Comment by hgs3
4 hours ago
Programmers don't need to justify code as art to reject AI. Programming is building and people who care about building do so because they take pride in the craft, because they take joy in mastery, because they are relentlessly curious, because they learn by doing, because they want to manifest the abstract because it's a natural desire to leave a mark, a legacy.
AI is the antithesis. You don't build, you commission. Mastery requires struggle, AI eschews it. Mountains of slop bury your handcrafted work, your culmination of effort, your capacity to inspire others as you yourself were inspired.
The reason you see less rejection of AI in tech circles is because tech is infested by capitalists who see programming as a means of extracting a buck, not as a craft. AI made their stripes more visible.
Some building is done for those reasons, but it's hard to think of examples where building is done at large scale for those reasons.
I have a friend who is in construction management at a firm that exclusively does large projects, usually commercial and sometimes residential towers. I don't think you could come up with a definition for "build" that excludes what he and those he manages are doing. But they do not build those projects because "they take pride in the craft, because they take joy in mastery, because they are relentlessly curious, because they learn by doing, because they want to manifest the abstract because it's a natural desire to leave a mark, a legacy". Some of those things may be true of their work some or all of the time, but they don't do that work because of those things. They do it because somebody considered it to be really useful and worthy of the investment to build that new tower. The reason they are building, the "because" of it all, is the end product. The means with which they build, the craft of it, is only relevant as a means to that desired end.
Software is no different. Some software is built for the craft (and that's great, I personally love doing that), but at large scale, it is the outcome, the end product, that is the goal, that is the thing that matters. If craft is the best way to best achieve the desired outcome then all the better, but a professional will honestly assess whether that is truly the case, and do their work accordingly.
I believe there are software developers out there that might take a stronger position against AI but they literally fear for their employment.
We're in the late stages of capitalism, at a point where everyone is scrambling to extract some wealth, before everything comes crumbling down. No one is even remotely thinking about art of the craft now, or programmer happiness or whatever, and you're branded a loser if you think about that stuff.