Yeah it’s fucked, our job has been destroyed from a fun team-based intellectual activity to being a button pusher. I imagine something similar happened to tailors who became factory sweatshop workers.
No point crying about it or coping that some bubble will pop and the genie will go back in the bottle. I’m pretty confident that’s not happening, though in the distant future some society will recognize that everything that can be automated should not be automated, that society will look very different and probably won’t happen in my lifetime (it will for one, I predict bring back tailors too).
So here’s my solution, leave the field. If what you enjoyed most was creative problem solving then moving to a field that enables that is the best solution. Yes the next Ruby on Rails app will involve even lesser creativity than before, but is that the situation for the next good aeroplane? Flying car? Small modular nuclear reactor. I suspect just button pushing for that won’t work nearly as well and that’s my plan anyway.
Yea, I got into programming because... I like programming. Not whatever the fuck this is. We've been reduced to hamsters pushing a button and getting a little pellet back, over and over.
>in the distant future some society will recognize that everything that can be automated should not be automated
No, everything that can be automated SHOULD be automated, but the automation should benefit everyone instead of just the 0.1% (actually this percentile keeps getting smaller and smaller, so the percentage of people outside of the "permanent underclass" is probably even less than that now).
The problem about AI (at its current level, barring AI2027 type scenarios) is not about AI, but about the way we've organized society as a whole.
I've brought this up before, if the USSR existed today how would Soviet mathematicians react to AI? Would they be dismayed or overjoyed? You never see mathematicians acknowledge this point, but it's the crux of the issue. In our society employment justifies existence, in a society where existence is inherently justified AI would mean freedom to people instead of causing existential dread.
> I've brought this up before, if the USSR existed today how would Soviet mathematicians react to AI? Would they be dismayed or overjoyed? You never see mathematicians acknowledge this point, but it's the crux of the issue. In our society employment justifies existence, in a society where existence is inherently justified AI would mean freedom to people instead of causing existential dread.
Yeah, but even once we've achieved a society in which existence is inherently justified, some things are about the destination and some things are about the journey. We need to organize society around producing people and lives, good lives, as the final economic output. A person we "produce" under such a system will probably be highly skilled and want to participate in society's productive processes, because mastery and participation are real human needs for living a good life.
The question is how we distinguish between processes that are important to the people participating in them, and those that are not. Factory work was and is a massive improvement over subsistence farming, but no population in world history has been permanently satisfied spending their lives on the assembly line, so either we can take advantage of highly automated manufacturing to just have machines do the work or we can redirect automation towards re-involving human craftspeople into producing less interchangeable, higher-quality products (the market has been moving towards customizable commodities anyway).
I agree with your first paragraph. I myself do not use AI for my personal projects (such as the game engine I'm developing), and do not intend to do so in the future regardless of how far AI develops.
I'm not arguing in favor of a human existence that is completely based on consumption, but one that maximizes automation as much as possible for the benefit of society as a whole so that all human labor becomes voluntary. At that point people will decide which processes are important for them to participate in on their own.
> No, everything that can be automated SHOULD be automated,
I disagree, because then the "human" part of our days are over. If everything is automated, I don't need to interact with any human at all anymore - but the random small chat in the Bakery every couple of days is very nice. Ther will also be no chance to break out of the loop. Try to get a human involved if the automated system thinks "naa, not today", that's going to be difficult because companies prove they will fire the human as fast as possible because the task seemingly is fully automated.
This is how I have been thinking too. Programming as a mass-market career is over the same way being a tailor, a blacksmith, a cobbler a carpenter, etc for the mass market is also over. Unlike programming, those profession enjoyed millennials of history so there is still some type of romantic idea of a "hand made garment" or a "hand made leather shoe", but outside of very small market for that, there is no economical value in those anymore. The fact that a person might have enjoyed sewing or woodworking as a vocation is incidental to people's need for clothes or cabinets.
I don't think anyone would care about "hand made software", arguably no one ever did. You need a tool to do X. The enjoyment of the person producing that tool is entirely incidental. You don't care if the corn you're eating was hand picked by a person who loved manual farm labor or by a combine harvester. Just like you wouldn't care if someone enjoys driving a combine vs a self-driving combine nor if someone enjoys directing self-driving harvesters or if they are self-directing.
Yeah, I think I would avoid video games with AI art or code, I only play indie interesting video games and looking at the public’s reaction I think they too feel the same way, so I do expect a smaller market for handmade video games.
Outside of that it’s hard to envision handmade anything in software in this everything mass produced cheap consumerist society.
> I don't think anyone would care about "hand made software", arguably no one ever did. You need a tool to do X.
I absolutely do. Perhaps this is a product of my first exposure to computers, but I vividly remember the early Macintosh computers coming on the scene. The care and attention to detail on every level of the machine was special. They were so different than everything before. And it inspired many developers to produce beautiful, weird, awesome software. Does anybody remember the Talking Moose? After Dark? Spaceward Ho! HyperCard? RoboWars? Heck, even MSWord 5.1a was an amazing piece of software whose grammar checker literally taught me grammar.
Now we have “software that does X”, but that X is so bland and enshittified nearly all the joy of computing has been erased. I love writing software. I love writing good and clever software. Perhaps the world no longer cares, but I do.
Agreed. I carefully choose the software I use because I believe the author poured in some domain specific knowledge and made a tool that is novel and carefully thought through.
