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Feeling Sad about AI

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Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#191

Post by cortesoft »

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…

This is exactly how I feel, and I have been trying to think how to articulate it.

I love programming, and have loved it ever since I read the first page of my BASIC programming book 35 years ago and learned how to write a PRINT statement. I remember running into my parent's room as an 8 year old, telling them I knew how to make the computer print something. It was so exciting.

I have never lost that excitement, but my love is not just about programming. It is about technology in general. I love the idea of having smart machines, and being able to use them to do stuff, and the power you can have when you automate something. I love being able to come up with an idea about how a machine can do what I want, and then how that means it can do it over and over without tiring.

I loved technology in science fiction. My family watched Star Trek: The Next Generation from the first episode until the last. I loved Data, I loved the ships computer, I loved the holodeck. I dreamed about having those. I was so excited when I spent way too much money to buy the very first Oculus Rift dev kit, because it felt so much closer to the holodeck than anything I had experienced before.

I have felt that way about AI. I was astonished by the first ChatGPT I used. It was amazing! The first programming AI I tried was github's copilot, and I was already astonished. It was able to complete the function I needed! How did it know what I wanted to do?

I continue to be amazed at every advancement. I remember the first time I tried Claude, and I had it write me a connect 4 engine in Rust (writing connect 4 engines is one of my standard 'new language' routines), and it did it!

I have felt closer to living in Star Trek these last couple of years than ever before. Telling the computer what you want, seeing the response, and refining what you are asking for is how I dreamed of using a computer since I saw them do that on the Enterprise. And here I am, doing it!

I like computers and programming because I like technology, and I like seeing it advance into areas that seemed impossible before. I love the fact that the 'Tasks' XKCD that I loved to quote for so many years when non-programmers would talk about a programming idea (https://xkcd.com/1425/) has become completely obsolete; now anyone could spin up a bird identifying app in a few hours. What was 'virtually impossible' is now routine.

THAT is the thing I love, not writing code. I mean, I DO love writing code, but I love getting my machines to do what I want even more.

I can't wait until robotics become more mainstream. I can't wait to have a machine that can clean my bathrooms and do my laundry and cooke me dinner. I can already imagine the routines I will develop, and the new ways of combining those skills I will come up with when these things are invented. Or hell, maybe I will join one of the companies working on those things and move that field forward.

There is no end to what technology can do, and I am so excited to see what is next.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#193

Post by pixl97 »

pram wrote: post #33
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.

IDK man it’s a golden era for one-man indie games right now (I just finished Endacopia) and that can only increase with AI assistance. I wouldn’t be too cynical about it

Ehhhhhh. Its a golden era for one-man indie games that are successful.

But this is deceptive. Per game delivered one man games were likely far far more successful in the past. Simply because there were very few of them in a much smaller market.

There are countless indie games to day and only the best of the best really get any views. It is insanely hard to stand out in that market.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#194

Post by Verdex »

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…

> Once you come to terms with the idea that translating an exact specification into decent code isn't a unique skill

My employer moved out of the "accept spec; produce code" space back in the early aughts. It was clear that early that this was going to be a bad space to operate in. (Although not for LLM reasons, obviously)

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#196

Post by hintymad »

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…

Maybe the real threat is that our industry has been stalled for years, or to put it more politely, that it has been mature for a while. Back before 2010 or so, people actually read books like The Art of Computer Programming, the Dragon Book on compilers, and the Lions’ Book on Unix, or followed sites like lambda-the-ultimate.org. Then sites like High Scalability became popular. Not that everyone studied them cover to cover, but plenty of engineers considered them essential reading. Yet long before LLMs came along, that kind of depth had clearly become niche. The creator of High Scalability even put the site up for sale. Whenever someone posts an article titled "Top X Data Structures for Y," every single structure mentioned was invented decades ago. If most of what we do now is just slice and dice abstractions created and refined by previous generations, we are really just relying on our once-unique ability to transfer knowledge - something AI is rapidly replacing.

