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Everyone is taking a very bad faith view of what you're saying. I don't think you're arguing this is the worse time in all of human history to live, but that t
by kypro 2mo ago
Everyone is taking a very bad faith view of what you're saying.
I don't think you're arguing this is the worse time in all of human history to live, but that this period we are now entering broadly speaking is the worse for our humanity in many ways.
I think the latter could be true, at least for some of us. There's many things that gave my life meaning which I've abruptly stopped doing as a result of AI – and no one has given me a good reason to want to continue pursuing those things.
- I used to write a technical blog and published technical books. There is absolutely no point in me doing this anymore. I've spent years of my life writing and I'd now advise people to use AI over reading anything I've ever written. Acknowledging this makes me physically hurt because it was a huge sense of pride for me in the recent past.
- I used to write music. I'd argue there's absolutely no point in anyone wasting their time with music now. Unless you're extremely talented AI is going to do a better job than you. Unless you get a kick out of prompting AI to produce music or enjoy creating subpar music there's no point.
- I've spend decades of my life coding. It's my number 1 passion in life. It's the thing I loved doing more than anything as a teen. But I no longer code. AI is broadly superhuman at all coding, and even where it's not it's quite there yet it's far faster for me to tell AI what code to write. This isn't remotely enjoyable, but I'll do it for a while more just for the money.
- I used to do a fair amount of casual photo editing and VFX for people. It was a bit of a side hobby from when I was a teen, but I was decent enough. I'd never do this anymore. For almost all small projects people are better off using AI.
Elsewhere I no longer ask humans to do things for me:
- I don't need to pay human to design things for me anymore
- I don't need humans to pay humans for translations
- I don't need to pay humans for technical knowledge I don't have
I genuinely don't know what people are doing on computers where they're finding meaning anymore. For me I'm just checking out and growing my own food, building furniture, raising my chickens, etc. None of it gives me creative meaning, but at least I feel like I'm accomplishing something.
My sense is that AI appeals to the types of people video game cheat codes appeal to. If you feel satisfaction from completing games with unlimited health, then you probably love AI. I'm not that person. I like things I do to be hard with high barriers to entry. If I can talk to an LLM and do something it's pointless in my eyes.
- GPerson 2mo agoI agree with a lot of what you’re saying except I’m still choosing to create things, knowing full-well the computer can (or will be able to) do better. I’m going to choose to create things that are interesting or challenging, and I’m going to share them with a few friends in my vicinity. “I used to write music. I'd argue there's absolutely no point in anyone wasting their time with music now. Unless you're extremely talented AI is going to do a better job than you. Unless you get a kick out of prompting AI to produce music or enjoy creating subpar music there's no point.” I do disagree with this conclusion. Screwing around on the keyboard is fun, and I imagine people who actually make music like yourself have fun doing structured versions of that. Why deny yourself that enjoyment? It’s not like there weren’t more talented people around before the AI craze started (presumably) at making songs. This can be cured with a perspective shift I’m quite confident.
- notahacker 2mo ago> I do disagree with this conclusion. Screwing around on the keyboard is fun, and I imagine people who actually make music like yourself have fun doing structured versions of that. Why deny yourself that enjoyment? It’s not like there weren’t more talented people around before the AI craze started (presumably) at making songs. This can be cured with a perspective shift I’m quite confident. It's also not a novel argument. Why write new music or perform music at all in an era in which recordings are widely available?
- kypro 2mo ago> It's also not a novel argument. Why write new music or perform music at all in an era in which recordings are widely available? I actually agree with this, but not everything has been written. Everything I created had to have some uniqueness. That was something I was obsessive about. If I thought you could find anything I wrote on some other blog or on Spotify then I wouldn't write it. There would be no point.
- kypro 2mo agoThanks for the reply. I don't think you're wrong, I think I'm just wired differently. I really like achievement. And effort without achievement seems pointless to me. I was never particularly talented at music, but I could do things most people couldn't and so there was a sense of pride. Similarly with my writing, the topics I covered in the way I did required undeniable thought, effort and care. Today if it wasn't for the metadata showing a pre-2023 creation data, you'd genuinely struggle to know if it was 5 mins of prompting or days of effort... The last 2 decades of my effort can be summed up in this way. If I've waste 2 decades, I don't want to waste anymore time. I just have to try to find other things I can be proud of and that requires moving on from the things that once gave me joy.