8 ms·

Ask HN: Does anyone else feel like nothing matters anymore?

297 points by ramesh31 2mo ago

New software releases? Who cares. Learning new CS concepts? Whatever. Studying for the next interview? Job probably won't even exist in a year. Working on that side project? No one will care because it's just another addition to the mountain of slop, and the guy bagging your groceries can do it. Everything is done and cooked with AI now. It's exactly like that feeling once you enable cheats in a game; sure you can do anything, but everything is meaningless now. Our entire purpose and joy in life has been taken from us.

rogerkirkness 2mo ago
I feel this way, so I shut my startup down. Not sure what I'm going to do next but I'm hoping it isn't so computer dependent. The reason I got into computers was unregulated opportunity and freedom and it's just the opposite today.
toomuchtodo 2mo ago
Find something that has meaning to you.
- schmeichel 2mo ago
  Ditto. I've started reading recently. The last time I seriously read a book was High School. It's rather enjoyable, and I have a newfound appreciation for public libraries.
  - Barbing 2mo ago
    If anyone hasn't read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams is absolutely hilarious. The coffins stood about waist high and were constructed of what appeared to be white marble, which is almost certainly what it was - something that only appeared to be white marble.
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Chinjut 2mo ago
Yes. And math too. I think there's lots of beauty remaining in understanding these things, and using that understanding to craft things cleanly rather than as slop, but no one will pay us to do it, so we will never have the opportunity to do it.
- chongli 2mo ago
  You don’t have to get paid to make contributions to math. There are still loads of hobbyists making contributions around the world. The guy that found the aperiodic monotile was a hobbyist who collaborated with a researcher. There was a significant proof in combinatorics (lower bound on superpermutations) contributed by an anonymous 4chan poster! Hobbyist mathematics may long outlive a lot of research mathematics, and I think that’s okay. There’s nothing in the human spirit of inquiry that necessitates academia as an all-powerful institution. Heck, there have been a lot of problems with the institution in recent years, and those have everything to do with perverse incentives and nothing to do with AI.
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Taikhoom10 2mo ago
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bm3719 2mo ago
Corollary to your complaints: Another downside that I haven't seen on anyone's AI hatelist yet is that it crowds out all other discussion. What happened to everyone talking about languages, protocols, algorithms, architecture, etc.? We can't have those conversations anymore because we're not even sure they matter now. In fact, we probably suspect they don't, hence the not bothering. Also, anything we do write will just get immediately slurped into AI embeddings, anonymizing it and detaching it from its human source, at most nudging some corner of its vectorized slurry. Maybe someone will ask a question that our content influences, but if that user bothers to thank anyone, he'll thank Claude. Perhaps this is what it feels like to be fully commoditized, fully alienated from one's labor.
- calvinmorrison 2mo ago
  why write programming languages if LLMs are fast enough to talk plaintext everything to eachother with perfect memory
  - throw03172019 2mo ago
    Perfect* memory *semi-perfect
  - throw-the-towel 2mo ago
    Why go see Rome when you can google up some photos? Why climb Mt Everest? Why have your own sex when there's so much porn? The answer is going to be the same it's always been: because we fucking can.
    - margalabargala 2mo ago
      I take your point, but unlike everything you mentioned, programming languages have usually been written for others to use, with a handful of Intercal-like exceptions. Any fully new languages we get will be either doomed from the start, or the language equivalent of TempleOS. Or both.
      - 2mo ago
kranner 2mo ago
I think one aspect of this relates to extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. I'm intrinsically motivated to work on my software projects because I want them to exist, and I enjoy exploring the problem space and working my way to a good solution. AI is great because it accelerates my abilities in this regard. If I'd had only extrinsic motivations of credit and money, I can see that AI would affect them negatively. But I'd also have to believe that anyone else could AI-shortcut their way to whatever I make. I don't really believe that TBH. A real solution is extremely nuanced: it addresses many, many edge cases; it is performant in CPU and memory use; its UX steers the user away from incidental complications straight to the solution they're seeking. Being able to attend to all that doesn't seem everyone's cup of tea. Finally, even if someone just copied whatever I had made, I would still have the satisfaction of knowing I was the original and they the copycat. That's good enough for me.
- bobbiechen 2mo ago
  >Is it that I want it to be done? Would it have been done if I didn't? (Additionality) >Is it that I want to have done it? Would I be happy if someone else did it? (credit) >Is it that I want to be doing it? (achievement/process) >I want to have a mix. I want to do some things for the experience and some things for the accomplishment. I want to do some easy things and some hard things. Some fun things and some unfun things. Some things just for me and some things for others. Amit Patel, via https://digitalseams.com/blog/amit-patel-on-making-things https://digitalseams.com/blog/amit-patel-on-making-things
- xpct 2mo ago
  I envy your enthusiasm. I sincerely enjoyed being proficient at something that was hard to replace, and still feel pride for it. There's still avenues like that, but they've grown thinner and it's not as one-sided. I'm still very happy to be in this field and keep toiling away, but with less joy.
- maplethorpe 2mo ago
  > I'm intrinsically motivated to work on my software projects because I want them to exist Isn't that extrinsic motivation? You're motivated by the desire to bring something outside of yourself into existence. The software project doesn't exist within you.
globalnode 2mo ago
make software for yourself, learn maths for enjoyment. times have changed. i guess there will always be software jobs but they wont be the same as in the past. if youre thinking of a way to make money and earn prestige at the same time in the computer industry i dont know what the answer to that is.
- allthetime 2mo ago
  Startups aren’t dead. Software businesses aren’t dead. 90% of the traditional buyers of software aren’t building and deploying their own apps from scratch. With a little thinking, creativity, and confidence, you too can make things and sell them for money in 2026.
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allthetime 2mo ago
Anyone can do it? Is everyone you know making a million dollars a year with their software startup? Are you?
- deleted 2mo ago
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- RoadieRoller 2mo ago
  Anyone with internet connection, a phone/laptop, and a few dollars to spare can create anything. Earlier it was not like this. All of a sudden, your competition is anyone from anywhere in the world. Yes, to really make a million dollars, you need more than making the software. Even if you end up making a million dollars, you have 1000s of copy-cats from all parts of the world stealing your pie in no time. An average Joe will have tough time knowing which one is good and which ones to avoid.
  - allthetime 2mo ago
    Every single one of my clients, early in their business, tried to underpay for foreign labour. Every single one of my clients came to me, willing to pay full price, to remake what cheap foreign contractors failed to do - or partially succeeded, but then failed to maintain. Good software business is so much more than code. It's communication and reliability and relationship building and maintenance. Clients pay me full price because we are in similar time zones and can clearly communicate to get things done properly so that they don't need to be remade next year and they have the guarantee that I will still be here.
paul7986 2mo ago
Indeed it feels so uninspiring, no talent/skill needed and my experience of 17 years feels a bit pointless. In the past few months I have used Codex to build apps, so it's not like Im not using AI it just makes my/the career seem dumb. Also, the LinkedIn recruiter semi flood of messages offering potential jobs has dried up completely(anyone else experience this too?). Linkedin is now just a sad and depressing place as you read others sharing similar sentiment. I'm now in medical school pursing mid-level medical type job. This after 17 years of doing UX Research, Web/graphic design and front-end development. 10 of those years I was working in govt indirectly making very good money and little stress. Now my future in the next few months is hospital work with lots of stress and less pay. A bit depressing but i dont dwell on it too much just keep pushing ahead!
