Thread

1. socializer · 1791160263 · focus · HN ↗

   The problem isn't that you can't use AI to uplevel your creativity. It's that doing it slows you down, so you end up at a marked disadvantage, because others who just prompt "hey Claude, make me X" will produce 100 good enough slop-pieces in the time it takes you to finish one.

   For the vast majority of paying customers or social media appreciators, that low-effort slop is sufficient. It's cheap, fast, and gets better with every passing month. So if your overriding goal is to scale to win in that marketplace, then you can only scale by giving up on quality and artistry. It's a race to the bottom.

   I think the only way to win is to push back on the notion that you need to work on superhuman scale in the first place. You can differentiate yourself from AI by asserting you're human and that there's inherent value in human art. You'll find some customers willing to pay extra for that, just like some hire a woodworker instead of buying at Ikea. But it's going to be a tough market for artisans because fewer and fewer people are forced to buy the fruits of your intellectual labor.

   In software engineering specifically, we gleefully decided that speed and cost are the only thing that matters and we celebrate "hey Claude, make me X" projects the same as we celebrate human ingenuity (case in point: HN front page). So for SWEs, even that "I'm a human" route may be unavailable.

   1. imnotr0b0t · 1791163190 · focus · HN ↗

      I have to agree. This is especially noticeable in software; it’s impossible to distinguish manual work from the generated kind. There’s no point in appealing to the human element here, the buyer simply doesn’t see the difference. But fortunately, for now, we still have work.
   2. howunfortunate · 1791163653 · focus · HN ↗

      Year after year, I keep seeing people talk about various races to the bottom.

      And yet all the things (in particular the technology things) just keep getting better and better?

      1. [deleted] · 1791175754 · focus · HN ↗

         [deleted]

      2. countWSS · 1791177454 · focus · HN ↗

         "Cheap-to-generate" mediocre content forces the floor expectation to rise, becoming the "minimum", which raises expectations of "current mediocre" further. Its largely invisible, slow process, where you can't gauge past "floor-level" expectation for content, because it implicitly assumed the 'current year' standard is the norm(while its evolution of expectations). In a few years, expectation for "mediocre slop" would likely include stuff that considered top-level today, but has some minor deficiencies and the "slop of years past" would be relegated to unusable/useless junk, like\ e.g. Stable Diffusion 1.5 images and GPT2 texts.
   3. RAWGOD · 1791175152 · focus · HN ↗

      [dead]

   4. Scrapemist · 1791176779 · focus · HN ↗

      Don’t see how scaling mediocre content is a winning strategy. Quality will go up and we all win.

      1. socializer · 1791180733 · focus · HN ↗

         That's a very one-dimensional view. Two things I'd encourage you to consider:

         1. What is quality, exactly? An average person on Facebook prefers AI-generated images to real photos or human art. Is their preference a signal of quality, or is this actually optimizing for orthogonal metrics - agreeability, engagement, etc?

         2. Do increases in quality always translate to "everyone winning"? For example, is it a net win if a marketing flyer for your local grocery store has 10% higher "quality" if it means that your next-door neighbor who used to design these is no longer employed? Even if you disregard the feelings of the neighbor, is it good for you? You stand to lose more than you're gaining (e.g., reduction in property values if they can no longer afford upkeep).

         I don't want to paint AI as a net negative, but these dynamics are pretty complex. There's plenty of situations where AI is not upleveling quality, or where quality is comparatively unimportant.

   5. AlexCoventry · 1791178213 · focus · HN ↗

      Did you watch the video? Her point is to use AI's productivity gains to iterate faster on the creative aspects.

      1. socializer · 1791181167 · focus · HN ↗

         That's my point. When you use AI tools in a "responsible" way in your creative process, you lose the ability to (honestly) differentiate your work as AI-free, but you can't possibly win the competition with AI on speed or price unless you give up more control than you want. And in terms of customer preferences, most people are content with low-effort AI art.

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