That does not mean a clever user cannot use an AI tool to help produce it, but so far most of it is slop. Some clever users can build some gems though.
> I imagine something similar happened to tailors who became factory sweatshop workers.
I'm really wondering where this goes. I'm not sure we are going to the "tailors", but maybe I'm also biased.
Tailoring completly got lost - there are basically none* in western europe (* if you don't count the couple of shops that adjust your clothes a little - try to find clothes Made in Europe). So are we going out-of-business and our code is coming from (name a country)?
Or are we going to exist, but it's all Fortune 500 and smaller shops have no chance of establishing themselves anymore?
Or is it going to be totally different and small shops will flourish and the Fortune 500 will loose part of the market?
sashank_1509 · · focus · HN ↗
No point crying about it or coping that some bubble will pop and the genie will go back in the bottle. I’m pretty confident that’s not happening, though in the distant future some society will recognize that everything that can be automated should not be automated, that society will look very different and probably won’t happen in my lifetime (it will for one, I predict bring back tailors too).
So here’s my solution, leave the field. If what you enjoyed most was creative problem solving then moving to a field that enables that is the best solution. Yes the next Ruby on Rails app will involve even lesser creativity than before, but is that the situation for the next good aeroplane? Flying car? Small modular nuclear reactor. I suspect just button pushing for that won’t work nearly as well and that’s my plan anyway.
ryandrake · · focus · HN ↗
monospacegames · · focus · HN ↗
No, everything that can be automated SHOULD be automated, but the automation should benefit everyone instead of just the 0.1% (actually this percentile keeps getting smaller and smaller, so the percentage of people outside of the "permanent underclass" is probably even less than that now).
The problem about AI (at its current level, barring AI2027 type scenarios) is not about AI, but about the way we've organized society as a whole.
I've brought this up before, if the USSR existed today how would Soviet mathematicians react to AI? Would they be dismayed or overjoyed? You never see mathematicians acknowledge this point, but it's the crux of the issue. In our society employment justifies existence, in a society where existence is inherently justified AI would mean freedom to people instead of causing existential dread.
eli_gottlieb · · focus · HN ↗
Yeah, but even once we've achieved a society in which existence is inherently justified, some things are about the destination and some things are about the journey. We need to organize society around producing people and lives, good lives, as the final economic output. A person we "produce" under such a system will probably be highly skilled and want to participate in society's productive processes, because mastery and participation are real human needs for living a good life.
The question is how we distinguish between processes that are important to the people participating in them, and those that are not. Factory work was and is a massive improvement over subsistence farming, but no population in world history has been permanently satisfied spending their lives on the assembly line, so either we can take advantage of highly automated manufacturing to just have machines do the work or we can redirect automation towards re-involving human craftspeople into producing less interchangeable, higher-quality products (the market has been moving towards customizable commodities anyway).
monospacegames · · focus · HN ↗
I'm not arguing in favor of a human existence that is completely based on consumption, but one that maximizes automation as much as possible for the benefit of society as a whole so that all human labor becomes voluntary. At that point people will decide which processes are important for them to participate in on their own.
chrisandchris · · focus · HN ↗
I disagree, because then the "human" part of our days are over. If everything is automated, I don't need to interact with any human at all anymore - but the random small chat in the Bakery every couple of days is very nice. Ther will also be no chance to break out of the loop. Try to get a human involved if the automated system thinks "naa, not today", that's going to be difficult because companies prove they will fire the human as fast as possible because the task seemingly is fully automated.
eddythompson80 · · focus · HN ↗
I don't think anyone would care about "hand made software", arguably no one ever did. You need a tool to do X. The enjoyment of the person producing that tool is entirely incidental. You don't care if the corn you're eating was hand picked by a person who loved manual farm labor or by a combine harvester. Just like you wouldn't care if someone enjoys driving a combine vs a self-driving combine nor if someone enjoys directing self-driving harvesters or if they are self-directing.
sashank_1509 · · focus · HN ↗
Outside of that it’s hard to envision handmade anything in software in this everything mass produced cheap consumerist society.
raddan · · focus · HN ↗
I absolutely do. Perhaps this is a product of my first exposure to computers, but I vividly remember the early Macintosh computers coming on the scene. The care and attention to detail on every level of the machine was special. They were so different than everything before. And it inspired many developers to produce beautiful, weird, awesome software. Does anybody remember the Talking Moose? After Dark? Spaceward Ho! HyperCard? RoboWars? Heck, even MSWord 5.1a was an amazing piece of software whose grammar checker literally taught me grammar.
Now we have “software that does X”, but that X is so bland and enshittified nearly all the joy of computing has been erased. I love writing software. I love writing good and clever software. Perhaps the world no longer cares, but I do.
smashed · · focus · HN ↗
That does not mean a clever user cannot use an AI tool to help produce it, but so far most of it is slop. Some clever users can build some gems though.
Spiritual_Grape · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
chrisandchris · · focus · HN ↗
I'm really wondering where this goes. I'm not sure we are going to the "tailors", but maybe I'm also biased.
Tailoring completly got lost - there are basically none* in western europe (* if you don't count the couple of shops that adjust your clothes a little - try to find clothes Made in Europe). So are we going out-of-business and our code is coming from (name a country)?
Or are we going to exist, but it's all Fortune 500 and smaller shops have no chance of establishing themselves anymore?
Or is it going to be totally different and small shops will flourish and the Fortune 500 will loose part of the market?