The Rise of Whatever

> What are we actually saying here — that even Microsoft has to evaluate usage of “AI” directly, because it doesn’t affect performance enough to have an obvious impact otherwise

Oh wow.

Personally I think your basic premise is false, hence your conclusion is false.

>> We all need jobs to afford living

In many countries this is already not true. There is already enough wealth that there is enough for everyone.

Yes, the western mindset is kinda "you don't work, you don't get paid". The idea that people can "free load" on the system is offensive at a really deep emotional level. If I suggest that a third of the people can work, and the other 2 thirds do nothing, but get supported, most will get distressed [1]. The very essence of US society is that we are defined by our work.

And yet if 2% of the work force is in agriculture, and produce enough food for all, why is hunger a thing?

As jobs become ever more productive, perhaps just -considering- a world where worth is not linked to output is a useful thought exercise.

No country has figured this out perfectly yet. Norway is pretty close. Lots of Europe has endless unemployment benefits. Yes, there's still progress to be made there.

[1] of course, even in the US, already it's OK for only a 3rd to work. Children don't work. Neither do retirees. Both essentially live off the labor of those in-between. But imagine if we keep raising the start-working age, while reducing retirement benefits age....

I agree with a lot of this at the outset, but don't really like the gloomy outlook. I don't think there's much to gain by writing off all this unfortunate stuff as people being stupid and greedy. I mean sure, that may be true, but you can flip it around and say that it's impressive that we have it as good as we do despite having to co-exist with stupidity and greed. Better yet, you can see it as a challenge to overcome.

And I'm not the only one saying this but - the bit about LLMs is likely throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes the "AI-ification" of everything is horrible and people are shoehorning it into places where it's not useful. But to say that every single LLM interaction is wrong/not useful is just not true (though it might be true if you limit yourself to only freely available models!). Using LLMs effectively is a skill in itself, and not one to be underestimated. Just because you failed to get it to do something it's not well-suited to doesn't mean it can't do anything at all.

Though the conclusion (do things, make things) I do agree with anyway.

IMO, this is more ranting about people who meet the metrics of the platform.

You're a platform drone, you have no mind, yada. Yet, we are reading the author's blog.

The author may hate LLMs, but they will lead to many people realizing things they never were aware of, like the author's superficial ability to take information and present it in a way that engages others. Soon that will be a thing that is known. Not many will make money sharing information in prose.

What the author refers to as "LLMs" today, will continually improve and "get better" at everything the author has issues with, maybe in novel ways we can't think of at the moment.

Alternative take:

"Popular culture" has always been a "lesser" ideal of experience, and now that ontological grouping now includes the Internet, as a whole. There are no safe corners, everything you experience on the Internet, if someone shared it with you, is now "Popular culture".

Everyone knows what you know, and you are no longer special or have special things to share, because awareness is ubiquitous.

This is good for society in many ways.

For example, with information asymmetry, where assholes made others their food, it will become less common that people are food.

Things like ad-driven social networks will fade away as this realization becomes normalized.

Unfortunately, we are at the very early stages of this, and it takes a very long time for people to become aware of things like hoaxes.

> agent constructions

> But this article is based on a model of LLM code generation from 6 months ago which is simply no longer true, and you can't gaslight your way back to Q1 2024.

You’re ahead of the curve and wondering why others don’t know what you do. If you’re not an AI company, a faang, or an AI evangelist you likely haven’t heard of those solutions.

I’ve been trying to keep up with AI developments, and only learned about MCP and agentic workflows 1-2 months ago and I consider myself failing at keeping up with cutting edge AI development

Edit:

Also six months ago is Q1 2025, not 2024. Not sure if that was a typo or a need to remind you at how rapidly this technology is iterating