Comment by simonw
6 days ago
"And we, the engineers, are in a unique position. Unlike people in any other industry, we can affect the trajectory of AI."
I firmly believe that too. That's why I've been investing a great deal of effort in helping people understand what this stuff can and can't do and how best to make use of it.
I don't think we can stop it, but I do think (hope) we can show people how to use it in a way where the good applications outweigh the bad.
> I don't think we can stop it, but I do think (hope) we can show people how to use it in a way where the good applications outweigh the bad.
That feels idealistic. About as realistic as telling people how to use semiconductors or petrochemicals for good instead of bad.
No-one knows where AI is going but one thing you can be sure of - the bad actors don't give two hoots what we think, and they will act in their own interests as always. And as we see from historical events, there are still many, many bad actors around. And when the bad actors do bad things with the technology, the good actors have no choice but to react.
The only way to fight bad actors using the technology is good actors using the technology.
You can write walls of texts about ethics and social failure. Bad actors won't care.
You can tell everyone that some technology is bad and everyone should stop using it. Some good people will listen to you and stop. Bad actors won't stop, and they will have technological edge.
You can ask politicians for regulation. However, your government might be a bad actor just as well (and recently we had a fine demonstration). They will not regulate in the interests of good people. They will regulate for what stakeholders want. Common people are never stakeholders.
If you want to stop bad actors doing bad things with AI: learn AI faster and figure out how to use AI to stop AI. This is the only way to fly.
> About as realistic as telling people how to use semiconductors or petrochemicals for good instead of bad.
Sounds better than nothing.
Sorry to snipe but: You don't feel at least a little shared responsibility in evangelizing "vibe-coding"? Is that currently blazing hype a force for good? I think it wouldn't be all over social- and mainstream media at this point without your blog post(s).
I doubt I had much influence at all on the spread of vibe-coding.
I stand by what I wrote about it though: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/
I think it's a net positive for regular humans to be able to build tools for their own personal use, and I think my section on "when is it OK to vibe code?" (only for low stakes projects, treat with extreme caution if private data or security is involved) is something I wish people had paid more attention to! https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/#when-is-i...