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Scalzi has developed an almost religious sort of dogmatic hatred of AI. He seems to acknowledge none of the benefits, even those that are obvious. Likely becaus

Scalzi has developed an almost religious sort of dogmatic hatred of AI. He seems to acknowledge none of the benefits, even those that are obvious. Likely because he feels it's harmful to the way he earns his living. He is rapidly coming to define himself through opposition, rather than promotion. Which is a dangerous and fruitless game. Throughout human history there has never been a still useful technology that we as a species chose to stop using, and AI very much is. Maybe we'll come to regulate it, but the genie will never go completely back into the bottle and folks are going to need to get used to the new world.

latexr 2mo ago
> Likely because he feels it's harmful to the way he earns his living. Absurd. Scalzi fans are not going to stop reading his works because LLMs exist. If anything, established authors are the ones with the least to fear. This talking point that when people dislike something it’s because it affects their personal finances is getting really tired. Not everyone is a greedy selfish prick who only thinks of themselves, people are allowed to dislike things for other reasons. That’s normal, it’s not an anomaly. > but the genie will never go completely back into the bottle and folks are going to need to get used to the new world. And apparently we’ll never share another original idea, either. “Genie is out of the bottle”, “you’re going to get left behind”. Apparently the people who called LLMs parrots got it wrong, they instead turn people into them, mindlessly repeating whatever the labs want them to.
- scotty79 2mo ago
  Nobody even started to seriously write books using AI. But at one point there will be AI books on "most read" lists. And a more than one of those will have readership higher than anything by John Scalzi. And he's not bad, I liked what I read of his.
  - TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
    Plenty of people have been using AI to write books for a couple of years now. The successful ones already knew how to write books - which directly contradicts the standard line about "It's just people who couldn't do it without AI." That's just objectively wrong. There have been some successful spammers who flood Amazon with tens/hundreds/thousands of titles, but that's more of an exercise in technology and marketing than writing.
    - scotty79 2mo ago
      Any AI bestsellers you know about yet?
  - bluefirebrand 2mo ago
    You're probably right, and it will be an incredibly sad day when we have completed replaced the human part of creation in our culture with AI creation Might just be final nail in the coffin for our cultural stagnation
    - scotty79 2mo ago
      Human literature won't be completely replaced, same way photography and print didn't replace painting. They just outgrew it billion times (in volmue at least) and the humanity is richer for it.
      - latexr 2mo ago
        Humanity is richer because photography outgrew painting? How do you figure? I’m not judging or disagreeing, I’m just interested in the argument. On a utilitarian sense, no doubt a photography is more useful than a painting. But in the artistic/creative sense (what the conversation is about), I’m not sure the case is that clear-cut, hence the question.
        scotty79 2mo ago
        > But in the artistic/creative sense (what the conversation is about), I’m not sure the case is that clear-cut, hence the question. Art for me is joy (or in wider definition emotion) of the beholders (and the creators). The sum of joy (and other emotions) that people derive from making, sharing and viewing photos manyfold exceeds sum of emotional value that paintings deliver.
- mapontosevenths 2mo ago
