This hit me hard. This article is art. I think I need to sleep on this and read it again in the morning.
People will argue this point. However, when I look at all the things that tech has done thinking it was going to improve society; when in fact, it did the exact opposite is hard to argue. AI is just another item on a very long list of dystopian markers that writers/musicians have warned us about for years.
The scary part now is people denying its happening right in front of them.
I wonder if age is a factor. Those of us who have been around for a while have seen all the promises and hope and excitement about the future, that maybe 20% of that comes true and the rest ends up being the usual exploitation and greed.
The younger people haven't been through that cycle of disillusionment yet so they still believe that only the positive, hopeful dreams will come true. It's natural, but naive, to believe that humans will always collectively choose the best path forward [1].
My grandma always refused to touch computers despite my excitement about them in my youth and I couldn't understand why. Now I think I get it.
In the former, you understand it better and better as you age, but in the latter you're left with knowledge that's of no use while the next generation is ahead of you just by the privilege of being young.
In the former, you are a valuable source of information. In the latter, a burden.
I'd put it more like: you're left with knowledge that sees right through bullshit and the same-old promises and error modes, but nobody's buying. And the next generation is hired precisely because they're naive to all of that to repeat the same mistakes eagerly while sociopaths profit.
With age I'm becoming jaded with computing, not personal computers per se, but the overwhelming space taken by them now (especially due to cheap networking I guess).
I did manage to convince her to try a VR headset at one point and despite her protests she clearly enjoyed it. Afterwards she said "what a silly gadget" haha. I'm realising now that I have similar feelings about generative AI.
So now I rebalance things and put computers in a smaller niche, not the centre of gravity.
Hard to tell if it's just nostalgia, but all the smoothing, drop shadows, antialiasing (and now blurring with MacOS 26) feel so unnecessary and hardly even pretty anymore.
There's something nice about computer interfaces that just look like computer interfaces instead of pretending they're something else.
IMO part of it is that the older interfaces trusted the intelligence of the user to understand the abstractions below the interface, while newer software assumes the user is dumb in order to capture the largest possible market share. In the 90s it was "RTFM", now it's "your software sucks if it's not obvious". But what we lost in that is that interfaces now abstract away what's actually going on underneath.
Maybe this preference for the old way is part of the reason for the resurgence of TUIs.
[1] https://viznut.fi/unscii/
[2] https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/I too feel that the computing aesthetic has vanished, somehow on purpose, a lot of efforts were aimed at making gpus and browser able to emulate anything (magazine, movies), so that's what apps do.
And I also agree about the balance between the tool and user. Limitations forced UIs to be organized, structured in some simple ways, they would do enough work to do some of the work, but the rest was on you to grasp the abstractions and ideas around. The software became something to immerse yourself in to gain more. That was part of the magic.
Even scarier are the UIs for whom it's not happening fast enough and who cheer it on. Most of them don't realize they are digging their own graves if the promises they believe in become true. And if they don't become true, there will be a rude awakening for a great many people and bankruptcy for many companies.
Imagine, you invented iron production to improve people lives - better tools (ploughs, axes, knives), etc - and now you see how people immediately use it for better weapons crushing the ones who have still been using bronze.
Or for example from the Palantir's Karp's book "Technological Republic" :
" We make the case that one of the most significant challenges that we face in this country is ensuring that the U.S. Department of Defense turns the corner from an institution designed to fight and win kinetic wars to an organization that can design, build, and acquire AI weaponry—... "
The tech is great, be it iron or AI. The people are still [almost] the same (i sometimes think that our evolutionary goal is the AGI robots who would take over the Earth and will evolve toward higher morals and conscience faster than we would - as they would naturally have shared brain state/connection that we can get only if we develop telepathy which we wouldn't, and we unfortunately disregard the next best thing - empathy)
is that a reasonable statement? if so, congratulations, welcome to the club bud! you're a luddite now. we meet on tuesdays, please bring cookies if it's your first time.
This is nothing new or unique to software.
Certainly a lot of bad things have come out of tech.
But I don't agree that it has made everything overall worse. That feels like recency bias. In which few decades in history would you rather be spending your years on this earth, instead of now?
I could not give less fucks for having AI and smartphones and most other stuff, including all the fancy new medical procedures which are barely incremental.
