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Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

I am roughly the same age and I grapple with many of the same ideas, although I'm still pretty depressed at this point. I've been coding for 25 years, I'm quite good at it, it's a facet of my personality. Seeing this skillset commoditized within a year or so has been a brutal experience. Payback for all the jobs we replaced with software, I suppose.

I do feel like I should be thankful to be alive right now though. I witnessed the evolution from Kirby on the Game Boy to Half Life 2 to VR to LLMs. The tools we use today were science fiction only a few years ago.

I just wish society was in a better state to make this tech a greater good instead of a tool for advertisement, warfare and wealth concentration. I feel a deep sense of loss because of this. 20 years ago I had no doubt that technological progress was an obviously good thing, that it would improve the lives of everyone. Do I still believe this? I'd like to, at least.

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I feel that as a field, we overfitted towards economic value maximization (which, to be fair, is the obvious thing to do) while leaving important problems behind.

Accessibility, sanitary infrastructure (in developing countries), generally improving health (including making it cheaper), and environment/wildlife preservation being some good examples of largely unsolved problems that technology still holds the key to dramatic improvement.

This might be the right time to start working on these things. Ironically, warfare, advertisement, and wealth concentration helped advance technology rapidly, making it easier to tackle other problems.

> This might be the right time to start working on these things.

Yes, many smart people didn't want to go into politics and management because the low-level tinkering was too much fun and more interesting. Now that is gone, maybe we'll see some brains in politics and management.

This amuses me because it made me wonder how many of Europe's historical political and war catastrophes could have been avoided, but all the smartest people were distracted by clocks and early chemicals and how to make nautical navigation devices.

Bill Gates has spent a lot of energy on the list you provided. We can all help, too.

I appreciate the comment because it resonates so closely to how I feel. Honestly, I could have written nearly the same thing. Thanks for sharing. I still do hang on the idea that there is still good we can bring into the world.

Yeah, I am also grateful to have been around to watch the twilight of humanity as we outsource our abilities.

Tech has certainly stopped being good for people.

You (not responding to you directly simias) are truly delusional if you think what's happening isn't extremely concerning and dystopian in a lot of ways.

And there will be a lot of ego death, esp. with people deep in a lot of kowledge work.

But if you claim that AI is absolutely a waste and bad for humanity I feel sorry for you if you can't see how incredible it is that we have this new technology. -That it will most likely solve some very core issues humans are working on, and that it is a kind of evolutionary moment in human history, creating artificial intelligence. I feel sorry that you can't see past your own nose to see the bigger picture in that sense.

I tend to think big changes will always make things better and worse at the same time. If you look at the long horizon of history (100s of years) it appears that it makes things better on balance. But who really knows for sure what will happen.

I think at this point I am mostly in AI camp. The recent advances in reverse engineering automation ( and subsequent panic -- and upcoming banhammer - coming from owners and shareholders of previously available money makers ) made me recognize it is a real shift and not just an incremental improvement.

People are scared. I suppose they should be. A lot of people have been invested in ensuring that things stay roughly the way they are. I am not sure that was ever sustainable, but now it seems like an impossible dream.

Cat is out of the bag. Milk is spilt. Hanninal crossed the alps.

Am I worried? Yes. But it is still fucking amazing to watch it unfold.

This will solve problems that humans are working on, but it also will solve everything that makes life worthwhile.

There's nothing good at the end of this path.

> will solve everything that makes life worthwhile

Like programming? Or what else, I'm not sure I understand what that would mean.

Like problem solving, art, music, writing, and other intellectual challenges. And doing it well enough that you make an impact on the people around you.

Programming is one such creative endeavor, but they're all under attack.

Personally, when it comes to media and creative things, I want to hear from other humans. It could be other humans using AI as a tool, but I'm not interested in the Meta AI account slop they were promoting. Or the Spotify algorithm optimized playlist artists.

I don't think everyone will agree with me, and we might have truly AI generated movie and pop stars, but I think most people won't want synthetic art- it's missing the point of what art is for, for expressing something about humans.

Right now it's easy to say, because the AI generated stuff is so obviously bad. What if it were better than human output? What if the only way to tell was that the human sounded worse?

You're betting on AI continuing to be bad, or on humans rejecting it wholesale. While I wish humans would reject it, I'm not so optimistic.

For most people, art is just entertainment. For artists, it's a source of income.

AI can likely solve entertainment cheaper than artists can.

There is no AI in the world that can replace live AC/DC performance.

Sure, in a regression to the world pre-1900s, live shows may remain.

Live performance is already the better source of revenue for most musicians.

Yeah, we've been enshittifying things for a while, haven't we?

> it also will solve everything that makes life worthwhile.

It's going to solve your kids? Or eating food? Or enjoying fresh air?

Or strengthen your partnership with your dog by hiking together and working on agility training, tracking trials, and obedience.

Build a garden and harvest food, creating a bee- and butterfly-friendly environment while watching the little beasties feed on the bounty supplied by the plants' sex organs.

With the magic of grit and glass, make a telescope, then spend evenings observing with your organic eye, planets, and waiting for those moments of atmospheric stability and clarity when you see the most amazing detail.

AI won't keep me from any of these things, but the need for money to live does.

"I consume things". Great life you have there bro.

yeah, fresh air, appreciating parenting, how awful and dystopian

much worse than having one's identity entirely subsumed by typing code and reading software documentation

I mean, sure, if it's enough to satisfy a dog, why wouldn't it be what everyone wants. Maybe the AI will even remember to play fetch with you.

Intellectual anything? Doing things? Pfft. Just breathe the fresh forest fire air in the fresh, new, brightly incinerated climate we're building towards. It's all anyone could ever aspire to leave their children.

This "organic" comment is from an AI booster:

https://x.com/awongh

The AI generated posters are an utter disaster. What a time to be alive! Shills, poseurs and influencers.

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