- ecshafer 2mo ago
  As a backend/full-stack engineer I still receive at least a few linkedin recruiter messages a week.
  - paul7986 2mo ago
    curious how long have you been in the field? Ive been wondering if it's my age or my LinkedIn algorithm changed for the worse in February once I updated it. I hadnt updated it in many years previously.
    - RoadieRoller 2mo ago
      I am not the one who posted before. But try this to maximize LinkedIn. Consciously, "Like" job posts. That is, in the feed section of linkedin, "like" any type of jobs that you see others post. Linkedin will show you more job posts in your feed, which others post. You "like" that too. Then it will show more job postings. Keep liking that too from your feed. But don't like or view or read any other posts while you do this. Not even your friends/partner's posts. Do this at least 3-4 times a day, with 5-10 likes in each batch. In a week's time, Linkedin will flood your feed with job posts from actual users. Now you become selective and like only design/web developer posts that your skills align with. Then it will bring more of it and you might be able to find something. There are two things that happens. Recruiters/hiring managers see that you liked their post, so they check your profile. Keep it updated. Your profile visits will also go up. Linkedin sees that your profile is viewed by more recruiters, and your profile will be shown above other profiles when recruiters search using their tool. I hope you get a job soon, and you can thank me later!
throw-the-towel 2mo ago
Yes, but also no. On one hand, the possibility to make something genuinely new feels gone. There was always a huge crowd of better developers than myself, but still, they couldn't take all the ideas for themselves. Now they can. On the other hand, I love the process of programming, and the feeling of accomplishment it brings to me. I don't know if I'm still going to have it at work, and this is genuinely important, but at least nobody is going to take my personal projects from me. Tonight I was up until 3.30 am, writing a CLI to wrangle a shapefile into a set of vector tiles that would then be rendered into PNGs. Opus could probably have done this in five minutes. I'm writing this (mostly) myself, it's been two evenings of work, and I'm not done. If Opus could know how utterly I don't care about this fact, it would have cried. I'm not gonna stop eating cheese just because a robot can eat it better. (But I'm not trying to debate you here, you feel what you feel, and if I don't agree then it's none of my business anyway. Hope you find strength!)
tclancy 2mo ago
Hey, congrats on coming up on a birthday that ends in 0. Mine was just 5-0. I can give you two pieces of possible advice: - nothing does matter. You will die. We may meet in the Bardo if you are spectacularly unlucky. - the trick is now being kind and enjoying your time after discovering this.
- t0bia_s 2mo ago
  Sounds like only materialism matter. But life is more than that fortunately. You can care, you can explore, you can love, be thankful, look around, go out, behind our ego...
ab_goat 2mo ago
Doing what matters has become essential; discerning what that is, less clear.
OgsyedIE 2mo ago
The thing you describe was perfectly addressed, as far as I can tell, in a piece of short fiction about AI that was written in 2021. https://m.fictionpress.com/s/3353977/1/The-End-of-Creative-Scarcity https://m.fictionpress.com/s/3353977/1/The-End-of-Creative-S...
joshdavham 2mo ago
I’m actually incredibly excited for the future! Individuals are now a lot more empowered to work effectively with computers (including us in the tech industry). Would you honestly wanna go back to pre-LLM? I now have more fun learning CS concepts and the side projects I can work on now were previously impossible. On the other hand, if you only got into CS for the money… then I take your point.
- bckr 2mo ago
  This is how I feel too! If you want to get excited… think about all the things that ever got you excited about the future. Then think about how you basically had to defer the possibility of them happening in your lifetime. Readjust your timelines! Determine what is the most amazing thing that could happen, that you could contribute to, by orchestrating computation effectively. I mean we don’t even have a cure for cancer yet!
kadhirvelm 2mo ago
I still think there's some junction between software and the physical world that's the next exciting frontier. There's a whole new world opening up that we've never been able to tackle before. Imagine a world where we can shift all these bright folks from working on ads and SaaS to working on new materials discovery, fundamental sciences, healthcare access, climate change, etc. Working to make the world around us a better place. We can now build apps with a TAM of 1 or 2 viable at scale - I still have hope there's a lot of good we can do for the world with that new reality. Purpose-built tools for super niche, high-impact problems, where software isn't the end goal, it's just a means to an end. What do you think? Still meaningless?
chr15m 2mo ago
> enable cheats in a game Great analogy. Life does not have cheats though. Things are changing fast but the limits of physics still apply and reality has a surprising amount of detail[1]. I find myself feeling the way you are feeling when I stop making things. When I'm making things it is very clear where the limits and frontiers have moved to, and that's where the fun is. I would say just start exploring and making things and you'll soon see that "you can do anything" is not true. There is still enormously fun work to be done and puzzles to be solved, with the help of AI or without it. [1] http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
- someguydave 2mo ago
  Well said. It’s easy to generalize doom and hard to make something real.
kiddico 2mo ago
I was fired a while ago and hit my "why am I waking up today?" point. Took me a while but turns out the best reason I found to exist was taking cool pictures of bugs. Fuck me are spiders cool. Dragonflies are incredible. Look at that springtail! Do something ai can't take from you. I set myself a goal to find all 3 species of a particular spider genus in my state. Got it! Moving on to finding a bolas spider. idk. There really is a lot to enjoy outside the collapse of the things I used to enjoy and define my existence by.
- xpct 2mo ago
  Thank you for sharing. I hope your bug-hunting goes well.
fenestella 2mo ago
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mixmastamyk 2mo ago
Yes, but it's more because I haven't had substantial work in a long time and less about AI/ML specifically. Despite limitless info at our fingertips, tech interviewers have doubled-down on asking one to recite memorized facts point blank, which I was never great at as a generalist and now seems completely obsolete.
hattmall 2mo ago
IDK, this seems short sighted. In my experience AI doesn't just create great things out of the gate. It CAN assist, but the AI flyers, writing, web interfaces etc, they have gotten played out really quickly. AI flyers just get ignored, writing is detectable after about 3 lines and AI interfaces get less usage. I definitely feel like there have been similar waves that equally faded out.
xyzelement 2mo ago
Family, community, religion are pretty timeless and universal.
chasd00 2mo ago
Nothing has been taken from you. If writing software brings you joy then write software. Or do you mean a path to riches and elite exclusivity you have in your head has been taken from you? The hard fact is you’re just not that important. It’s a bitter pill and we all have to deal with it at some point.
keel-control 2mo ago
there's still ego & competition against other humans which is what I do to distract myself
millipede 2mo ago
The joy being gone is the big painful one for me. Talking to colleagues and friends who like slopifying everything, they seem to love it. It's a divide between us and them; they never really liked programming in the first place and only considered it a job.
throwaway_2026_ 2mo ago
Thank you for asking this. I am in my 40s and have been working with computers and programming since my teens. I am considered as a good developer in my circle but have slowly started to lose my motivation.
diydsp 2mo ago
This is a form of ego death and should be taken seriously. Your/our place(s) in society have been shaken up like dice in a cup...and someone may not even care to pour them out and see what numbers come out. What are you like when no one is watching? Like any death, it will re-arrange your values. Fortunately existentialist philosophers have been grasping with this for some time. The secret is you have to make your own meaning. It can be scary. Don't freak out. You've essentially been forced to become a radical non-conformist. Also: the ego usually reassembles itself like the robot in Saturn 3. It just comes back a little different, a little more mature. And often it's grateful for every good thing you've ever done for yourself and others.
