5 ms·

I'd argue that supply isn't really increasing. I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released? NYT is now 10x as thick? Every source of quality has upp

by asdff 1mo ago

I'd argue that supply isn't really increasing. I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released? NYT is now 10x as thick? Every source of quality has upped its quantity by 10x? Not at all. Seems output in this brave new AI era is more or less the exact same as it was in the dark ages. The only output that has gone up, logarithmically at that, is spam and other low effort fodder. I also want to push back on the idea that content is "solved." Consider the fact that you could be born in 1810 or 1910 or 2010 and in each of those eras, have more content available for you to read than you could ever read in your lifetime. People tend to enjoy contemporary stuff vs exclusively reading classics, and therefore there is constant demand for new stuff of quality in principle. I think writers who are trying to become truly gifted writers aren't going to be out of demand in the future. I mean after all, technology has come up with dozens of new ways to commodity just about every medium of art there is for mass production, and yet, for every medium of art there is there are still sought after and celebrated artists. Provenance has value. That is something that technologists often forget coming from engineering backgrounds, where everything they interact with is commodified and provenance doesn't matter at all, only the binary of if the spec is met.

adventured 1mo ago
I believe you're spot on. We now have exceptionally capable local image generation models for example. Are the masses rushing to produce a thousand fold increase in the output of any sort of generative images? Not even in the slightest is that happening. Why not? Nobody gives a shit. Their attention time is finite. And the masses don't want to produce anything when they're not at work. Production is work. High-quality production is hard work. The latest human TikTok continues to be at least 10x more interesting to the masses than most any form of AI media. Why? It's about pleasurable passive consumption. AI video isn't there yet (3-5 years before it really matters in the realm of big media). There's no risk on the horizon of a supply issue. The 99% do not care to spend their home time manufacturing.
darkteflon 1mo ago
Doesn’t the claim in the first paragraph only make sense if you assume that content becomes irrelevant as it ages? That holds for news but not for most other media. I have a huge Steam backlog and a Plex server stocked with (ymmv) many of the finest movies available in the form. There’s so much media there that there’s no realistic path to experiencing it all in my lifetime. That certainly has an impact on my inclination to purchase new games or movies. I concede that that’s always been the case for durable written works thanks to the local library. But the scale of convenient supply now is staggering.
- asdff 1mo ago
  I wouldn't say irrelevant but certainly less popular over time compared to when it was newer. Even with all this supply on your fingertips I bet you watch a lot more movies from the 2020s than the 1920s. EDIT: Since people are getting specific about that last line and missing the point, how about instead it's "I bet you watch a lot more movies from the $yourFavoriteDecade than the timemachine(start = $yourFavoriteDecade, direction = "reverse", years = 40)"
  - SoftTalker 1mo ago
    Watching a movie from the 1920s requires paying some attention to follow characters and plot. Watching a movie from the 2020s is just 90-120 minutes of nonstop CGI visual stimulation.
    - lokar 1mo ago
      There are plenty of good films to see that don’t depend on sfx
  - scantron4 1mo ago
    Ok but I watch more movies from the 2000s than from the 2020s.
- Aerroon 1mo ago
  >I have a huge Steam backlog Yeah, and by the time you get to many of those games they will feel clunky and outdated. It's not just the graphics that ages, but also the game mechanics, UI and UX, and the general presentation of the game. I would rather play Path of Exile than Diablo 2. >I concede that that’s always been the case for durable written works thanks to the local library. But the scale of convenient supply now is staggerin. I think even these written works go through "improvements". It's difficult to point out what is better about the more recently written stories, but somehow they are more appealing (in some aspects). Picking up an old book is harder than a new one if you're very familiar with a genre.
  - 1mo ago
bluefirebrand 1mo ago
> I'd argue that supply isn't really increasing. I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released? Steam is releasing 50-70ish games every single day now from what I understand. That's a crazy number. Compared to 2016 which saw 10-15 per day And in 2023 (pre AI?) it was 30-40ish
- asdff 1mo ago
  I'm trying to put a wedge between quality content and slop fodder. I admit slop fodder is increasing exponentially. But quality content e.g. movies that see theatrical runs, it isn't like there is some huge increase of supply of that relatively speaking, or some huge scale up in theater capacity to show more supply. For games, forget steam as a whole but consider maybe a single studio. It isn't like EA is moving to monthly vs yearly releases of their regular titles even though output is 10-12ish-x more in theory. It isn't like they are covering 10x as many sports in terms of games as they did previously now that they can do 10x more output with this new tooling, in theory of course. Output in terms of actual deliverables seems to be the same as it ever was.
  - bluefirebrand 1mo ago