  > Apparently the people who called LLMs parrots got it wrong, they instead turn people into them, mindlessly repeating whatever the labs want them to. Being rude about it doesn't make you right about it. It sounds like people are repeating themselves because they have to keep repeating the obvious in every one of these threads: The tools are useful, people are going to use them. Cope.
glimshe 2mo ago
I use AI to code review my personal projects. There's no downside - I ignore what I don't like and take the suggestions that make sense. Most of the suggestions are good and it found a ton of little bugs over time. I think that someone who's radically opposed to any use of AI is simply a poor developer.
- ryandvm 2mo ago
  There's no downside for you. You said it yourself - you have the knowledge and ability to know what to ignore and keep what makes sense, but that's because you spent years actually writing and understanding code. The magic wand of AI is absolutely wreaking havoc with juniors engineers' ability to understand complex code bases and software engineering fundamentals. How will the engineers of tomorrow know what to keep and what to reject if all they've ever known is "you are a principal engineer. read this Jira ticket and build a solution. ultrathink".
  - glimshe 2mo ago
    What you said is different from being radically opposed to AI in all situations. You're saying that junior engineers should keep learning the fundamentals of software development instead of fully relying on AI. I agree with that. Inexperienced people shouldn't be left alone with dangerous tools, so to speak, but it doesn't mean that we should abandon these tools. I think that junior engineers can learn from AI, but the corporate setting isn't the best place for self-learning from AI. There's a lot to be learned from the average advice from the better AIs, as long as they are trying to understand the feedback. Please note that for these engineers, AI is replacing the old copy-and-paste from Stack Overflow. At least with AI they can dig deeper and ask questions.
- beej71 2mo ago
  > I use AI to code review my personal projects. There's no downside I used to think there was no downside, but now I think there is. You're developing the skill of choosing things out of a list to use. Your skill of creating that list is withering because you've offloaded it. Now, I won't deny there's power in an AI code review, and for many people and occasions that tradeoff is worth it. For me, as well. But I'm convinced from my own experience it is a tradeoff.
Fricken 2mo ago
Climate Change has accelerated rapidly. We're expecting 3 degrees of warming by 2050 now, 5 degrees by 2100. Betting on the singularity to save us is culty wankery.
- mapontosevenths 2mo ago
  I doubt that any reasonable person is actually counting on that. It's a new, and potentially very lucrative, technology. Given time the cost will go down, not up. The way that will happen is increased efficiency. Do I know HOW that will happen? No, but I know that it will. It always has, and there are huge motivations for making it happen.
  - Fricken 2mo ago
    The most reasonable and sober-minded people are counting on that: https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/stellungnahmen-der-dpg/klima-energie/klimaaufruf/ https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/...
    - mapontosevenths 2mo ago
      I don't speak German, so I had to machine translate it... but I don't see anything about anyone counting on AI to magically solve climate change in that reference. I've seen a few dim-bulbs or sales-types on social media say things of that sort, but never a serious adult.
      - Fricken 2mo ago
        Huh? Oh, I thought you were talking about the climate change part of my comment. Everything about the data centre buildout is a bet on the singularity, that's the whole operating premise behind what all AI researchers are doing. The most grandiose charlatans of silicon valley talk about that stuff and everyone else has got in line whether or not they believe it. Trillions of dollars have spent on bringing about AGI. If it doesn't usher in AGI (and it won't) then it's all a catastrophically stupid thing to do.