- quaverquaver 2mo ago
  ^hell yeah! thx
- iJohnDoe 2mo ago
  Sound advice.
- wanderingpixel 2mo ago
  > The secret is you have to make your own meaning. Existentialism is one approach, or you can turn towards Camus and accept life has no ultimate meaning, and live intensely despite that knowledge.
- mlrtime 2mo ago
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- jpillora 2mo ago
  This is the answer - software engineering and your job has changed - find the new mastery in it
ryuuseijin 2mo ago
I agree that AI is a gamechanger in many ways, however it is not the end of life or the end of civilization. Life will go on, and people will be happy productive members of society, even with AI becoming part of everyday life - at least that is what I believe, since believing the alternative would be self defeating. When I think back to the 90s when the internet became popular, to me, living in the middle of nowhere, being able to interact with others through a computer, it was such an exciting time and it is what got me into programming. I believe right now today, there will be young people who may, just like me, be super excited about this AI thing, want to learn more about it, become a wielder of it, with all the energy and hope that comes with youth, just like when I discovered the internet. To them AI is not a "learn this new thing or you are going to be left behind", but it is probably something that gives them hope. Even older people can do this. I remember when I was 16 a taxi driver, probably in his 50s asking me to tell him about this internet thing: "what should I do to learn the internet?". I fondly remember this driver since he seemed to have such an innoncent interest and willingness to learn from this 16 year old who didn't know anything himself. Even with AI, as good as it is now, as well as with it becoming better, people will be part of the process. Although I'm nostalgic about how software used to be created, I'm trying to embrace the new way of doing things and look for new opportunities and a way how I can make a difference, with a positive outlook - this has never failed for me in the past.
- ChrisArchitect 2mo ago
  Young People Hate AI CEOs So Passionately That It's Almost Hard to Believe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323932
- Unknown_Unknown 2mo ago
  > Life will go on, and people will be happy productive members of society, even with AI becoming part of everyday life - at least that is what I believe, since believing the alternative would be self defeating. Unfortunately, I'm not so optimistic. If the rapid change in AI advancement continues at this rate, bar some world wars or an economic collapse, we will face an existensial crisis as humans. AI for me is not attacking or replacing human jobs, it is coming after the cost of our own intelligence. I fear that the cost of human intelligence will go down with time compared to AI. We will no longer be needed to perform tasks as part of an economic framework (capitalism or other will not matter). Money will not be worth anything and hopefully we get to UBI quickly. I don't believe that my son who is 5 will work till retirement age.
raytopia 2mo ago
Yeah, the worst part is feeling suspicious of new things because who knows if anyone actually put any thought into it or if it's just slop. Also while a lot of this generative ai stuff is technically interesting, I do wonder what the opportunity cost is. What else could we have gotten if big tech and investors decided to spend 1.5 trillon dollars on other things? Instead of a machine that outputs the most likely token given an input. Also the amount of spam that is going to being and going to be created because of these tools is very frustrating. It feels like the open internet is going to be coming to a close just so communities can manage the spam tsunami. And I don't just mean signup to view websites I also mean private internets created with tools like Netbird or Tailscale so your content doesn't get scrapped anymore.
- cindyllm 2mo ago
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lowkey57 2mo ago
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lelandbatey 2mo ago
Not particularly because: the LLMs can code, but holy hell can they not operate or plan appropriately for ACTUALLY high stakes operational situations. When you absolutely cannot cause downtime, if you hand Fable/Sol/Kimi the reigns and say "do this 30 million token novel thing and absolutely don't screw up customer traffic" they'll blow it after the first compaction, every time. This is on things like "we have to migrate how we do TLS termination via coordinated infra changes and DNS changes for a couple thousand customers, many of which are fortune 500 companies". It's maddening. If there's stakes, and it's not a small enough problem that there's not already a StackOverflow post/library for how to do XYZ, then you have to be so vigilant.
- esbeeb 2mo ago
  Yep, everyone has forgotten the term "TCO", it seems
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vanity0 2mo ago
Sorry, it was always meaningless. The shiny toys just distracted our attention enough to trick us into thinking there's a golden pot at the end of the rainbow. But now we can reach the end of the rainbow and it's emptiness. Read Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." Everything under the sun is vain, as we will all eventually find out. Nothing will satisfy us because our emptiness was never meant to be filled with code, knowledge, or whatever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlvOrTq4Bes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlvOrTq4Bes
joshum97 2mo ago
Might be tolerable if it would have given us fully automated utopia, but instead we get to watch the world burn and know nobody’s gonna do anything about it.
Retr0id 2mo ago
I can relate to the cheats analogy. But there are still plenty of other games left to play.
thomasjeff1 2mo ago
1. why haven't we developed blood in the lab yet? 2. why haven't we developed organs in the lab yet? 3. why haven't we invented space travel yet? 4. why haven't we solved food, shelter, cover for all human beings on planet earth yet? 5. why don't we have absolute democracy and have hold politicians accountable for their inaction, exploit and abuse? (specifically using Software and AI). Where are the dashboards of all public info of each politicians with organization chart of each country representing top leader with nodes of people working under him/her and further down.
- thomasjeff1 2mo ago
  5.1. where are the alerts when a politicians takes a bribe or does insider trading?
  - downrightmike 2mo ago
    But they say its okay for them to do it, just not the teleprompter man or any of us
    - thomasjeff1 2mo ago
      Because we let them by not having the dashboard and alerts
  - ramesh31 2mo ago
    >where are the alerts when a politicians takes a bribe or does insider trading? They're on the front page news. And no one (with the power to do anything) cares.
    - thomasjeff1 2mo ago
      how about an internet torrent p2p style journalism to prove with tangible proof (pictures, videos, documents) instead of just news?
- RussianBot9580 2mo ago
themgt 2mo ago
No one will care because it's just another addition to the mountain of slop, and the guy bagging your groceries can do it. Did the universe bestow on you some right to code better than the guy who bags your groceries? This whole post oozes a sense of wounded, bitter entitlement.
firefoxd 2mo ago
I think the phenomena we are experiencing is "change". That's what change looks like. Out with the old, in with the new. It feels like nothing matters only because this is all happening too fast. Since we are talking about AI, I'll bring up one thing that hasn't changed, or hasn't been solved at least by AI. Understanding. We are producing so much more than ever, yet we are not understanding the world better. You can experiment it yourself, just because you have the world's knowledge at your fingertips doesn't make you an expert in every field. I asked an LLM to teach me everything I need to know about batteries so I can get into the business. All the information is there, a well crafted curriculum. The amount I didn't know that I didn't know before starting is depressing. Extend this to the idea that now everyone knows everything about everything and you'll quickly realize that we still don't understand much about anything despite this powerful tool on our hand. Understanding things still matters.
