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Comment by schnebbau | Hacker News Reader

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> The days of techies gatekeeping these experiences are over.

Why do people keep using the word "gatekeeping"? "Techies" made open source. Anyone could have taken the time to learn what they wanted, the tools and the resources were available.

The disdain for tech will always baffle me. Yes, this stuff is hard. A lot of it requires a certain level of skill. Even now, you still require some level of skill to get good results.

No non-corporate tech person has ever wanted to prevent another soul from using their work or learning their craft.

The top-level comment feels a lot like the perspective of somebody who never cared to try.

With robots for agriculture, delivery, and food processing, the days of farmers gatekeeping food will be over

Also, the "techies" are naturally going to be a lot better at pushing AI to its limits. This doesn't change the playing field - it means more people can do more things, but the upper end of the skill range is going to be just as far ahead, if not further ahead, of everyone else as it always was.

> Anyone could have taken the time to learn what they wanted, the tools and the resources were available.

False in reality. Just ask any dev who has had to listen to family and friends' app ideas over the last decade. The good news for them is soon they will never be asked again.

Having a concept is completely different, their unwillingness to dive into implementation cannot be blamed on the "techies". I would wager that the same people who were pitching unrealistic app ideas then are still not trying to make apps using AI.

What AI has largely changed is how the communication barrier (or perception thereof) is dealt with between two sides: one which consists of those who perceive gatekeeping or attribute their lack of substantive progress to it, and the other side which consists of the time, resources, and skills the former feels entitled to or indebted towards.

I’ve had a running theory for a few years now that some tech folks are more open to receiving an error message from a compiler or other tool, than they are to critical feedback from a peer. If they’re blocked and finally have exhausted their other avenues (pre-LLM: web searches, forums, etc), they’ll reluctantly engage with a peer, and do so with extremely limited patience.

The first paragraph of this reply is extending that theory to non-tech —-> tech, but replace compilers with LLMs that _appear_ to be more useful (or at least busy) working with what limited context you provide them, especially when it’s insufficient.

It won’t quite tell you your app idea is unrealistic or that the implementation is nearly impossible, but after burning a bunch of time and tokens, those people will eventually get the point.

Or reluctantly reach out to a tech person anyway.

This is more comparable to a mass produced plastic replica than the handcrafted work of an artist. Experience and skill are not orthogonal to creativity or taste.

The examples were a one shot. The creativity hasn't even been applied yet.

Experience and skill is what gives you taste. Creativity is nothing without it.

And scarcity gives things value. No one bats an eye at a mass produced cotton t-shirt with a detailed custom print on it. There's services online where you can order a thousand with whatever print on it for quite a cheap price.

But take one of those shirts 80 years back in time and it'll likely impress everyone.

Perhaps that's what's going to happen to software too. If you're an idea guy you might get a monkey paw situation, at least if you planned on making some sort of serious income from your software idea.

Now, you just need to use someone else's words and someone else's AI built on everyone else's stolen art! But sure, yes, thats you being creative... Don't use your imagination at all.

There are three main categories of AI ethical dilemmas for me:

1. IP infringement

2. Climate impact

3. Cultural impact

I think that 2 & 3 apply to all AI right now - artistic, coding, writing, whatever. However, I don't think that #1 applies to everything. Code has been openly shared for as long as it's been possible to do so. There have probably been cases where AI trained on closed-source code, but I hardly believe that was ever necessary at any point to get where we are.

My point in saying this is that your critique of AI is valid but I think a little less so here.

#1 is way more concerning to me

That's fine, I'm only making the point that it's not really relevant to coding. Programmers have been outright copying each other's code for decades to the chagrin of nobody.

Or, you can use your imagination building on top of the sum of all human knowledge distilled into a language model. Your choice.

I totally understand. I'm a developer with almost 20 years experience myself and it has taken me a while to come to terms with this too. Fortunately, I made enough during the good times to see me out once my job ceases to exist. I'm sorry for everyone who didn't.

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