches to walk. Forests to…

I have to admit, as a former JW, the linked article is actually not proselytizing, instead it's actually got worthwhile advice.

We are each here for a reason and we all touch many lives. We may not ever know, while we're on this earth, many of the important roles we play, just by being ourselves.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#174

Post by qarl »

slowin wrote: post #88
simonw wrote: post #66

I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side. The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well , is to be very disheartened by it. Once you come to terms with the idea that translating an exact spe…

> The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well, is to be very disheartened by it. I think it depends on the person. I've been waiting for AI since I first saw Wargames as a child. As soon as I saw that agents could code at or beyond my level, it felt like the entire world was unlocked. Now I can explore so many ideas that I was bottle-n…

> it feels like a superpower

I say "it feels like flying."

People worry that I'm too enthusiastic about AI. My obvious answer is - wouldn't you love to fly too?

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#175

Post by ungovernableCat »

david927 wrote: post #18

The thing you love and made your identity was always the cruft middleman of getting from one place to another. People were sad when we moved from horses to cars; they loved their horses, they named them. That didn't stop the slow, glacial, detached march of the calendar, of progress, and in this example, of the wheel.

were the horses sad too?

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#176

Post by [deleted] »

notpachet wrote: post #172
simonw wrote: post #66

I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side. The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well , is to be very disheartened by it. Once you come to terms with the idea that translating an exact spe…

There's a larger existential crisis still in store for you. Our global civilization is collapsing. We are choking to death on the unchecked negative externalities of our own progress. It is our species' Achilles heel. Whether or not an individual developer adapts to this temporary capability blip (agentic coding) will not matter in the long run. The systems necessary for supporting these capabilities are too brittle…

[deleted]

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#177

Post by paulinho1 »

This is what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket. For the sake of your life, do something meaningful outside of your work. This industry is full of nerdy geeks who think they're better than everybody else just because they can code a little better. This tendency makes the workplace often very toxic. It's hard to communicate about real problems without getting into politics. From my view, these unsocial behaviors finally caught up with those geek coders. You have no personality other than coding, and now that it's obsolete, you are just sad. Given how much disrespect I've gotten in this industry from this kind of people, this trend after AI makes me even feel happy. The industry really needs a huge change in people's attitude if it wants to survive beyond AI.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#178

Post by palmotea »

simonw wrote: post #66

I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side. The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well , is to be very disheartened by it. Once you come to terms with the idea that translating an exact spe…

> I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side.

Two important things you didn't address:

1. Quality-of-life

2. Economic security

I'm not unhappy that vibe-coding is possible. I'm unhappy that it's likely to change the equation so I will lose a good chunk of my economic security (in a way that increases inequality) and make my work simultaneously more intense and less satisfying. I may be in a better position than a new-grad comp sci major, but the effects are a net negative. That doesn't make me happy or excited. And I'm not a psychopath, so I'm also unhappy for the new-grad comp sci majors, too.

I think one thing you can say for sure, is AI technology has not been developed to make any regular person's life better or help humanity in any way, despite any propaganda to the contrary. It's deeply anti-human, and serves other inhuman mechanisms first and foremost. A relatively small number of people are building it to just see what happens and maybe win the lottery in the process, and everyone else has to deal with the consequences of that (which, by the way, is why data centers are so hated: it's not the first we've been through something like this and almost everyone is sick of it).

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#179

Post by Animats »

fidotron wrote: post #29
asdfman123 wrote: post #6

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…

> creating large minorities of disenfranchised.

That's called "elite overproduction". Too many people going to college when the jobs aren't there. In the US, about half of college graduates have jobs that don't require a college degree.

It's much worse in less developed countries. The article today about essays in Kenya mentions that the country is creating far more educated people than it can use. Egypt had a scheme where the government guaranteed a government job to everyone who graduated from college. They had to give that up when the oil ran out.

It's hitting top people first, which was unexpected. Mathematicians who've won the Fields Medal are worried, and some are giving up math.[1]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/19/mathema...

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#180

Post by thatmf »

datakan wrote: 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.

I was the same at that age (decades ago, but still). And I'm kind of glad I didn't go down that path, seeing friends and colleagues who did. There's a (I think) Folding Ideas video where he's talking to some 13-yo Roblox developer who already has that jaded veteran kind of vibe to them. Which might be the most salient visual. The thing is separating the consuming experience from the creating experience, but also recognizing the validity and importance of both. It's obvious but hard to really internalize.

A good parallel I've discovered as an adult is wine. I love it, and collect it, and can talk at length about terroir, techniques, etc. About ten years ago I wanted to get hands-on experience, and thru a friend was able to intern at a local winery during harvest.

That was one of the most intense months of my life, and I was in physical pain for months afterwards, even as a relatively fit person. So much of that elegant, philosophical final product is manual labor, lifting lots of heavy shit, and endless repetitive motion. It was fun, but it was also brutal.

It left me with even more respect for the people who dedicate their lives to it. But also the realization that I'm much more comfortable being on the other end of it. And that's not only ok but absolutely essential, because the producers need people to buy (and maybe wax philosophical) about their product.

So yeah, by all means give it a shot. But also I think it's important to communicate that there are many valid and satisfying ways to engage with something. Consumer/maker isn't a binary.

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