- thomasjeff1 2mo ago
  So the next step is to make machines understand the things it needs to understand to solve the problems we care about.
  - firefoxd 2mo ago
    I had this shirt that had a snarky remark on it, it said: > I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you. The machine understanding things doesn't make us understand things. Especially when The Machine Stops™
- unified101 2mo ago
  A lot of the old world's benefit was the gatekeeping of (legitimate) knowledge and understanding. You had to spend a lot of time to grok it, and you could then exploit this for money. LLMs completely kill this gatekeeping, for good or bad. And we're seeing the after effects. I don't know how to feel about this.
solarized 2mo ago
We have to adapt. This what happened to textile workers during Industrial Revolution. Satisfaction of crafting things disappeared once machines automated the work. I literally hesitated to code manually again because I've figured out how to drive this “creature” properly. It can do almost anything faster than me. (for production context). Upgrade toward sales and management ?. At least cover our basic daily needs, so we still have freedom to explore different interesting domains. I feel sorry for brilliant engineers who rely too heavily on their technical skills, because those skills can become almost "irrelevant" in day-to-day work. Some of them literally refuse to adopt AI in their problem-solving process. They still can't accept that “my hard-earned knowledge from decades of learning can be wiped out in just one day.”
- piloto_ciego 2mo ago
  All I ever wanted to do in this universe was fly airplanes. And I did it professionally for nearly 15 years. Then I got sick, and couldn’t do it anymore. Suddenly, all my skills were meaningless and unemployable. I got over it. But it took time. I reinvented myself - I had always liked writing code. So I pivoted to this and literally went back to grad school to study AI. I’m watching a lot of people right now flounder like I did in the first year or so after I got sick. They’re grieving. They’ll move beyond it, but it’s immensely painful to them right now.
  - unified101 2mo ago
    You're right on target. Indeed this is what it is.
    - piloto_ciego 2mo ago
      But, you know, we can move past that grief, and instead use it as fuel! We'll be better for it in the long run even though we might not like it now.
  - solarized 2mo ago
    I really feel for you. One of my friends was also a pilot, licensed to fly Airbus planes. He had to quit because of COVID. I still remember seeing Thai Airways pilots and crew working as street vendors during that time. It’s become much harder to get back into the airline industry now because of the supply-demand situation. Anyway, my friend now became regular staff at local factory, doing something completely unrelated to aviation and aerospace knowledge. It’s really painful to break out of our “locked-in” comfort zone.
glimshe 2mo ago
I don't feel this way at all - and I'm in my late 40s. I'm excited about the future of technology, not only because of AI but also other opportunities next-gen GPUs and new power-efficient processors bring. RISC V. Cheap PCB manufacturing. Cheaper FPGAs and, perhaps, even homebrew ASICs. Much to be excited about. And look around you - so much pain and suffering in the world. Lots and lots of problems to be solved, hopefully helped by all this technology.
solarized 2mo ago
> Also, anything we do write will just get immediately slurped into AI embeddings, anonymizing it and detaching it from its human source, at most nudging some corner of its vectorized slurry. Maybe someone will ask a question that our content influences, but if that user bothers to thank anyone, he'll thank Claude. Perhaps this is what it feels like to be fully commoditized, fully alienated from one's labor. Holy F. elephant in the room !
sva_ 2mo ago
Sounds like you're burnt out. Maybe its time to touch some grass and think about what is really important and meaningful to you. About 150 years ago, Nietzsche wrote > God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? about the secularization of society. Perhaps something similar is happening to knowledge work now, but I think it was never a great idea to derive all your life's meaning from it anyway.
iJohnDoe 2mo ago
It’s not unusual to feel this way right now. The world is arguably in an interesting state. One thing to keep in mind is the world probably felt this way a few times as well. During the Vietnam War and the administration at the time probably made people feel powerless to do anything. 1930s crash. Lots of other examples like this. AI certainly seems like a unique tipping point that reaches into all aspects of humanity. So, maybe it’s different this time.
Isaackoz 2mo ago
Find a hobby that'll scratch that creative itch. I recently got into woodworking and its been a blast! The Anarchist's Tool Chest might be right up your alley [1]. Christopher just released the revised edition a few days ago. There's a link in the description to a free pdf download. On a similar note... the whole idea behind making your own furniture is similar to hand rolling code. You can go ahead and buy a dresser or bed at ikea and call it a day, but the quality is complete shit. Or you could build something that will last a life time and be praised for it's quality. [1]: https://lostartpress.com/products/the-anarchists-tool-chest https://lostartpress.com/products/the-anarchists-tool-chest
thomasjeff1 2mo ago
Then why not just do the things you want to/can instead of the things you have to? I am unemployed and surviving since last 4 years and being creative every day. In between I am also doing what I really want to do. I have raised my bar really high to weed out the shitty employers and companies after 16 years in the industry and focus on what I want to do. I believe the money will just follow. It always has for me.
smitty1e 2mo ago
Euclid: "There is no royal road to geometry." Ptolemy I: "I have this 'Royal Road' AI right here." E: "Can it tell you the precise product of pi*e?" P: "Piece of cake."
an0malous 2mo ago
If AI was actually as good as the VCs and execs want you to believe, there would be tons of new and exciting things being created every day and new opportunities for everyone. There isn’t though, the one cool new technology is the coding agents themselves. But there’s no amazing software, no awesome new games or movies, no breakthrough medicine, no new foods or biotech, no fun electronics or gadgets. Coca Cola couldn’t even make a decent 1 minute commercial with gen AI and millions of dollars, it was just a random sequence of trains driving through snow. Where is the promised techno utopia? It’s all just slop. The malaise is from these VCs force feeding us all slop and telling us this is the future. I’m not saying current AI isn’t impressive or useful, I’m just saying it hasn’t really made anything better yet. I don’t think it’ll be that way forever though. I’m still long term bullish on AI, I just don’t think transformers are enough. We need something that enhances creativity and innovation, that improves quality, not just make it faster and cheaper to put together mediocre products. I think things will turn around by the end of next year, but not before some major reckoning. There is a lot of motivated reasoning going on right now with trillions of dollars at stake where people aren’t being discerning and honest about what AI is actually capable of, and a lot of circular cash flow that’s making it seem more successful than it really is. I think when it really arrives, we’ll see a creative explosion that enriches our lives, where everything isn’t just cheaper to make at 80% of its former quality but actually better quality too. And I believe the solutions for improving quality will surface the things that human beings can uniquely do that AI can’t and give meaning back to our lives, but right now we’re in a shitty in between phase.
Taikhoom10 2mo ago
[flagged]
tmsh 2mo ago
Maybe how medieval monks felt about the printing press. Even the guy bagging groceries can create books now! See better.
newsomix9xl 2mo ago
I've tried AI and it takes either an expert to steer and evaluate or enormous patience and some level of expertise to make it work at all. Its a false sense of efficacy. Like looking at a dating app and thinking you could date any or all those people: the reality is no you can't and you don't even know it. So cheer up: life is still hard as f*ck.
narrator 2mo ago
Hand sewers complain life is meaningless because the Jackard loom makes sewing trivial now.