    > I'm trying to put a wedge between quality content and slop fodder. I admit slop fodder is increasing exponentially Fair enough, but the increase does make it a lot harder to separate signal from noise > Output in terms of actual deliverables seems to be the same as it ever was. Any efficiency that the technology is revealing seems to be getting gobbled by bureaucracy to me. I suspect that what we're seeing instead of "more deliverables" we're seeing "same deliverables with less effort"
    - asdff 1mo ago
      >Fair enough, but the increase does make it a lot harder to separate signal from noise This is true but depends where you get your information. Social media like Reddit, yeah, it's becoming just bots and bot comments and many of the humans don't even trust themselves to write longer than six words without prompting an llm. Real news sources where people put their government name to the article, less so, especially the more credible the source is. >I suspect that what we're seeing instead of "more deliverables" we're seeing "same deliverables with less effort" Even this I wonder to be true. What is less effort? I agree that ultimately the slow point is not the code generation. It is the bureacracy, interactions with stakeholders and collaborators, everything else that isn't getting faster of course. Now how about the engineer. Is anyone actually working less? Like having less to do and just not working for 9/10ths the day? I don't think that is the case. The nature of software is actually that its productivity is a bit removed from business. You could be in charge of some product and there is literally endless work to be done either in features to potentially add and bugs that appear. Some more or less critical but that is the job really: infinite work. You can literally tinker forever. If anything this enables more tinkering and doing and getting caught up mucking around in the endless work slog. And of course none of this increased effort is going to move the needle on ultimately the sales job that pays the real bills of the software org, not engineering. The product can be junk if it can be spun to sell to enough people and make a very successful company, and plenty of excellent products do not sell and wither on the vine. And there is only so much market out there, only so many fish able to bite so many lines even if there is some product market fit.
cosiiine 1mo ago
To debate your point, we are absolutely seeing Amazon being flooded by AI books. Any open marketplace is currently experiencing a race to the bottom.
- asdff 1mo ago
  I'm referring to high quality content not low effort spam such as AI books flooding amazon, which was already flooded with low effort spam books and other junk product before AI.
- glimshe 1mo ago
  True, but these aren't becoming best sellers. It's a bigger problem for Amazon than for readers in a sense, as they need to implement a good way for people to filter out these offerings so customers don't simply walk away and go back to physical bookstores (perhaps a blessing in disguise).
roosterIllusi0n 1mo ago
Engineers are not the CEOs. The CEOs are gaslighting to justify another self enriching layoff. AI decisions and control sits with a handful of grifting CEOs. Engineers get no say.
munificent 1mo ago
> I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released? 20 million videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. >* NYT is now 10x as thick?* One random site I checked says there are 600 million active blogs right now. > Every source of quality has upped its quantity by 10x? I made no claims about quality. If you spend two hours watching Citizen Kane, or two hours watching loot boxed unboxing videos, the fraction of your life that's spent is the same. The attentional cost is equivalent even if the value someone derived from it is not. > I think writers who are trying to become truly gifted writers aren't going to be out of demand in the future. Almost no one can make a living writing poetry any more. That means the hypothetically world's best poet probably doesn't exist because that requires a time investment that simply isn't available except among the idle rich. The trend is going that way for photography, music, and fiction. In order to be truly gifted, you need a massive amount of time to hone your craft and it's very hard to find that in an economy that doesn't pay you to do that. > Provenance has value. That is something that technologists often forget coming from engineering backgrounds, where everything they interact with is commodified and provenance doesn't matter at all, only the binary of if the spec is met. I agree. Hand-made stuff is good. But imagine a world where every fast food restaurant charged five cents for an entire meal. Home-cooked meals would still be superior, but how often would the average person summon the time and willpower to make them? And in that world, how good do you think the average home cook would get?
- tarsinge 1mo ago
  I think the parent is talking about quality stuff, and is specifically addressing that in contrast spam is increasing. It’s especially true in video games, more games then ever are released, but the amount of actually enjoyable quality game has barely increased. Last time I checked SoA models were still very lacking at game design, let alone capable of creating a finished original and fun game.
  - munificent 1mo ago
    The thing is, though, people are still choosing to spend time on crap. So as a producer of quality content, your audience has shrunk because a minute spend consuming crap is a minute not available for your thing. And as a consumer, the average total quality being consumed has likely gone down.
cykros 1mo ago
Idk about 10x but I know I get my podcasts at 2x speed. 1x makes it sound like they're not on enough cocaine.