This isn't unique to software engineering. In Renaissance Italy, mathematicians like Tartaglia and Fior hoarded cubic formula shortcuts like proprietary algorithms and challenged rivals to public math duels. Today, we solve cubic equations without a second thought. Special functions used to be a staple college course for physics and engineering majors. Are they still? The US military used to employ thousands of people just to calculate PDEs by hand. Do we need anyone doing that today?

Our only hope is that our society moves fast enough to create new demands and problem domains that genuinely require new systems and algorithms. Look at AI: it’s evolving rapidly, driving massive demand, and forcing the development of new systems and architectures. As a result, the lucky few[1] working at that frontier are having rewarding careers. Without frontiers like that, the rest of us risk becoming irrelevant.

[1] One unfortunate factor is that building AI now requires lots of capital for accessing GPUs, which means individuals in the open source community have a hard time working on it.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#197

Post by Trasmatta »

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.

I often feel like this as well. It's hard to talk about it with people, because they panic and immediately start sending you literature about suicidality and giving you hotlines, etc, etc, as if I haven't already seen all of that before.

I'm not actively suicidal or anything (and I know all the signs of risk, and what to do about it), but there's an underlying feeling that life just hurts and has no meaning. Currently the thing that helps me stick around is the idea of "doing it for the plot". Life ends in short order either way, so I figure I'll just stick around and keep it interesting.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#198

Post by Trasmatta »

podgietaru wrote: post #190
xp84 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll add. I once got stopped by a bunch of JW. And I wanted to practice my Dutch, and they were willing to talk to me in Dutch. They showed me a video about depression. And it was actually exceptionally good advice. It spoke about speaking to a therapist. There was a small bit about prayer, which was obviously not my bag. But I was pleasantly surprised at how grounded the advice was.

Hopefully their advice includes: "take this advice, and then don't join the Jehovah's Witnesses. It's a high control abusive religion that will make your depression worse".

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#199

Post by VCFundedGenYer »

I'm just sad that the overwhelming majority has resorted to using AI in terrible ways.

Case in point, last night, I saw a flyer with the US flag. It contained at least 55 stars, and the bottom row was cut off at the bottom.

Nobody even reviews this stuff anymore, and don't even for one second tell me people will get better at it - they won't. You're living in an absolute bubble if you think AI is a net benefit for society.

Our AI team at my org doesn't even know how to write half decent prompts. They just show us how to make Corgi pictures in every meeting. When you actually challenge them to use LLMs in real ways, they crap their pants or tell you that you're out of scope.

Executives are the same way, they push AI on everyone but have no clue how to actually use it in a practical setting (because there probably isn't a way)

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#200

Post by bitpush »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #143
bitpush wrote: post #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 t…

1. Corporations misappropriating $9Tn of opensource human works to sell isomorphic plagiarism tokens is not progress, but rather an unsustainable ectoparasite people will not tolerate very long. 2. Indeed, the invention of the Cotton gin was credited for prolonging the economics of US Slavery for another century. Those folks were probably upset for a good reason. It is a self correcting problem, as anything that coul…

> 1. Corporations misappropriating $9Tn of opensource human works to sell isomorphic plagiarism tokens is not progress, but rather an unsustainable ectoparasite people will not tolerate very long.

I think about this a lot when I look at the roads, freeways and railroads of the world. In pursuit for building it, billions of trees have been cut down, land fundamentally shifted, rivers cut through, and wildlife uprooted.

Yet, roads, freeways and railroads allow for growth. Someone facing medical emergency can reach a hospital on road because it exists. I get to eat fruits in winter because it is imported and transported to me from warmer places and/or storage units.

Human progress and prosperity comes at a cost. Nothing in the world is free (perhaps maybe sunshine?) and the life that you're yearning pre-AI is also extremely tainted. Infact, you'll be hard pressed to find an era when human meddling hasnt had bad impact on the world (right from farming and domesticating animals).

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