- card_zero 2mo ago
  Looms are for weaving. If you try to get workers to sew with their looms it could be dangerous, maybe it rips their hands off, and then how will you get rid of the pile of detached hands? You'll have to flush them down the hand sewer. Also: Jacquard.
hintymad 2mo ago
> Learning new CS concepts A key reason is that so many CS concepts are already well packaged in very nice libraries or frameworks. And unfortunately many people do not have to use very advanced CS concepts. Look at the so-called top 10 algorithms or data structures for <your favorite area>, how many of them are invented recently, and how many of them do not have an amazing library of production quality? Note this does not mean that the CS field is not advancing. It's just that we have yet to find another hyper-growth area that demands novel algorithm, except probably the AI infra - except that only very few people get to work on that area.
ejboy 2mo ago
Totally. I've learned a lot this year, but the knowledge feels shallow. I'm now mostly outcome-oriented, rather than focused on the journey.
- unified101 2mo ago
  That seems to be in your control to fix? I have been on this journey, but capitalism does not make it easy.
  - ejboy 2mo ago
    [flagged]
bdg3r 2mo ago
[dead]
purple-leafy 2mo ago
Ideas and execution is basically dead, because any idiot with a keyboard and a spare hour and some api credits can build almost anything you can now. I myself have built so much shit lately but it all feels incredibly shallow. I used to get joy from software, now it feels like fast fashion. Even systems engineering and low level code. Fast fashion. Derivative shit, flung at the void.
keeda 2mo ago
On the contrary, only when we're an immortal, intergalactic species that has mastered the deepest, darkest secrets of the universe, there might be nothing left for us to do and you could make this complaint. Until then the number of challenges we have to overcome is basically infinite, and we finally have the powers needed to make any kind of meaningful progress on it. There is the pesky little matter of jobs and paying rent and capitalism which will cause a lot of turmoil for a very long time, but once we get past that we have our work cut out for us. "You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."
Valakas_ 2mo ago
Sometimes. Have you ever played a single player game where there are achievements, goals, strategies to be had (...). You can often get addicted (eg Factorio) trying to optimize, make the best of your limited resources. But then you realise you're spending too much time on it. And you just want to see the ending. So you enter the cheat codes to make it easy. You blast through everything, you get to the last levels and still easy. And things start feeling meaningless and pointless, and in fact, probably because of that, you quickly lose interest in the game completely. It now feels like we're in the end game. For hundreds of thousands of years we struggled with finding food, be it foraging or hunting, both of which requiring a lot of skill, dealing with several difficult diseases throughout adulthood, droughts, finding new places to stay for the night, for food. And now... all we do is sit 8h per day in front of a screen, and everything else is taken care of. We can even have sex without having babies and a huge lifelong commitement. A first! The pleasures that it unlocks. We have food from all over the world at our fingertips. A feast no hunter-gatherer tribe would ever in their wildest dreams could even conceive of. We have cameras streaming animals from all over the world, lions killing impalas recorded being uploaded for the pleasure of people who watch it on youtube, or simply fledgling birds and their progress, we monitor the weather on all of Earth. We convert sunlight into thunder energy, and make thinking machines from rock. Truly, feels like the last levels of a game where we have the cheat codes. A fish will rarely ask himself "what is water?". It just is. That's just how it is. So we also tend not to realise the ridiculousness of the world we live in because we have been born in it. Even more so younger generations. Some of us have seen the world rapidly changing at an increasingly faster pace. This all we have today is NOT normal. We live in the equivalent of a fraction of the blink of an eye to human existence. Of course, we stress. A lot. Our mental health has never been worse. But this is feels like the end game. Our 'progressivism' and 'Libertarianism' led us to change a lot without thinking of the consequences. And here we are, reaching the finish line, unprepared. Our systems, laws, mental stability have no have time to adapt. And it's scary. I hope we can pull it through.
sph 2mo ago
I thought I was the only one, so burnt out from software engineering I am glad to be out of a job. I am starting to have physical revulsion at the thought of it, and I have been dealing with the fact that I have even lost my fun time in front of the PC, playing games or browsing. These days I literally feel better doing the dishes than opening Steam or watching YouTube. If it’s only me, I can say it’s burnout and depression, if it’s an entire class of people, then the world is sick. As for AI, I have mellowed in my extreme doomer position, though I still believe people have unrealistically high expectations and the reality of it is gonna hit tech very hard in the face soon. Perhaps AI has instilled into me an appreciation for the human creativity, and humanity as a whole, and there’s not much of it to be found online. The Internet was an exciting place where we came to develop our nerdy selves, and today we find having to accept it has become a smelly, dirty shanty town with open air sewer, everybody hustling for a coin. It’s time to unplug.
- comment0r 2mo ago
  I did my taxes on paper instead of digitally this year because of the same anti-computer feeling. It’s a very magnificent feeling, I do find it kind of interesting how I came to feel this way.
- preg_match 2mo ago
  I had this experience and then it completely flipped after being out of work for chemotherapy. I was ready to leave software engineering for good, a complete career transition with the years of investment it would take. But in my time off, I've done my own coding projects and I've rediscovered my love for code. I realized it never left, what I grew to dislike is coding in a corporate environment. But coding for myself is different, I do it for my own rewards and satisfaction. And nothing beats coding for that, really. You get to make things and take pride.
  - sph 2mo ago
    Yes, I still have love for coding, but I only know how to make a living from it in a corporate environment, and I know deep in my bones I cannot muster the energy to work a normal job any more. I have tried the solo entrepreneur route once, it didn't go very well but these days I figure it's hard to carve a niche selling software to people. I feel I'd have better chances in creative arts (game dev) than selling any other piece of software on my own; it's quite a frightening (and exciting) commitment to go down that path. I have spent the last 3 months dilly dallying around this conundrum, and haven't made much progress. It's scary having to reinvent your career in your 40s.
gkrishna 2mo ago
I have spoken to many professionals and looked at some companies usage. I can definitely tell we are in a bubble. I noticed when a non-tech person tries to solve a problem with AI, they only tend to think in-terms on LLM. For e.g. even for a calculator app they use LLM for compute instead of direct calculation. Sure they have managed to solve it. But they are remotely usable. I have seen multiple failed projects taking these vibe coded ideas to production. I wouldn't be disheartened and give up.
petterroea 2mo ago
I'm basically unable to work on boring things without LLMs now because it just doesn't feel like a good use of my time. I am also unable to work on thinks that are mostly vibecoded, by hand, because I know the code is bad, and I know the work will often be surpassed by a model in 1/5 the time once I get tokens again. This is not a "AI is replacing me" comment, but more a "The 90% of my job that takes time and that nobody wants to do is now automated, and not using LLMs is no longer motivationally an option". Vibecoded projects have short term rewards but long term I just find I don't really care, its not "my project" and I'm not proud of it. I am at my happiest when I am out of tokens and working on projects that I care about myself, and am forced to tradcode. I think going forward I will have a few "Tradcode only" projects that personally interest me, to work on when I need a fix-me-up.