latexr 2mo ago

> Likely because he feels it's harmful to the way he earns his living. Absurd. Scalzi fans are not going to stop reading his works because LLMs exist. If anything, established authors are the ones with the least to fear. This talking point that when people dislike something it’s because it affects their personal finances is getting really tired. Not everyone is a greedy selfish prick who only thinks of themselves, people are allowed to dislike things for other reasons. That’s normal, it’s not an anomaly. > but the genie will never go completely back into the bottle and folks are going to need to get used to the new world. And apparently we’ll never share another original idea, either. “Genie is out of the bottle”, “you’re going to get left behind”. Apparently the people who called LLMs parrots got it wrong, they instead turn people into them, mindlessly repeating whatever the labs want them to.

scotty79 2mo ago
Nobody even started to seriously write books using AI. But at one point there will be AI books on "most read" lists. And a more than one of those will have readership higher than anything by John Scalzi. And he's not bad, I liked what I read of his.
- TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
  Plenty of people have been using AI to write books for a couple of years now. The successful ones already knew how to write books - which directly contradicts the standard line about "It's just people who couldn't do it without AI." That's just objectively wrong. There have been some successful spammers who flood Amazon with tens/hundreds/thousands of titles, but that's more of an exercise in technology and marketing than writing.
  - scotty79 2mo ago
    Any AI bestsellers you know about yet?
- bluefirebrand 2mo ago
  You're probably right, and it will be an incredibly sad day when we have completed replaced the human part of creation in our culture with AI creation Might just be final nail in the coffin for our cultural stagnation
  - scotty79 2mo ago
    Human literature won't be completely replaced, same way photography and print didn't replace painting. They just outgrew it billion times (in volmue at least) and the humanity is richer for it.
    - latexr 2mo ago
      Humanity is richer because photography outgrew painting? How do you figure? I’m not judging or disagreeing, I’m just interested in the argument. On a utilitarian sense, no doubt a photography is more useful than a painting. But in the artistic/creative sense (what the conversation is about), I’m not sure the case is that clear-cut, hence the question.
      - scotty79 2mo ago
        > But in the artistic/creative sense (what the conversation is about), I’m not sure the case is that clear-cut, hence the question. Art for me is joy (or in wider definition emotion) of the beholders (and the creators). The sum of joy (and other emotions) that people derive from making, sharing and viewing photos manyfold exceeds sum of emotional value that paintings deliver.
mapontosevenths 2mo ago
> Apparently the people who called LLMs parrots got it wrong, they instead turn people into them, mindlessly repeating whatever the labs want them to. Being rude about it doesn't make you right about it. It sounds like people are repeating themselves because they have to keep repeating the obvious in every one of these threads: The tools are useful, people are going to use them. Cope.

glimshe 2mo ago

I use AI to code review my personal projects. There's no downside - I ignore what I don't like and take the suggestions that make sense. Most of the suggestions are good and it found a ton of little bugs over time. I think that someone who's radically opposed to any use of AI is simply a poor developer.

ryandvm 2mo ago
There's no downside for you. You said it yourself - you have the knowledge and ability to know what to ignore and keep what makes sense, but that's because you spent years actually writing and understanding code. The magic wand of AI is absolutely wreaking havoc with juniors engineers' ability to understand complex code bases and software engineering fundamentals. How will the engineers of tomorrow know what to keep and what to reject if all they've ever known is "you are a principal engineer. read this Jira ticket and build a solution. ultrathink".
- glimshe 2mo ago
  What you said is different from being radically opposed to AI in all situations. You're saying that junior engineers should keep learning the fundamentals of software development instead of fully relying on AI. I agree with that. Inexperienced people shouldn't be left alone with dangerous tools, so to speak, but it doesn't mean that we should abandon these tools. I think that junior engineers can learn from AI, but the corporate setting isn't the best place for self-learning from AI. There's a lot to be learned from the average advice from the better AIs, as long as they are trying to understand the feedback. Please note that for these engineers, AI is replacing the old copy-and-paste from Stack Overflow. At least with AI they can dig deeper and ask questions.
beej71 2mo ago
> I use AI to code review my personal projects. There's no downside I used to think there was no downside, but now I think there is. You're developing the skill of choosing things out of a list to use. Your skill of creating that list is withering because you've offloaded it. Now, I won't deny there's power in an AI code review, and for many people and occasions that tradeoff is worth it. For me, as well. But I'm convinced from my own experience it is a tradeoff.

Fricken 2mo ago

Climate Change has accelerated rapidly. We're expecting 3 degrees of warming by 2050 now, 5 degrees by 2100. Betting on the singularity to save us is culty wankery.

mapontosevenths 2mo ago
I doubt that any reasonable person is actually counting on that. It's a new, and potentially very lucrative, technology. Given time the cost will go down, not up. The way that will happen is increased efficiency. Do I know HOW that will happen? No, but I know that it will. It always has, and there are huge motivations for making it happen.
- Fricken 2mo ago
  The most reasonable and sober-minded people are counting on that: https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/stellungnahmen-der-dpg/klima-energie/klimaaufruf/ https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/...
  - mapontosevenths 2mo ago
    I don't speak German, so I had to machine translate it... but I don't see anything about anyone counting on AI to magically solve climate change in that reference. I've seen a few dim-bulbs or sales-types on social media say things of that sort, but never a serious adult.
    - Fricken 2mo ago
      Huh? Oh, I thought you were talking about the climate change part of my comment. Everything about the data centre buildout is a bet on the singularity, that's the whole operating premise behind what all AI researchers are doing. The most grandiose charlatans of silicon valley talk about that stuff and everyone else has got in line whether or not they believe it. Trillions of dollars have spent on bringing about AGI. If it doesn't usher in AGI (and it won't) then it's all a catastrophically stupid thing to do.