There's also a tension in your comment. Are we prioritizing "advancing society" or programmer feelings? If it's the former, then it doesn't matter if AI is better than humans, whatever moves us forward faster is better. If it's the latter, then we're talking about holding back progress for the sake of a programmer's feelings.
For the record, I'm a lifelong programmer who loves AI because now I can experiment with new ideas at a scale I could not before. I feel zero loss. In fact using AI brings back the magic of technology that we lost in the 90s with the "business-ifying" of tech.
The second thing revolves around this:
> In fact using AI brings back the magic of technology that we lost in the 90s with the "business-ifying" of tech.
This is the complete opposite of my experience. AI seems like the logical conclusion of the business-ifying of tech. Get rid of all those pesky nerds, and the MBAs can just create whatever grift pops into their head.
I'd argue you're conflating two independent axis: technological progress and societal inequality.
AI is useful today and is getting more powerful and efficient. This is obviously great for humanity! It's enabling discoveries that were previously out of reach, and allowing us to accomplish the same amount of work with less effort.
AI is also generating massive amounts of money for the wealthy and powerful and increasing inequality. This is not great for humanity!
I do think it's important to keep in mind that this centralization of power and wealth is not caused by AI directly: the pattern exists whenever there's a desirable but scarce resource. The same argument that AI is increasing inequality can reasonably be made about concrete, steel, and steam engines. The problems caused by AI are really human problems at their core. It's possible AI could even help us fix them! (I'm not at all hopeful.)
>AI is useful today and is getting more powerful and efficient
No, it's getting less efficient at an exponential rate without proportional performance gains
>do think it's important to keep in mind that this centralization of power and wealth is not caused by AI directly: the pattern exists whenever there's a desirable but scarce resource. The same argument that AI is increasing inequality can reasonably be made about concrete, steel, and steam engines.
The goal of these LLM companies is to funnel all economic activity through their models. LLMs only exist because of how they strip mined human work without consent or compensation. I.e. LLMs do directly cause the centralization of wealth and power by how they were designed and how they are meant to be used.
While not an LLM, protein folding is now often done via transformer.
> No, it's getting less efficient at an exponential rate without proportional performance gains
AI is expanding in both directions. Sure, it's eating the world with its compute demand and the bitter lesson bites, but we're also seeing drastically improved efficiencies employed alongside. The cost per task is dropping fast.
> The goal of these LLM companies is to funnel all economic activity through their models.
That's what all companies want, AI or otherwise.
No arguments here on the ethics of AI companies though.
Take away intellectual labor and society becomes inherently less equal, i.e. feudalistic.
I was just pointing out the logical tension in the comment I was replying to.
> This is the complete opposite of my experience. AI seems like the logical conclusion of the business-ifying of tech. Get rid of all those pesky nerds, and the MBAs can just create whatever grift pops into their head.
I have dozens of extremely nerdy projects going thanks to AI. I wouldn't have had time for any of them because I was too busy making money to spend 100+ extra hours programming my wildest tech fantasies, but now that's possible!
AI also makes it possible to do hardware programming, reverse engineering (when Anthropic isn't censoring itself) and all manner of other geeky pursuits.
I'm genuinely happy that you're having fun with it. I can't get over the feeling that _I'm not building anything._ To me, it seems like hopping on an IRC channel and copy-pasting code from a greybeard instead of writing it myself. I just don't find that satisfying at all.
And let's not kid ourselves, you aren't programming anything. You are paying Anthropic to brute force the code for you with their supercomputer which was only built thanks to the rare earth mining and human rights violations you claim to be bothered about.
They have a hard time dealing with those people that tell them their ideas are bad, unethical, or illegal.
Now they have their Fisher-Price steering wheel hooked into the drive train of the business!
https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-08-18...
University is not easy, so how did they skip the easy part? How did they get good enough grades everywhere else to pass?
Turns out: They must have done something that has nothing to do with programming but it is still computer science. What was it? What did they learn???
At the same time, I do wish it wouldn't do my proofs as well lmao
I don't agree. There are many creative and useful fields: engineering, law, finance. And others that don't require as much creativity but may be enjoyable due to social factors: medicine, teaching, emergency services.
The dilemma that people have faced is that they don't want to do earnest work, but still need money to live. There are enough types of work that are useful and stimulating in different ways that everyone should be able to find one, so long as they are given opportunities as children (we do a decent job of this in the developed world). At least, that was the contract. Many fields, not just software, are facing existential crises.
Programming is the art of automation, and is being taken to new levels. It'd be quite damming to the field if a substantial % of the world's output over many decade hadn't brought us here, tbh.
Were builders crying when the Hagia Sophia was built? Projects come and go, nothing is forever.
programming will likely be the same. fewer people who care to be craftsmen, more hobbyist, a few artisans who really dig deep and make new patterns (we still dont see AI sampling out of distribution).
>reduction of the job to a hobby takes that away from them.
this is your personal feeling. they never had anything in the first place, just that the market was valuing a certain skill for what it could output. the perspective you are posting is purely a construct.
I didn't mean to say sewing and knitting weren't impactful - on the contrary, they are analogous to programming: they were impactful but now they're basically hobbies. Maybe there are more developments left in the clothing making process - not sure.
Knitting and sewing were "mainstream impactful work" for a long time, much longer than programming was.