oxplot 2mo ago
OP: Anyone with severe depression feels like — get off the net and book a doctor's appointment.
jmloop 2mo ago
Keep learning things, create, do it because you like it not because you want to sell it. Think of all the books, music and movies produced before AI, they are still there waiting for us to enjoy. Can you imagine a world where AI is the only source of truth? Can you imagine the level of bias and manipulation that beast can have? Let's keep playing without cheats. === "Don't Take the Black Pill - Andrew Kelley | SSW 2026" Abstract: In our modern world, it's easy to feel like things are careening out of control; that the future is happening to us while we take a back seat... and all we can do is lie down and rot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLZwpH5lCD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLZwpH5lCD4
brador 2mo ago
You’re angry but you don’t know how to scream.
anal_reactor 2mo ago
I've been good at programming but I've never been passionate about it. I've always done the required minimum to meet the expectations. Therefore AI taking away passion doesn't really bother me. My problem though is that I thought that at this point of life I'd already be married or something, while it looks like no matter how much effort I put into being social, at the end of the day I'm alone. It really sucks because it's not "just hang on a little longer" anymore, it's going into the territory of "you'll spend most of your life alone".
raffael_de 2mo ago
you go from software releases to "Our entire purpose and joy in life has been taken from us." ... maybe your spiritual challenges are not caused by AI after all.
EmeraldSky 2mo ago
I used to contribute to large open source projects. I don’t anymore. I used to read books about various programming languages and CS topics, thinking it would all help advance my career somehow. I perceive all of these activities as too risky now. It takes away time I could spend with loved ones or on other topics I enjoy. I think the best engineers combine advanced CS knowledge with LLM tool use, but the ROI on obtaining that knowledge is much less certain now. Now I have a much higher threshold for what I spend time/money on, other than hobby stuff… if it doesn’t directly lead to some return (like investing) or a chance at some entrepreneurial success, it’s not worth bothering about these days imo. Probably was never a good choice, but contributing to open source projects with the hope it will advance your career is a fool’s errand these days, same goes for useless side projects and leetcode. I don’t think I’m articulating my feelings on this very well, but hopefully you get the gist.
thisisit 2mo ago
It is often easy to fear the unknown. When you don't have a concrete fear or example it is easy to make the worse scenario in mind. And every reassurance can be swept away with a "But what if..". The way I see it is that we are in Year 1/2 of the AI era. We can already see the issues too. * Github can't keep up with the commits * AI data centers build out being increasingly challenged * Electricity grids unable to keep up the pace Now all of this doesn't mean AI is not revolutionary. It absolutely is. It is to say that the pace of change will be slower Also, I believe learning new CS concepts and side projects are still going to matter. Because as much as today is about anyone can code the long term challenge is going to be running and maintaining it the said code.
frankie_t 2mo ago
Yes, all that and more. It doesn't feel to me like cheats are available, it feels like a cheater has entered the game and there is no point in taking the game seriously anymore. I heavily invested into dream of learning throughout all my life and benefiting from it financially and socially. Now it seems that won't come to be true. I've always been taught since childhood that the important things are those that you can carry in your head, because no one is going to take it away from you. I guess now they are wrong, while it cannot be taken directly it can be heavily debased to the point of pointlessness of having it. On top of that, the enshittification of everything tech-related, tightening grip on privacy. Quality collapse, not just what I am doesn't have any value, but nothing produced by anyone does. For example, I don't consider reading books that came after ~2024. On top of that, fear of bigger changes and turmoils related to redistribution of wealth (always upwards, of course), dystopic vision of the future. On top of that, war in my country with no end in sight and shifts to authoritarianism. I'm trying to find a way out of this, and I'm finding interesting observations. For example, one shouldn't overinvest themselves into anything - "never keep all you eggs in the same basket", because nothing is permanent. For me that was the idea of continuous self-improvement that would allow me to keep both a fulfilling job and middle-class lifestyle. It was the most important thing in life, and, of course, when it shattered the pain was substantial. It is possible to find and have other important things in life, some of them could be friends, family, community. Then, no one is going to take away what you do with your mind, especially in free time. You could give up on everything AI related and just enjoy the things you like. Maybe on the worse side of job market there won't be much apart from mercenaries, drug dealers and prostitutes. But in all better cases there's going to be something to occupy yourself with and live relatively serene life. Janitor, any kind of manual laborer that cannot be automated, small farmer, to name a few that came to mind. In free time (or during work even) you could read/listen to anything you like. And then, this is just the baseline, things could actually turn out better.
bodash 2mo ago
This trend started even before AI but just go accelerated recently. Us software engineers are sitting in the front-row experiencing it first and hardest. Not just the fact AI can code now, adjacent terms of similar symptoms are also "loneliness epidemic", "cost of living", etc. Before this turns into an endless rant, back to the question: in the age of "100:1 agents to human ratio soon?", we should be even more nicer to each other fellow human beings. That may help us find purpose/motivations again.
domod 2mo ago
[flagged]
masijo 2mo ago
Sounds like alienation to me. We’re experiencing it first hand thanks to AI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
- eberfreitas 1mo ago
  Came here to say the same
Balgair 2mo ago
I'm more like the guy bagging groceries here. In regards to AI, it feels like I have finally been given the tools. For me, the world now feels so open. I can make websites now, I can do the things I have always wanted to do with computers and code. Your world is finally accessible to me. In regards to you, I think you should read 'What Color is Your Parachute?' again. Yes, that sounds trite and glib, I am sorry. And yes, it sounds like boomer advice, I know. But the exercises in that book really are great stuff. There is a reason it's one of the best non-fiction sellers for like the last 40 years. And yes, I know, NPC-level advice here I really hope you find your path again. The world isn't going to turn into paperclip maximizing AI gods (Look, Claude gave me $1000 for free the other week. Aint no one do that if they aren't scared shitless that the music is about to stop). We're going to be fine, so will you. You got this, I believe in you.
tuesdaynight 2mo ago
What scares me the most is the "nothing" part, because I have a feeling that is really nothing. I have the mainstream opinion that wars sucks, so I was thinking about how I should be prepared to leave places to avoid war in the next decades. I remembered how that would sound crazy 10 years ago, but now it's acceptable. I accepted that I'm living in different times, though.
thatmiki 2mo ago
I'm a 40yo front-end developer. I can relate to what you say, and without detracting from your feelings, may I offer some of my personal experience caveats: I currently use AI both for work and for side projects. My usage patterns are different in both cases and make me think about different things. At work, where I'm working on a large, long-term codebase, we still code review. Knowing concepts about the language and coding style still helps me there, if only to make the code reviews easier and the code more readable and scalable (but also in actually improving the quality and weeding out bugs). I agree that catching up with the latest technologies and patterns became a lower priority, and I miss it being relevant, but honestly I feel like I should get back to it because it still helps. At personal projects - well, I'm actually finishing stuff! The joy of creation didn't dissapear, it's just different. Here, too, I miss the riddle solving and thought that had to go to coding, but seeing my vision becoming real - and actually getting to a stage where it's useful and polished - is satisfying. As for activating cheat codes - partially true. I feel like without my previous frontend knowledge and UX approach, my projects would have been much more slop-like. I don't agree with people not caring about new side projects. I'm working on utilities for my tea and cocktail hobbies, and getting very good responses from fellow enthusiasts, and that's also very satisfying. As for the jobs not being there next year - I'm not sure the trend of "replacing all devs with AI" will continue forever, or that it is continuing in full force now. As far as I know, companies begin to realize that the human developers are not that irreplaceable. And I think that in startups the situation might be a bit different than the large companies we hear about in the news (backed by my last job search last December). I know the situation can be despairing, and I hope you'll find a silver lining.
