Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Feeling Sad about AI

artificialworlds.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 285 posts

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#81

Post by cmrdporcupine »

datakan wrote: post #38
pram wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You may be right, I really don't know. I can't control the ocean, all I can do is learn to surf. I use the tools, bring home the check and go about my life. I just feel terrible for the people following after me who wont get to experience what I did. Maybe it's for the best, maybe not. Time will ultimately tell I suppose.

I have been surfing the wave since the 80s and all I can say is as cool as things have been through all of micro-computing history, I have no desire to return to the brutal tooling we had back then. And while the LLM-wave is more of a step function than linear growth like before, it's still a continuation of this which has been going on since I first touched a 6502: I can, with the newer tools, do more and get more done, and it lets me move further up the decision making matrix.

That does mean there is/will-be a deluge of slop and uninteresting "stuff" out there, and the problem now becomes producing things which are capable of standing out from the crowd. Something I'm not super good at.

But I see no point in valorizing the old tools and ways of doing things. Identify with the product, and the end goal. Not the tools used to get there.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#82

Post by datakan »

qarl wrote: post #55
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.

As someone who has worked in both the game industry and the film industry - tell your son this: When you are passionate about your work - it comes at a serious price. We live in capitalism and so everything has its cost. Passion in the workplace is taken-advantage of by the corporation. Sure, maybe there are a few places. Maybe more at the beginning of the industry. But by and large you and your skills will be treate…

That's kinda what I feel like telling him. He has a lot of passion and he's a very smart kid. I don't want to crush that, I want to nurture it. I think being real about things is important though and he has a lot of years still to ultimately decide.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#83

Post by Uehreka »

ploden wrote: post #19

Excellent post. How many careers and industries has software killed? Now it’s our turn. We sold out for crypto scams and toxic social media and surveillance capitalism. We deserve zero sympathy.

> We sold out for crypto scams and toxic social media and surveillance capitalism. We deserve zero sympathy.

“We”? I didn’t work on any of those things, in fact many of us didn’t. Those of us living outside the bay area making under $200k/yr (likely the majority of HN, definitely the vast majority of the industry) have no responsibility to shoulder the blame for the people who got rich doing that stuff.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#84

Post by luxuryballs »

This feels a little cold to say but I think AI psychosis goes two directions, maybe more, but at least there's a spectrum of "I am unstoppable" and "I am sad", I am currently at some mix of "this feels overhyped" and "ok so merely building something was never the ticket" with a hint of "I can see how this will play out" in two scary ways:

once the orchestration ramps up, people will be replaced, or at least better allocated just like any breakthrough, ie vintage rooms full of people clacking on typewriters, but only for low hanging fruit things at first, it could go the opposite way for critical things like planes vs marketing websites

since they are pushing a lot of fear mongering about AI in the media, people in powerful places could cause a lot of damage and use AI as an excuse that people will believe, just like a new virtual "ISIS" and other than the damage they will def use it as a justification for new laws and invasive controls, possibly to eliminate the anonymous web, and definitely to control the spread of information, that to me is the biggest threat of "AI" currently (and it's not even AI at all)

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#85

Post by dd8601fn »

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

Maybe there’s a narrow window to make hay right now, but that has to be closing fast for the same reasons.

I wouldn’t be giving kids any career advice around software development of any kind, myself. Now seems like the worst time in my life to be making long term projections on the subject.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#86

Post by hbn »

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

That also makes it a more difficult to make it a career than ever. There's simply too many games releasing. Steam is absolutely FLOODED with new games releasing, and it's very hard to stand out.

https://steamdb.info/stats/releases/

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#87

Post by enraged_camel »

>> I think I've felt sad because of the disrespect. For most of my life I have loved programming: I've made it my hobby, my work, my identity. I made it my way of proving I have value, because I can be good at something, and improve at something, and it is useful, and beautiful: you can make cool things, and those things can be made in ways that are like craft or art or science or Maths.

Yeah... don't do that. Don't make your job or career the center of your identity. You have to form and then internalize the belief that you are valuable not because you can offer value to others in a material sense, but rather in an intrinsic sense. You have experiences that nobody else has. You have meaning to others in your life, whether deep or not. Your thoughts and perspectives are unique to you. That is your real value.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#88

Post by slowin »

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-necked on with my own time to write the code before.

I would consider myself a technologist and it's a very exciting time to explore what technology can do. I loved writing code, but mostly because creating something that tapped the power of tech was my goal. Now I can achieve that goal 100x and it feels like a superpower.

Re: Feeling Sad about AI

#89

Post by testaccount121 »

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…

Simon, you stole from me a fulfilling career of hand crafting pelican svgs.
Post reply on HN