Fridges, basic 90s-style internet and mini-skirts and welfare, and cheap housing, and jobs-a-plenty, more affordable healthcare, and the lifestyle, I can use just fine!
And I'd avoid the Plague or feudal times too. Including the techno-feudal times of today.
Pretend people can't have periods they'd be fine to live again and might prefer to today is bullshit.
Genuine question, have you ever investigated these options? If so, why did you dismiss them?
I want the era/society/world, not mere personal or communal play-acting it.
Disagree
Removing yourself from the computing environment does not remove the impact it has on the world and around you. That is the equivalent of sticking one's head in the sand.
Right now I am picturing the dog drinking coffee in the burning room meme.
What I want is a better society (as I see it), not convenience for me personally.
Obviously to the degree I can distance myself from stuff I don't care for, I do it. But I don't want to larp in some like-minded commune while the world turns to shit, I want the world to not turn to shit.
But a lot of people disagree with you and think it isn't turning to shit, and in fact for most people on the planet, life gets better every year.
I understand your issues are more local, but remember, actions always speak louder than words. People say they don't want certain things, but then they engage prolifically with those things.
All I'm saying really is, try to avoid making the mistake that your reality is *the* reality. You can control your reality, and in this world you (and others) seem to dislike so much, there are other ways of being.
They're wrong. Their little corner might not be, but the world as a whole is.
> and in fact for most people on the planet, life gets better every year.
Sure, if you're a subsistence farmer, five of whose nine kids would have died of starvation a few decades ago. Now it's only one out of six. And yes, that is even in part thanks to the agricultural apps on your smartphone.
But for the larger part of the world's population, who aren't subsistence farmers — they're beyond all that, and into the downside (and that's where the subsistence farmers are headed too, once they are no longer such): Materially safe and well-fed, but prisoners in a bunch of walled panopticon gardens.
> You can control your reality
What one can control is a little Potemkin village, which one will always know is not actually reality. Your avid proselytizing for that as a "solution" is you working, intentionally or (hopefully) unintentionally, on behalf of the techbroligarks who are busily acquiring the real world as their personal fiefdoms.
If you are (hopefully not!) doing this intentionally, one can only wonder: Are you a techbroligark? (If so, who are you — Zuck, Musk, Thiel...?) If not: Why on Earth would you want to lull people — why would you be propagandizing for people lulling themselves — into the bliss of ignorance; why would you want them to ignore the world actually going to shit by hiding in some little artificial enclave where they can pretend that it isn't?
And if you aren't doing it intentionally, you need to wake up to the fact that it is what you're doing... And stop doing it.
That's so untrue in these here parts, it's laughable
Four things:
1. I am a parent. Ignoring like the world doesn't exist is not an option.
> wouldn't you be happier if you lived in an environment where you were not impacted by all the stuff you dislike?
2. That would not be possible.
3. If you have the capability to do something, some believe you have an obligation to. Actively working to not make a shit world requires a deep awareness and understanding that leads to consistent action.
4. Trying to isolate yourself like in the face of so much suffering, including those around you, seems like the most selfish thing I can imagine. Could never be me.
> Things are not that bad.
For YOU maybe, for fucks sake.
And many, many others.
Don't project your reality on everyone else.
Only through awareness and understanding of it can I work to reduce it.
I gotta say it reminds me a bit of that old Louis C.K bit where black people can't be messing with time machines. I guess gay people can't either. I don't think if you were gay you'd want the 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s - maybe late 90s.
I mean it does seem that there are many groups of people I could think of that might be like 10 years ago please, but not much further back than that. Then again social progress not being evenly distributed might mean that 20 years ago and in a different country might be equivalent to 10 years for some life scenarios.
Whatever any system does, it's someone's intention that it does so. It's like an unavoidable truism. You can't say anything that gets around it.
It's not 'destroying society'.
Not remotely in, any sense.
Many people seem to like Facebook. It's not really not causing harm, they are a minor nuisance at worst ... that you can avoid by ... not using it.
Open AI makes AI that you can use to do whatever.
That's mostly it.
I highly encourage you to read: https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/
The statement was that the purpose of the system is what it does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
Read at least the first couple lines and become microscopically less ignorant. Or don't. I'm not your mom.