by asdff 1mo ago

adventured 1mo ago

I believe you're spot on. We now have exceptionally capable local image generation models for example. Are the masses rushing to produce a thousand fold increase in the output of any sort of generative images? Not even in the slightest is that happening. Why not? Nobody gives a shit. Their attention time is finite. And the masses don't want to produce anything when they're not at work. Production is work. High-quality production is hard work. The latest human TikTok continues to be at least 10x more interesting to the masses than most any form of AI media. Why? It's about pleasurable passive consumption. AI video isn't there yet (3-5 years before it really matters in the realm of big media). There's no risk on the horizon of a supply issue. The 99% do not care to spend their home time manufacturing.

darkteflon 1mo ago

Doesn’t the claim in the first paragraph only make sense if you assume that content becomes irrelevant as it ages? That holds for news but not for most other media. I have a huge Steam backlog and a Plex server stocked with (ymmv) many of the finest movies available in the form. There’s so much media there that there’s no realistic path to experiencing it all in my lifetime. That certainly has an impact on my inclination to purchase new games or movies. I concede that that’s always been the case for durable written works thanks to the local library. But the scale of convenient supply now is staggering.

asdff 1mo ago
I wouldn't say irrelevant but certainly less popular over time compared to when it was newer. Even with all this supply on your fingertips I bet you watch a lot more movies from the 2020s than the 1920s. EDIT: Since people are getting specific about that last line and missing the point, how about instead it's "I bet you watch a lot more movies from the $yourFavoriteDecade than the timemachine(start = $yourFavoriteDecade, direction = "reverse", years = 40)"
- SoftTalker 1mo ago
  Watching a movie from the 1920s requires paying some attention to follow characters and plot. Watching a movie from the 2020s is just 90-120 minutes of nonstop CGI visual stimulation.
  - lokar 1mo ago
    There are plenty of good films to see that don’t depend on sfx
- scantron4 1mo ago
  Ok but I watch more movies from the 2000s than from the 2020s.
Aerroon 1mo ago
>I have a huge Steam backlog Yeah, and by the time you get to many of those games they will feel clunky and outdated. It's not just the graphics that ages, but also the game mechanics, UI and UX, and the general presentation of the game. I would rather play Path of Exile than Diablo 2. >I concede that that’s always been the case for durable written works thanks to the local library. But the scale of convenient supply now is staggerin. I think even these written works go through "improvements". It's difficult to point out what is better about the more recently written stories, but somehow they are more appealing (in some aspects). Picking up an old book is harder than a new one if you're very familiar with a genre.
- 1mo ago

bluefirebrand 1mo ago

> I'd argue that supply isn't really increasing. I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released? Steam is releasing 50-70ish games every single day now from what I understand. That's a crazy number. Compared to 2016 which saw 10-15 per day And in 2023 (pre AI?) it was 30-40ish

