The Ultimate Question: What Does the Endgame Look Like?
brodzinski.com
brodzinski.com
1. With a vast proliferation of code generated, there are limits to code review, presuming that humans do code review.
IMO, even without AI-generated code, this is already a major failing. Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and countless others ship buggy code, creating the current situation of daily exploits, and a general distrust of software products. Open source adds thousands of (unpaid) eyes to code review.
2. Like the 20 brands of identical spaghetti on the shelves, "what does this actually do for me?" becomes harder to answer.
3. Stuff sediments. When everyone has one/it, what's the added value? We are approaching the Beanie Baby software horizon. I count 5 on my shelf from the old days. One is my birthday beanie. The other 4 are just cute. (The ladybug wandered off. It will show up later on.) Does anyone care to write a new "to-do" app?
4. "Everyone can program". We had this with Hypercard. Even then, one would rely on a sharp coder to create something useful, if not entirely bespoke. Back when the first wave of job outsourcing hit, there was a magazine (lost to link rot?) entitled "Where are the jobs?". One article was saved at pastebin [0]
Another article in YES! Magazine [1] talked about "Who’s Building the Do-It-Ourselves Economy?" and even I had visions of local people with access to FAB reinventing the economy at home.
It still hasn't happened and while there are countless unmet needs (let's talk about seniors falling on the way to the kitchen and unable to read 2-point type food labels and use-by dates) perfectly meaningless "needs" are being addressed, and Microsoft and Apple continue to push out "features" that nobody requested nor wanted, and which fail when the internet chokes (partly due to AI crawlers) or which hand over PII to basically anyone due to government overreach or just plain software exploits.
3. Does this answer a real need? Well, needs change. Now that AI is so prevalent, transactions between people are being replaced (or have been replaced) by AI agents, so hiring is now "My AI versus Your AI" and the former real need of "A qualified person for a suitable job" is lost in the fallout. I considered creating cool tech products and services, but ultimately most if not all were in truth, answers to some problem that tech CREATED, in the hands of exploiters, such as the tyranny of "quantity kills quality" of the clickbait and echo chamber "clicks over all" ad-driven internet.
The "ultimate question", remarkably similar to Douglas Adams' "You're just a computer" to find the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, given the answer [3], no spoiler given, has to do with "Where is the value?" If the purpose of business and jobs is to create value, what happens when robots do all the blue-collar work and computers do half the white-collar work?
4. Where is the Value? That's being "answered" by the new priesthood of tech bro's whose only concern is getting filthy rich with no regard to consequences. [2] A pure play on "Solutions seeking a problem, or solutions redefining the problem". The classic case is/was the fairly universal use of spreadsheets as databases.
5. Endgame. From James Carse's "Finite and Infinite Games".[4][5] "There are at least two kinds of games: finite and infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.
Our finite games run into limitations such as resources (mega data centers) or as in the case of "endless wars of spite" or "weapons of mass distraction", when allowed to proceed without limit, wreak very large-scale havoc and destruction.
My humble suggestion is that our ultimate question be phrased as "How much is enough?" [6] when unchecked growth and concentration of resources for reasons of "Someone else has more," "If I don't do it, someone else will beat me to it," (recall the atomic bomb, which is the subject of dispute even today) and "Wealth and fame are not like a turkey dinner ... there can never be enough", then the near-zero entropy of such concentration and the wars to concentrate resources even further, could cause the near-infinite entropy of annihilation, and an end to all games on this planet.
David Loy describes the race for intangible symbols in "Money, Sex, War and Karma" (Introduction [6])
As these mega-computing black holes have shown, symbols are attached to real things. An unchecked desire for external symbols has real-world consequences.
"When you die in the Matrix" ... The Body cannot live without the mind, though we are making great progress in creating minds without bodies. With how much physical and persuasive power?
6. Please bro we're so close to AGI just $20,000,000,000 more dollars bro. [7] Image at imgbb.com
[0] https://pastebin.com/raw/Fi5YSV4a
[1] https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/jobs/2011/09/07/whos-build...
[2] https://karlbode.com/ceo-said-a-thing-journalism/
[3] Is AI actually 42?
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games
[5] https://archive.org/download/james-p-carse-finite-and-infini...
[6] https://www.davidloy.org/downloads/Loy-Money_Sex_War_Karma_I...
By all means, yes. Yet, it feels like we were playing a catch-up game (to a degree), and no one intentionally shipped unreviewed code. Now, reviewed without comprehension becomes standard, unreviewed & unread increasingly happens. That's a different kind of reckless.
"Open source adds thousands of (unpaid) eyes to code review."
True. And the open source community sees a massive inflow of AI-generated pull requests, which floods their capabilities to review. Leaving the ecosystem as it is means it will be dead. Thus, I assume resistance or evolution. And we definitely see some of the former, with some open source codebases being closed for AI contributions.
"Hiring is now 'My AI versus Your AI; and the former real need of 'A qualified person for a suitable job' is lost in the fallout."
Yes, that's where hiring has headed. Which, coincidentally, has made everyone worse off (save for AI-for-hiring apps providers). Candidates have it harder to land a decent job. Companies talk to people who play the AI hiring game better, not the most suitable candidates. All while having the same number of candidates and the same number of jobs, but 100x as many resumes exchanged: https://brodzinski.com/2025/08/broken-ai-hiring.html
Which basically means that a resume has lost its value as a token of information exchange. And since we base the whole process on this very assumption (resume as a token of information), the system is due to be rewired eventually. And sooner rather than later. One random idea: how about creating limited traffic where people actually care at least enough to pay some token money: https://brodzinski.com/2025/12/pay-for-resume-read.html
"My humble suggestion is that our ultimate question be phrased as 'How much is enough?'"
Perfect question if we start from the grand scheme of things. I am afraid, though, that there is never enough. At some point, another billion means increased status. You could buy everything with the billions you had previously, so right now it's a virtual leaderboard between you and other billionaires. And the status game is, indeed, infinite. If you aren't winning now, you can chase the leader. If you are the leader, you try to escape the chase.
The "enough" question doesn't work just as well in a finer-grained context. If we want to figure out things like the evolution of a specific profession. Or consider how digital products will be built in the future. Or how well outsourcing your content generation to an AI agent would work in the long run.