The 'system is doing what it is doing' and it's not 'destroying the world' it's improving it for the most part, with some negative externalities.
People on this thread are in such a juvenile nihilist head fog that they can't recognize what is going on around them, nor can they seem to even to be able to apply these metaphors, and when it's spelled out for them, they still don't get it.
There's nothing hugely wrong with 'the industry' even as it 'does what it does'.
oh that's happened to me a couple of times, its fucking infuriating.
I agree with you. Human greed has always been a thing, will always be a thing. But most people now would never choose to go back and be born 100 years ago if given the option. They ignore everything positive that technology has done, and massively ramp the negatives.
Think you are missing the point.
It is not an actual back room with dudes twirling their mustaches with concrete plans to destroy the world.
It is the 'profit motive' that forces a thousand small decisions, that you go along with because you have a mortgage to pay.
And all added up they destroy the world.
That is total nonsense.
You people have lost your minds, this is worse than a bad reddit thread.
Neither 'industry' not 'software' is 'destroying the world'.
Also ""Think you are missing the point.
It is not an actual back room with dudes twirling their mustaches ""
Thanks for the 'deep insight'?!?
Do you think you're conversing with a 14 year old, struggling with abstractions?
FYI - I've lived around the world, 'studied industry' formally, worked in a handful of them.
We're more prosperous than we have ever been, by a long mile.
There are some externalizations that are not healthy, but almost all of it is simply due to the large footprint we have on the earth.
Thankfully the population will scale back a bit and we'll probably harmonize.
But the very notion that 'the industry is destroying the world' is so juvenile and nihilist, it's just ridiculous.
Sure sounds like it.
Sorry. It think there were several themes here.
"Capitalism", leads to a thousand little decisions, that destroy the world. I've seen plenty of middle managers, that when they have to make their quarterly numbers, will dump toxic waste into the river upstream of a kindergarten.
Then "Industry". Look up some of the philosophy around 'e/acc'. They are definitely wanting to destroy the 'humans'. So maybe not the 'world', just all the 'humans'. And since the 'e/acc' comprise a large component of AI companies, and AI is driving the industry. I think there is a fair argument that the "Industry" does want to do harm to 'humans'. But maybe humans doesn't equal the 'world'.
"Do you think you're conversing with a 14 year old, struggling with abstractions?"
Yes, a little bit. You posted a single sentence. How does that convey that you are some industry veteran. Though, I do see you have posted more since then. But not what I saw at that time.
To some of your other posts. Yes, Today is better, and Tech is a big part of that. I don't think that should imply that it is a never ending fountain of good, just ignore any problems. It isn't like Industries can't go downhill. What? We can't talk about it. Could be we are steadily pushing up the mountain until we go over a cliff. Look up Black Swan events.
No it doesn't. But as a human being, you and everybody still deserves a decent living. And our current system clearly does not provide that for a lot of people.
Sure it does. Our species is social, meaning we form societies for evolutionary success. Both of us being members of that society, it is in my interest to see your child survive. It is a tragedy to think your child may not survive because human greed prevents them from accessing resources we have in abundance.
The opposite perspective is anti-social in a literal way: the greedy cannot use all of the resources, can't eat all of the food; they want control so you can't have it without their permission. You are entitled to eat, seeing as we have more than enough to feed you. That others think you are not is disagreeable, to put it mildly.
Even in a tribe, there’s a lotta suffering and very little remorse for it.
We may say we chase a society that would see everyone understand the principle of ‘your child should also get a decent life’, but what we see now, across nearly all societies is really the opposite. And it phrases like this - we don’t care if your children live or die for as long as our children get better chances.
This statement is rather plainly not true. It describes child rearing and claims it does not happen in one breath.
There is a concept of "fairness", which I don't want to discount, but there's not much of a history of people being bottom feeders who do nothing to help those around them. Sure, there's a lot of sentiment to that effect but it is somehow something I fail to observe to this day. It is in the eye of the beholder and I worry for the souls of the beholders who judge so harshly.
