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Comment by tom2026hn | Hacker News Reader

tom2026hn

The problem isn’t just “stealing the fruits of human labor”, it’s also driving down the value of human skills and even taking away human jobs.

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I think you just described "technology" -- would you outlaw all technology then? ;-)

Right? I've been automating things and eliminating jobs using technology for over 20 years. No you do not need a team of five to manage your monthly reporting. We can build automated reports that are delivered automatically to everyone who needs them! No you shouldn't be managing all of this data in an excel file on a shared computer. I don't care if 90% of what Dave does during the week is maintain that file. Let's streamline that.

Suddenly it's very different when it's our jobs being automated away.

Yes, I don't like it much either -- though I continue to be absolutely fascinated by all this -- but I realize this is unstoppable, and I must trust that on the balance technology has been extremely good for humanity and the source of all our progress, and so I must adapt to a new future.

But I also realize the impact of technology, good or bad, entirely depends on how society uses it, and that is where our focus must lie.

I should add that we must also consider the extent and speed of replacement. If the replacement rate is too high, employment levels can’t recover, both scenarios need to be avoided.

Technological innovation can be sped up, but it cannot be slowed down without mechanisms that create worse problems than technology. Adaptation is a political problem.

Every tool that is developed drives down the value of human skills. All sufficiently good tools diminish or take away human jobs.

One leads to the other so its simpler to point the root issue.

And the cruel irony is that they stole our work to train the AI that devalues our work going forward, and will cause many of us to lose our jobs.

I regret every line of open source code I ever wrote.

This process can even feel a bit like parasitism, it empties out the host, like in <Alien>.

> I regret every line of open source code I ever wrote

And every stack overflow post, every reddit post, everything.

I regret participating in the open Internet.

Here I am anyways, I guess. It's just in my genes or something.

Same. I've scrubbed my presence as much as possible from the majority of the internet (except HN for whatever reason) to prevent future models from being trained on my output, but the damage is already done. Part of me exists in pretty much all AI models now, without my consent. And those models are actively stealing my career and passions.

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