pickleglitch 2mo ago
> No one will care because it's just another addition to the mountain of slop, and the guy bagging your groceries can do it. In Western culture we tend to define ourselves based on our job, aka our economic output. That person is a fireman. That person is a doctor, or programmer, or whatever. As such, we are nowhere near ready for a world in which AI does all the knowledge-based work and leaves humans with nothing but manual labor. You* need to realize that your life never had any more meaning than that of the grocery bagger, or the ditch digger, or the vagrant, or even the criminal. *the general "you", not you specifically. Just like with a video game, just because the cheat mode exists, doesn't mean you have to use it. I suggest you do things you enjoy doing, and not worry about what value other people may or may not see in the results. Some people get great satisfaction from creating sand sculptures, while always knowing the work will be destroyed in a matter of days, or even hours. Take pleasure in the act, rather than the result.
stagas 2mo ago
One of the reasons why I started textlog.cc, to slow things down, take our time and re-think what we want the internet to look like. It tries to be unconventional and against all of the engagement tactics that have enshittified every corner of the internet. Don’t lose hope, build what you want to see. That’s what I did.
ChildOfChaos 2mo ago
Is it perhaps that what you thought mattered was misguided in the first place? This realisation that you have come too, will likely lead to a better place, much like all struggles.
port11 2mo ago
Kurzgesagt has proposed Nihilistic Optimism as a tongue-in-cheek but grounded way to look at it. (https://www.asktherightquestion.org/the-philosophy-of-kurzgesagt/ https://www.asktherightquestion.org/the-philosophy-of-kurzge...) I’m more or less a practicing Stoic and non-believer. Life never had any meaning, you have to create whichever one you can. If someone can take away your purpose in life, it was too influenced by external factors. I get it. Someone stole my start-up away from me, you go through a period of anger and despair. Do some shrooms, if you can and find your set and setting safe enough. Focus in your hobbies. Have a kid ;) Good luck stranger. I both agree with you and empathise with the despair. I hope the world rebuilds anew, with less elites, less power, less greed, less attempts and making humans redundant.
capitanazo77 2mo ago
You are entering a new level of prosperity and have to find meaning outside work
OutOfHere 2mo ago
> Working on that side project? No one will care because it's just another addition to the mountain of slop, and the guy bagging your groceries can do it. Everything is done and cooked with AI now. Do side projects that interest you, ones that you need or want. Why does it matter if anyone else cares or not. The random guy bagging the groceries can never do it, not even with AI, because to get it right requires defining the specifications and requirements in good detail to the AI. Without this detail, the output is likely to remain unsatisfactory. A code review matters too for the same reason.
kypro 2mo ago
> It's exactly like that feeling once you enable cheats in a game; sure you can do anything, but everything is meaningless now. I said pretty much exactly the same thing on another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334614 > 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. But yes, I feel this acutely and it hurts me terribly. I've been an AI doomer for like 15 years so the existential risks bother me emotionally less as I've lived for almost half of my life believe AI would ultimately kill me. What I never expected was for it to take so much from me along the way. This meaningless is something I've been adjusting to for the last 1-2 years, and as someone who very self-motivated and is always doing something it's not something I'm used to feeling. I knew automation was coming though and honestly should have seen this. Even to some extent in SWE I realised that the job was likely going to change a lot from AI after we first saw LLMs be able to generate simple syntax. But I guess I never considered that the writing I did (in AI), and the other creative tech pursuits I did would also be so easily automatable. AI has robbed me of both things I loved and the many years of my life I invested in those things. But I don't like to complain about this stuff. I work in AI and think about how to automate people's jobs away for my day job. I can't complain about karma which is due. It hurts, but at least for me, I am grateful for the pain on some level.
AtlasBarfed 2mo ago
Software was a mirror of human science. It was a gradual accumulation of conserved code and useful components of software and architecture. With AI, everything is one-off code, and removes the impetus to make software as a whole easier for future coding. This is in an age when improving things should be monumentally easier. But there's no open source reputation to be obtained now. No monetary gain from consulting on open source projects. No reason to open source closed source code because it might be useful to other programmers. That means software stops improving
andreyvit 2mo ago
Yes, AI is eating the relevancy of non-AI stuff. Is that a bad thing, though? I imagine that, during the industrial revolution, all the farming concepts also became irrelevant for many. The times are a-changing; what's relevant now is figuring out the most efficient uses of AI, and keeping up with how that evolves month to month. Big opportunities there for people who can stay flexible.
zingababba 2mo ago
I think the hard lesson here that will probably get buried and obfuscated eternally is that we have literally just recreated all of the horrible parts of management but now at the IC level. Every IC now has an entire army of claude or whatever agents indulging all their bullshit endlessly. I'm seeing it in fortune 200s all over the place at the moment. You have IC after IC just dopamine maxxing solutions left and right that don't play well with other IC solutions. Little fiefdoms exactly like what you would find at management barriers but so much worse somehow because for the majority of it you take one look and realize it's complete slop. I honestly don't know how all this shit will get cleaned up but it seems like ICs are doing an insane amount of damage all over the place probably because everyone is depressed and demoralized and basically like 'fuck it'.
red-iron-pine 2mo ago
> “If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. " - David Foster Wallace
bartimus 2mo ago
Coding has had its punch-card moment. Cookbook development is history. Congratulations: you’re a systems engineer now.
forest_brothers 2mo ago
[flagged]
bah9 1mo ago
Programming was a chess for me. AI is a chess engine. For sure, i cared about winning (i.e. deliver product), but i have zero enjoyment from winning if i used a chess engine Somehow, a lot of people can't understand me. Seems like 90% of programmers hate chess. They only enjoyed winning. Sad thing is, now every "guy bagging groceries" can win, what is exactly your value?
- akullpp 1mo ago
  I think the same way and act like it. I'm forced to deliver with AI in my job but what's delivered is utter garbage. Worst of all, now everyone think and behave the way like they are Magnus Carlson.
alessandroarosa 1mo ago
AI must be shut down. For sake of our race and the planet earth. We cannot afford it. Too energy and water required. A technology is not worth pursuing if it threatens its environment and creator. Losing chances of thinking makes people more controllable. So far, history was that of the thought of human race. Will it turn into that of AI ?
bbyford 1mo ago
I've felt this way alot this year, the year of apathy?? I've been talking about AI and Ethics for over 10 years now on my podcast the machine ethics podcast www.machine-ethics.net and I'm getting to the point that I actually hate talking about it, the influence it has on peoples minds is now massive and present in a way it hasn't been before. It should go the way of Alexa—a good technology a the few not the many (and im thinking cancer research etc here).
h8f1z 1mo ago
Yep. Same here.