This idea that someone is not deserving of food because they have not earned it a sad, anti-social thing to believe, perpetuated by psychological attacks from those who have more than they could ever need. You and your children deserve to eat and disagreement with that statement says more about the one disagreeing than it does any other, regardless of the judgement inherent to the nature of the disagreement (really, because of it, I suppose).
kind of the point of living in a civilized society i reckon
It's been so long since we've seen actual bread riots I fear we forgot how nasty those are.
I think the notion is that with new automated systems of violence and control, some of them built onto the people themselves, our "future civilization" can dial back the worker's compensation to below subsistence. There was a big zillionaire conference where they talked about slave collars, for example, or humanoid AI workers. I'm always a little distressed when the masters of industry fall back on science fiction in order to build a machine that needs to function in the, well, in the present.
[1] One person's output in terms of agriculture
What? Do you have a link?
It was a private 2017 desert retreat where five wealthy tech and hedge-fund investors flew out media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, ostensibly for a speaking engagement.
Rushkoff wrote it up first as a Guardian essay and later expanded it into his 2022 book Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.
The problem's super duper obvious if you studied history, but it is also pretty obvious if you can think about second order effects. In collapse the wealthy obviously need security forces to hold on to their stuff, but in a collapse your stuff will - presto changeo - become the security force's stuff. Essentially the singular founding story of all European royal families. Barbarian general took the house, banged the wife, now he's king. Or King-Sound. Kai- Zar
At the end of the day all these little lords and lordettes figured out the time honored lesson that to be actually safe you want to make friends with the locals. And that's part of being new king types as well. But "making people like you" isn't a popular notion with the Revenge of the Nerds types who love this "Lord of the Bunker" kind of thing.
I've seen zoo chimpanzees make a mockery out of this sort of device in VERY short order, and I would dread to impose it on a Delta Force psychopath who also has more higher degrees than I do. Because he's going to know who it was who did it and have all sorts of ideas about what he's doing about that. So the basic premise is also idiotic.
Sorry, I was a little more snide than I usually am on HN, it's been a long day.
So, yes, in order to have a society one perhaps and most likely needs to define how rights are guaranteed. But it does not mean anyone is entitled to it by definition. Otherwise millions of dying children throughout modern history, and now also, would see the perpetrators get a ‘fair’ treatment. But they don’t.
Perhaps only as second order effects that are hard to understand and are not entitlement.
I'm not really sure how your reasoning here is in line with your previous post.
It can be circular.
MS invests 5 billion in OpenAI.
OpenAI invests 5 billion in MS.
Do we have 10 billion now?
I want my son to live on a livable planet, and not under the constant threat of destitution. And I want that for all children, not just mine.
There's more to life than one's material standard of living. I think people were mostly talking about the other bits.
High trust societies, a feeling of place and well-being in a culture, connectedness, etc.
https://data.worldhappiness.report/map
Note: Look at the US continuing to move down the report year after year.
Never a shortage of those, it seems. But only for insiders, of course.
I do not know that word. I looked it up and found nothing helpful. What does it mean, and what do you mean?
Also, may I ask you to use more punctuation and things like currency symbols, because your message lacks so much context I can't even guess.
So, no, they were not, or I would not have asked.
The usual English term is "mid-level".
Education? Safety? Medical help? A home? Food? Transport? Communication?
These are things society needs to provide.
In turn, we provide society with labour, applied skills, decision making etc.
If there is no (trusted, working) social contract - society breaks down.
If we allow a small elite to monopolize the productivity gains and efficiency increased from new technology - the results will be dire.
I see the more feasible solutions to be some kind of universal income or negative tax - combined with reduced work hours (eg 30 hour weeks, to start).
At no point in any of that was anyone coddled or told that they will get to keep their job forever. Learn new skills. That's the game.
It's not even unique to tech. Doctors have to do this too.
There's so much work in the industry right now around LLM implementation that folks not looking into that are sleeping on good jobs.
"minor professional development refreshers" lol
Also known as (unpaid) hard work during the weekend.
That's obviously false. What's the point of society if that's true? Do you think there should be no government roads, no government health care (if you're in the US, you may think this, but only because you're indoctrinated), no legal system (or enforcement thereof) to protect you from criminals, no legally enforceable human rights whatsoever? Etc., etc.?
Once they actually understand what they're saying, no sane person believes that society doesn't owe them anything.
I don't think Society means what you think it means.
