Comment by cm2012
7 hours ago
This is the kind of person for whom AI is making the most negative change. I feel sad for them. For me, I love this new world. I never took pleasure in craftsmanship or perfectionism, I just want things to work and then iterate on it with as little effort as possible.
> I never took pleasure in craftsmanship or perfectionism, I just want things to work and then iterate on it with as little effort as possible.
The problem with this outlook (not with you personally) is that the increase in accessibility for you comes at a cost, but the way things work these days the cost is not paid by you but by someone else — someone you'll probably never even meet. The cost has been abstracted away from you and foisted onto somebody else against their will. This shows up as people adversely affected by local data centers (increased pollution, higher electricity prices), people displaced in the workforce (author of the article), people of the future who will not understand things because it's easier to skip understanding for now (students, early learners), and so many more.
It's very liberating — so long as you are given the ability to not think about the consequences for these other people, and the abstraction process by which AI companies are providing their services gives you that freedom by design. At the very least, it is something about which you perhaps ought to be wary.
You mean like all the benefits of industrialization? The real externalized human/environmental costs of our fast/cheap fashion, of our iPhones, of cars, of electricity, of agriculture?
I saw a video today, talking about how this is really the end goal of what we've been working towards for 200 years. Automation and scale and convenience uber alles. As structured it's not a good idea and it seems that Dr. Kaczynski wasn't wrong in diagnosis, only in the treatment. But here we are and we're pretty pot-committed, so I guess we have to see for ourselves what's on the other side.
First, I don't trust the elites to share in the wealth. I expect fuedalism to ensue.
Second, I think what is healthy for humans to yearn for is purpose and meaning, and convenience and idleness are almost counterproductive to that. Ok it's hard to argue with convenience, but nowhere in all of this has AI threatened to make my life more convenient by doing the chores for me, it just takes away fun creative tasks that I can get paid for.
Yes the fact that we have seen this pattern play out in the past and are very aware of all of the positive and negative effects it has should be sufficient to slow us down but naturally people are too selfish. The people who benefit will happily step over the graves of those of us who are fucked by the "benefits of industrialization" and then whoever survived will pat themselves on the back for a job well done while the rest of us rot
But there's no reason for us to be angry about it or resist it, of course
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That process is nothing new. That’s happened many times in history over and over. And in far more dangerous ways than not understanding how some complex piece of code keeps their favorite or most critical application running. At this point, people have long lost the ability to have even basic survival. How long would people last if they needed food or water? They have no idea on step one to achieving the basics. It’s all abstract to them, which includes us. That’s the loss that actually matters. Not that they know how their Amazon Fire TV works.
Disagree, in that humans are doing the same things they did in the dawn of time. Adapting to the environment and figuring out what it takes to thrive.
There are many things about our modern world which make less intuitive sense than the lives of hunter gatherers. People are trying to figure out how to survive in the conditions they are placed in.
Physical labour was weakened and then had to compete with machines, till we got lights out factories.
We were left with the service economy to find roles that allowed us to thrive. Now that is being threatened as well. It is unlikely that LLMs are going to make us all into entrepreneurs and capital owners.
Not to mention, the service sector required far fewer workers than manufacturing.
This isn't quite the same kind of moment we see over and over. It's not simply cars taking out horse drawn carriages.
I find it a breath of fresh air to be able to tackle backlogged tech debt items simultaneously with business priorities in parallel and stuff like that.
That being said, I can't see this entire field existing in five years anymore. I'm hoping for at least two more years, but who knows?
This stuff is coming for all white collar, the barrier to entry is completely gone now. Maybe not the barrier to mastery (yet), but the bottom has fallen out.
I agree, and the field possibly not existing in 5 years is a big issue. Like, how are young people supposed to take a mortgage, start a family, or any other big commitments like that, if their whole education and work experience may be useless in a couple of years?
I don't care whether I'm writing code or reviewing LLM generated stuff, but the prospect of losing my job and having to survive on welfare for the rest of my life isn't nice.
Where is the money for welfare coming from if tax from working people is drastically reduced?
From my perspective this is the thing that the people who have been talking about how good these damn things have gotten now were trying to get you to do all along. Understand that they're getting better, it doesn't seem to be stopping, and we really, really need to figure this part out ASAP.
What seems to happen though is it always gets pulled into a discussion of "But they can't X" or "but ma taste!" or the old generic canard "can't replicate what's not in the training data"
All I want is for people to see that yes, this is happening, accept it, then figure out what a good response would be to it. Instead we get everything from stochastic parrot parrots to "Dario is just marketing when he tries to warn us" to the old an thoughtless "But if you think it's bad, why are you doing it?"
Please.
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I am not sure mastery every truly goes away. But it is given the chance to evolve.
Navier-Stokes…
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I see sentiment like this (which is valid; it’s a different perspective), and then I look at my company’s current caseload of breaches and how most of the (insane) increase in business we’ve received is caused by poorly coded apps with obvious security issues, along with the inability of orgs to remediate those issues or adequately follow incidents because no one actually knows the applications anymore.
And I’m wondering if this isn’t the enormous amount of organizational debt from having security second to everything finally coming calling.
Presumably those poorly coded apps were written at least 6 months ago though... Enjoy it while it lasts.
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- Business priorities are potentially neverending so the expectations will just increase in relation to the increased capability.
And yeah, I agree, there is no bottom anymore.
I view it as a different layer of abstraction.
I _am_ a craftsman - software, wood, and a few more domains. There is a lot of personal satisfaction I find in woodcraft through the motion and the exercise. I love that this is a luxury hobby instead of a personal necessity. The difference there is that if I take my time on personal necessity where the market isn't paying for it, I may take food out of my kids' mouths or lose the roof over their head. Luxury craft hobbies face only self-imposed pressures.
AI is letting me build similarly. I can continue to craft my Rust and my Python and my Typescript and my Fortran to my heart's content - and those skills help in the day to day - yet I'm also able to compete in the market and build things that were really infeasible before.
I agree with this framing, but still trying to reconcile staying ahead of the curve without adopting full hype train or doomer mentality.
How are you keeping your “human” addition to the loop valuable, is it through the time spent on the software craftsman hobby?
Im in my early 30’s, and trying to stay ahead. I feel it was easier prior to LLM’s, and now its tough to even know where to focus skill building.
> How are you keeping your “human” addition to the loop valuable, is it through the time spent on the software craftsman hobby?
Yes, and, integrating it into my normal tasks and delivery. Some principles:
(1) I wouldn't worry so much about staying _ahead_ of the technology, rather, focus on the outcomes for yourself and the people you serve. That gives a more holistic and natural boundary when you research and adopt the technologies that help you get there.
(2) I'd also focus on adopting what works best, not what is latest and greatest. Tech regressions definitely happen[1], and you know your need the best.
(3) When quantifying, cost-benefit is typically focused on Benefit / Costs - 1 to give incremental lift. Unsurprisingly, if benefit is high and costs are higher, it might not be worthwhile to adopt!
[1] https://roderick.dev/writing/2026-08-28-obsessing-harnesses/ forgive a small bit of self promotion, but I'm researching this exact problem with my research group, about how to quantify solum benchmaxxing, tradefoff adoption, regression, and improvement for harnesses.