asdff 1mo ago
I'm trying to put a wedge between quality content and slop fodder. I admit slop fodder is increasing exponentially. But quality content e.g. movies that see theatrical runs, it isn't like there is some huge increase of supply of that relatively speaking, or some huge scale up in theater capacity to show more supply. For games, forget steam as a whole but consider maybe a single studio. It isn't like EA is moving to monthly vs yearly releases of their regular titles even though output is 10-12ish-x more in theory. It isn't like they are covering 10x as many sports in terms of games as they did previously now that they can do 10x more output with this new tooling, in theory of course. Output in terms of actual deliverables seems to be the same as it ever was.
- bluefirebrand 1mo ago
  > I'm trying to put a wedge between quality content and slop fodder. I admit slop fodder is increasing exponentially Fair enough, but the increase does make it a lot harder to separate signal from noise > Output in terms of actual deliverables seems to be the same as it ever was. Any efficiency that the technology is revealing seems to be getting gobbled by bureaucracy to me. I suspect that what we're seeing instead of "more deliverables" we're seeing "same deliverables with less effort"
  - asdff 1mo ago
    >Fair enough, but the increase does make it a lot harder to separate signal from noise This is true but depends where you get your information. Social media like Reddit, yeah, it's becoming just bots and bot comments and many of the humans don't even trust themselves to write longer than six words without prompting an llm. Real news sources where people put their government name to the article, less so, especially the more credible the source is. >I suspect that what we're seeing instead of "more deliverables" we're seeing "same deliverables with less effort" Even this I wonder to be true. What is less effort? I agree that ultimately the slow point is not the code generation. It is the bureacracy, interactions with stakeholders and collaborators, everything else that isn't getting faster of course. Now how about the engineer. Is anyone actually working less? Like having less to do and just not working for 9/10ths the day? I don't think that is the case. The nature of software is actually that its productivity is a bit removed from business. You could be in charge of some product and there is literally endless work to be done either in features to potentially add and bugs that appear. Some more or less critical but that is the job really: infinite work. You can literally tinker forever. If anything this enables more tinkering and doing and getting caught up mucking around in the endless work slog. And of course none of this increased effort is going to move the needle on ultimately the sales job that pays the real bills of the software org, not engineering. The product can be junk if it can be spun to sell to enough people and make a very successful company, and plenty of excellent products do not sell and wither on the vine. And there is only so much market out there, only so many fish able to bite so many lines even if there is some product market fit.

cosiiine 1mo ago

To debate your point, we are absolutely seeing Amazon being flooded by AI books. Any open marketplace is currently experiencing a race to the bottom.

asdff 1mo ago
I'm referring to high quality content not low effort spam such as AI books flooding amazon, which was already flooded with low effort spam books and other junk product before AI.
glimshe 1mo ago
True, but these aren't becoming best sellers. It's a bigger problem for Amazon than for readers in a sense, as they need to implement a good way for people to filter out these offerings so customers don't simply walk away and go back to physical bookstores (perhaps a blessing in disguise).

roosterIllusi0n 1mo ago

Engineers are not the CEOs. The CEOs are gaslighting to justify another self enriching layoff. AI decisions and control sits with a handful of grifting CEOs. Engineers get no say.

munificent 1mo ago

> I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released? 20 million videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. >* NYT is now 10x as thick?* One random site I checked says there are 600 million active blogs right now. > Every source of quality has upped its quantity by 10x? I made no claims about quality. If you spend two hours watching Citizen Kane, or two hours watching loot boxed unboxing videos, the fraction of your life that's spent is the same. The attentional cost is equivalent even if the value someone derived from it is not. > I think writers who are trying to become truly gifted writers aren't going to be out of demand in the future. Almost no one can make a living writing poetry any more. That means the hypothetically world's best poet probably doesn't exist because that requires a time investment that simply isn't available except among the idle rich. The trend is going that way for photography, music, and fiction. In order to be truly gifted, you need a massive amount of time to hone your craft and it's very hard to find that in an economy that doesn't pay you to do that. > Provenance has value. That is something that technologists often forget coming from engineering backgrounds, where everything they interact with is commodified and provenance doesn't matter at all, only the binary of if the spec is met. I agree. Hand-made stuff is good. But imagine a world where every fast food restaurant charged five cents for an entire meal. Home-cooked meals would still be superior, but how often would the average person summon the time and willpower to make them? And in that world, how good do you think the average home cook would get?

tarsinge 1mo ago
I think the parent is talking about quality stuff, and is specifically addressing that in contrast spam is increasing. It’s especially true in video games, more games then ever are released, but the amount of actually enjoyable quality game has barely increased. Last time I checked SoA models were still very lacking at game design, let alone capable of creating a finished original and fun game.
- munificent 1mo ago
  The thing is, though, people are still choosing to spend time on crap. So as a producer of quality content, your audience has shrunk because a minute spend consuming crap is a minute not available for your thing. And as a consumer, the average total quality being consumed has likely gone down.

cykros 1mo ago

Idk about 10x but I know I get my podcasts at 2x speed. 1x makes it sound like they're not on enough cocaine.