Note: the above is not claiming AI or LLM can do these jobs. it’s claiming “IF” they can then they will. No greed required
If technological innovation is to liberate us from poverty then it should be a celebration that everytime that a job is automated. Since that is not happening, it implies something deeply wrong about how we structure our society.
It depends. Sometimes automating a job just means wiping out the institutional knowledge that came with the job - which I take to be the OP's broader point. It's not clear that AI agents will be able to replace that role to any useful extent, even though it's nice that we can read their accumulated knowledge as a set of .md files written in plain English.
So my grandma shouldn't have been be deliriously happy with the new washing machine that saved her hands from bleeding weekly because the evil capitalist laundromat owners charged a few quarters per load?!
Those jobs aren't creative knowledge work.
The advent of digital audio workstations didn't reduce the number of musicians - it increased the amount of music.
Now that we can write code with AI, we (as a civilization) will simply write more code than we used to.
Long hours? Sure, but that's not new (or universal), and AI definitely didn't cause it.
That’s where your idea breaks. There’s a big swathe of people who prefer the feel and simplicity of newspapers over digital hellscape. There’s also a reason why people prefer quality books like Folio Society over books printer on a toilet paper.
> “IF” your job can be automated away or made more efficient it will. That might not be a benefit for your but it’s a benefit to society at large
You can automate away 80% of CEOs by Markov chains, and it would be a benefit to society at large. Yet it doesn’t happen, why?
Because, at some level, people understand that a CEO’s job is largely about the human interaction part, so the real value of a human CEO is that last 20%.
The real value of a software engineer is also their own “last 20%”, but non-technical people (and many frustrated technical people) don’t really appreciate how much non-technical work is involved in being a good SWE.
Now of course there's also jevon's "paradox" here, and the automation does allow us to support a larger population so in that sense not all the increased productivity is just "skimmed off the top" as profit. But on the flipside the crux of the other recent [1] HN post is that the wealth disparity is increasing. And if all the increased productivity directly translated to more "physical resources" in the world, that wouldn't be the case.
So something must be getting skimmed of the top, and intuitively you can feel the "rent seeking" layers in society have increased. Gains in efficiency are no longer resulting in surplus of physical products and decrease in prices.
Or, IOW, "productivity" is a per-capita measure, so the total number of people doesn't factor in. (Or perhaps rather, gets factored out?) Anyway: People becoming "more productive" means each one producing more per hour — or per 40 hours — than before, so it's weird that they still need to work just as much as before, only to maintain the standard of living they had before.
(Running faster and faster, just to stay where they are... Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.)
"No greed required" doesn't seem accurate. One would not use an AI to do the job instead of a human, except for the motivation that they would have more at the end of the day.
That remains to be determined. Most of the examples you'll likely come up with are made at the expense of the environment. We've never consumed as much oil and other limited natural resources as now, in spite of massive gains in productivity.
So far it also looks like digital media is fast tracking us back into fascism, helped by the large concentration of capital that occurred during the transition.
Change and automation are not always societal progress, sadly.
It's a long winding absurdist metaphorical tale, that is really more or less a rant. It's not particularly well grounded.
It's a nice piece of personalized fiction, but it's not particularly good writing and nothing approaching what we'd think of as 'journalism'.
When is the last time you opened an HN comment section and the main comment was that people enjoyed the writing quality? Maybe it says more about what we usually read as a crowd, but to me this was a breath of fresh air, it was engaging but also quite deep at times.
I think the mark of great writing is that it makes an impression on you, on others, in a way casual writing doesn't. At least that's my take on this.
It's highly personalized and interesting, but I wouldn't call it well written.
As a personal bit of art - 'thumbs up', but anything else is overstated.
But more appropriately, the nihilism on this thread is unhinged.
"seeing their industry's future" ???
I'm seeing people empowered to do the most spectacular things that they have ever done in their lives.
Software hiring on the aggregate is up, job postings are up, people are doing more, non-developers get to tinker.
Speculative money is coming into the industry for people to try wild new things.
The implied reality in the story is totally detached from reality.
Surely - there is a movement of people who lament a sense of loss of control, but that's normal with change.