happytoexplain 2mo ago

I am intrinsically motivated, but AI doesn't just accelerate, it changes the end product when used in the way we are forced by economics to use it: Broadly, and supported by tests rather than by looking at each line. Something I made is explicitly different from something somebody (or something) else made over which I merely acted as a manager. For my personal experience, that's a different end product - I know the architecture of the thing, but the thing itself can not be internalized. It's less interesting, and, despite requiring less thinking, it's more stressful. And even regardless, reviewing code is simply less enjoyable/motivating than writing code. I am also extrinsically motivated, as everybody is. The "if you don't like AI, then you only cared about the money" implication is nonsensical. I'm not going to starve or become homeless, but I absolutely could lose my current home. That would drive me to depression. I also don't want to have a job I don't enjoy at all. That would turn me into a different person. A miserable person. Switching to something I can learn to do within a short enough time frame that I'm not being financially irresponsible, that I enjoy at least a little, and that ultimately ends up paying at least 75% of what my previous job pays, is essentially not realistic.

kranner 2mo ago
I agree with your second paragraph. I'm not blindly pro-AI, merely trying to make the best of a bad situation. I didn't mean to imply "if you don't like AI, then you only cared about the money" at all. I'm trying to say if you don't want to do the work because you think anyone at all can do the same job with AI, then 1) you're probably underestimating yourself, and 2) maybe you care less about the work than about being on the other side of a moat of knowledge and experience. That moat is still there, and a large part of it is caring about the work. (Also I agree that AI changes the end product if one doesn't read the code, but I don't agree that we are all necessarily forced by the economics to operate it that way. I still plan how to implement features myself first, without AI; I still read every line of code; and I still sometimes step in and rewrite the AI patch myself. I'm lucky not to have a boss breathing down my neck, I realise; at least that's true for the moment while my savings haven't run out.)

happytoexplain 2mo ago

If all the pilots were affected, it would be a disaster, not one person's personal challenge. If you switch out "pilot" for something even more common/fundamental in the economy, like "tradesman", "scientist", or "software developer", it gets even more grim. You write as though you are enlightened, but in this light, your anecdote is selfish. It's selfish to apply your personal experience to the whole world with the broad "just handle your situation like I did mine" brush.

piloto_ciego 2mo ago
You should just handle your situation. Though, not necessarily like I did, but handle it none the less. I am enlightened on this particular topic - one of the few in the world I'm qualified to viscerally understand. This is the second time I'm living it, and this time is far more fun because I'm less invested in the identity of "programmer" but it is still daunting. Selfish? Maybe. What I see from a lot of people I talk to about this stuff is anger and frustration. So they lash out at the guy who says, "hey you can be mad, but you're still going to have to figure out your stuff." I can give advice, you're free to take it or not, but this is not a situation where there is a rule book. You're going to have to forge a new path - things are changing, and you will have to adapt or suffer the consequences of not adapting. There is no one person to blame for this problem (except for maybe yourselves if you were too invested in "dev" as an identity), there is no way to un-invent these tools. It's not going away. "Just handle your situation" is the right answer here. That's what you're going to have to do anyway. When you get done blubbering about what could have been (and believe me, I did quite a bit of blubbering too), you'll eventually need to get up off your ass and do something in this changed world. I know that sucks, and I know it's not what you want to hear. But these are the facts on the ground right now. I'm sorry this is happening to you guys (and I guess me twice), but I've been here before, I know what it is like. You can take the advice of a guy who's already been hiking a similar mountain for a few years, or you can say, "screw you man!" That's up to you, but I promise you that being angry will not halt AI coding agents or AI progress in general. You're going to have to adapt to the new world, and if you cannot adapt you are going to suffer more. How do I know? Because I fucking lived this already once. Once you're done grieving, you can start to say, "oh, what are the new found opportunities in this world where I can't do $old_career?" If you need help along the way, I'm here, but you shouldn't expect me to abandon my lived experience with this stuff. It sucks to lose a career, but the faster you can let go of the old identity and forge a better one, the better you'll be for it.

tavavex 2mo ago

I think you're talking past what OP really meant. Millions of people change careers, and it usually isn't treated as a sign of failure or deficiency. The effects they're talking about are not as shallow as finding employment in doing the same thing they initially expected to do. The reason so many people feel hollow, in addition to the job loss, is that the deployment of AI coincides with the accelerating hollowing-out and financialization of the world, especially the tech world. I don't think nearly as many people who still can be employed in tech would have such a big problem if they still felt like they were paid to solve problems and make things happen, even if indirectly. Instead what everyone is feeling, even many expert AI users, is that now everyone is increasingly working on creating the appearance of value, not actual value. Instead of serving customers, they make numbers look good to shareholders, hype up whatever they want to hear and line the pockets of people whose level of wealth they will never reach. The number of tech sub-fields where this isn't a theme is thinning by the day. So it goes much deeper than "I need to train for another job" - lots of people make that choice every day. By suggesting that these people need to study AI like you, you're telling them they need to accept the corporate system they hate. Become one with the financial interests. I am your opposite. I started out by being enthusiastic about machine learning, I was fascinated by GPT-2 or image generation demos years before normal people found out about it. I saw the tech field as flawed, but good enough. And after all, back then engineers had a real value and a voice, they could push back and advocate for better technical solution, they still hadn't become the unvalued scavengers of "look what AI made for me" produced by people who have no idea what they're doing. Now that AI has pushed 80% of tech firmly into the "enriching the immensely wealthy and bringing about a dystopian world" paradigm, I'm looking to go back and do something that will actually benefit real people. Not any of the grass-is-greener farming fantasies people post about occasionally - I still like technology, I just want to use it for real, actual work. That's what OP and many others are probably feeling.

piloto_ciego 2mo ago
I have never said they need to accept the "corporate system they hate" - I'm saying they need to adapt, and the genie is never going back into the bottle. You can take my advice, or you can ignore it. Up to you, but what I see, from my limited perspective, is a lot of people grieving not being useful in the same way they used to be. They can adapt, or they can suffer. Not trying to be callous or whatever, but the sooner people stop making their identity about their careers the better. And let's be real, 99% of code never created any real value in the world anyway. You think that the B2B SaaS dashboard you built for some company called Wankytottle was really valuable in any sense of the word? You don't have to accept "the system," especially now.
- tavavex 2mo ago
  Sorry, I assumed that accepting the system was what you advocated for given your example of moving to AI combined with the message of needing to adapt. It's a common argument used by AI advocates, that AI and all its consequences are the only way in all industries, and that everyone has a choice of either doing AI or dying (metaphorically or literally). I explained why the grief that people feel isn't just tied to employment, but their overall perception of how the world is doing and what it's like to thrive in it. It's especially pertinent because OP isn't pushed out and trying to find something else to do - judging by the post, they're still in the game, still doing all the right AI things. They're just exhausted and questioning the meaning of it all. I find these emotions to usually be the strongest for people who used to do something they saw as valuable in the past, but don't anymore - or at least people who thought that were satisfied by solving problems even if no one but them would ever appreciate the solution. The B2B SaaS webdevs and similar archetypical solvers of trivial low-value problems are the ones who love AI the most.