21–30 of 103 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sheer thought of asking "how I performed" in one of the most subjective fields is the most ai-esque thing I read in a while
Yes. There were never any performative parts to dating prior to the release of ChatGPT in November, 2022.
We listen to tech bros trying to shape a distopian future, who spent more time with their computer then with their familly and friends.
>The other story covers a founder who has Claude review her first dates and tell her whether she was engaging and empathetic enough, thanks to recording every single one of them. Two people meet and afterwards, rather than talk to the other person or trust her own judgment, one of them sits alone with a machine and asks how well she performed. Holy insanity
Throughout history there have been predictions that the next technological breakthrough will lead to us working less and living more fulfilled lives, that has never happened. Same seems to be happening with AI, people are just working more rather than less.
This really captures the danger of turning every technological gain into a new expectation. AI may save us time, but if we simply reinvest that time into working harder and competing more, what have we actually gained? Throughout history there have been predictions that the next technological breakthrough will lead to us working less and living more fulfilled lives, that has never happened. Same seems to be happening…
Everyone lives in anxiety. Whether they use AI or not, people shout that their way is the right way. Right or wrong, I think it's ultimately about finding the organization that fits the workflow you want. I use AI, but I don't feel the need to convince those who don't to use it. Conversely, if someone who doesn't use AI tells me not to, I'll just agree and move on. I see the ongoing AI driven transformation as part o…
This is a key point, and one that is rarely articulated.
The problem -- for me, anyway -- with the Current Era is specifically the workload, but the relentlessness.
I'm old enough to remember the Old Days of big release dates. You'd grind for a while, sometimes in a deathmarch, but after the release the organization would relax and there would be _some_ slack.
Now it's an endless river of prompts, push to prod, fix, repeat ad nauseam. Because implementation is now much cheaper but genuinely good ideas are as scarce as ever, companies are turning into a random walk optimizations weirdly mirroring training regimes. The idea apparently being that you make enough features/changes you'll eventually find the key to unlocking hyper-growth.
But unlike a training system, all these intermediate steps compound. Customers find their software mutating under them at an alarming rate. Maintainability becomes barely possible, even with Claude doing a ton of work. We're just creating technical debt we expect the future AI to fix, and getting no closer to the "revenue unlock."
Many are chained with fear to this dehumanizing and demoralizing system, and it sucks.
Everyone lives in anxiety. Whether they use AI or not, people shout that their way is the right way. Right or wrong, I think it's ultimately about finding the organization that fits the workflow you want. I use AI, but I don't feel the need to convince those who don't to use it. Conversely, if someone who doesn't use AI tells me not to, I'll just agree and move on. I see the ongoing AI driven transformation as part o…
> I think it's ultimately about finding the organization that fits the workflow you want. This is a key point, and one that is rarely articulated. The problem -- for me, anyway -- with the Current Era is specifically the workload, but the relentlessness. I'm old enough to remember the Old Days of big release dates. You'd grind for a while, sometimes in a deathmarch, but after the release the organization would relax…
I also think it's about the workload. A senior from my country (Korea) once told me something similar. He had 25 years of programming experience. He said to me:
'Back in the day, inefficiencies reduced the workload. People weren't used to email, or getting approvals took a day or two. Those inefficiencies actually meant people worked less. These days, there's just too much work.'
Hearing your words reminded me of what that senior programmer who hired me said.
It's true—once you start using AI code, it becomes hard to write your own code. Because the machine's abstraction and your abstraction are different. So there are points where maintainability becomes harder.
It feels like we're chasing efficiency so much that the resting points humans actually need are disappearing.
Anyway, I agree with you, senior.
This really captures the danger of turning every technological gain into a new expectation. AI may save us time, but if we simply reinvest that time into working harder and competing more, what have we actually gained? Throughout history there have been predictions that the next technological breakthrough will lead to us working less and living more fulfilled lives, that has never happened. Same seems to be happening…
I think you may be in a bit of a bubble. Sure the Anthropic engineer is trying to token max. But "we" generally see AI as a step up from google search and go about our lives pretty much the same as we have.
The ones that are captured by AI, I think they're just truly excited about the technology. It's new and opening up possibilities. It's like when you first learned to program and you stayed up all night writing games or whatever your interests were.
I know without programming I would "work less" but that doesn't result in "more fulfilled lives". Quite the opposite. The most unfulfilled people I know in life work the least!
This really captures the danger of turning every technological gain into a new expectation. AI may save us time, but if we simply reinvest that time into working harder and competing more, what have we actually gained? Throughout history there have been predictions that the next technological breakthrough will lead to us working less and living more fulfilled lives, that has never happened. Same seems to be happening…
In the last big AI productivity thread I read on Hacker News the most common anecdote was people saying they weren’t more producing more at work with AI, they were just getting the same work done faster. After that they’d relax or switch to working on side projects.
I don’t think that’s going to last for everyone, but I do think it is a common response to AI. I don’t agree when you say that people are working more. I think, at this moment in time, most people are using AI to compress the time spent doing their work. Some people pick up extra tasks with some of their new free time. Others don’t.
I don’t think AI is leading to increased working time other than in the LinkedIn and X hustle and grind bubbles where posters are bragging about having 10 agent loops running constantly to launch their startup.
>The other story covers a founder who has Claude review her first dates and tell her whether she was engaging and empathetic enough, thanks to recording every single one of them. Two people meet and afterwards, rather than talk to the other person or trust her own judgment, one of them sits alone with a machine and asks how well she performed. Holy insanity