There are also people in crappy jobs with crappy bosses in crappy companies doing crappy things - but that's not a feature of AI or the industry, in fact, software is a pretty good place, relatively speaking.
As I said, this is a reflection of someone's state of mind, mood, being interpreted as some kind of metaphor, but it just doesn't line up with reality in general. A personal reality sure, but that's not a reflection of the community.
Here is a thought that seems not to have occurred to you.
All these people saying it's good. You commented multiple times to say you disagree and think it is bad.
Maybe that means you do not get it. Maybe the problem here is you and your reading and your lack of comprehension. Maybe the problem is not in the article and the way the article is written.
While "well-written" is subjective, the bar for "well-written" is whether people enjoyed reading it and the author managed to deliver his message.
I'm now very curious what bar you personally use for well-written, because it obviously differs from the majority of the people in this thread.
You say, to the community, as it describes how it relates to the message.
You may not agree with it, but surely this thread among many should show you this view is not fringe or denial, but how a strong segment feels. I concede it's a divisive topic, some people feel optimistic, others less so. I myself don't fully know where I stand. I just don't agree with branding all of this as "unhinged nihilism".
The writing is an expression of a state of mind through an absurdist voice, not any kind of reasonable articulation of reality. It's at least a much about the lens as it is the subject. Which is fine, if we ingest it roughly from that purview.
I actually enjoyed your writing (though it does mimic a certain style I see coming out of the US), and I even enjoyed what you wrote. A lot of it definitely resonates, but you could have omitted any mention of AI, written it 20 years ago, and expressed the same sentiment. And I guess that is the main point "greed is to blame, not AI".
I printed them with OP to remind me any time i’m afraid somebody can criticize my work and that it’s not worth to produce/write/publish.
no matter how good, there will always be people like you here, so no need to worry.
Besides this is an opinion piece, which contains passages comparing programmers who despite AI, make hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting at home or air conditioned offices, to bangladeshi indentured workers.
Even if we do away with hyperbole and take the 'Sara' example, programming are still one of the least physically demanding and best paid jobs out there, especially in the US, even compared to jobs needing hard qualifications. Compared to your hypothetical 'Sarah' keeping the payroll system alive, almost everyone in every profession does more work for less pay.
He also sells (I imagine not cheap) consulting on the side.
- We're not indentured workers yet. We should always have been fighting for their dignity & rights, because they're ours too. - Might I invite you to read the original, it's linked at the top of the article. Sure, programming isn't physically demanding, but that doesn't mean we should just accept the bad parts. - All of that being said, yes I agree, other jobs are more valuable and it's insane that we get paid what we do. That's why I'm a socialist. Your value shouldn't depend on a grabbag of accidental circumstances outside of your control.
As to selling consulting on the side: I've been an employee for 2 decades, and am striking out on my own to build a better life for my newborn son & fiance. Sorry for wanting to be a more present father.
You cross mountains. Marshes. You evade pirates, bandits. Help some fellow travelers. Finally, after scouring the land and asking hundreds for clues and direction, you find his location; a small plateau beyond the swamp and rainforest which hugs the southern shore of the great lake.
You notice immediately that the wind dies down. It is now completely calm. Weirdly serene, as if the sudden silence made you notice all the ambient noise, now absent. The sage sits between (edit: beneath) a cherry blossom tree, said to always bloom; the sage is an old man but his wisdom is the most permanent thing on the plateau.
You approach the old man. His eyes are closed. You make sure to exaggerate your approach, make some noise, so as to not startle this frail old man that surely must have seen more than ninety winters. You prostrate yourself, calmly introduce yourself, and sit down beside him.
You calmly breathe in and out. This is it. Don’t rush it. Any erratic movement, any slight irritation could prove fatal to his old shell.
“Venerable Opakaku”, you start. “I know some things about how the world works. Why the cruel rule us. Why the meek suffer. Why the brave die for nothing. Why those of brilliant mind mostly seem to serve the cruel. But my opinions are unimportant. Can you please tell me, Venerable Opakaku, why is the world in this state? And how do we solve it?”
The sage’s parched lips move. He has to wet his throat, it is difficult for him—such is the state of his shell—but he composes himself and opens his white eyes, staring just to the left of your head. His blind eyes widen as he is about to reveal the answer. “Greed!”