The poem is absolutely on point. Nobody wants to consume AI content, especially on the parts that should be all-human.
At the same time the poem is published on Substack, instead of a hand-crafted custom blog.
There are 1) the tools that let us surface the human, then there is 2) the human, and then there comes 3) the factory generated business (someone doesn’t care but has to do it) content pretending to be human to sell stuff to humans. The human 2) is drowned out by the “had to do it” 3) while there is a small corner of some of us who are making 1) tools to surface and reward more 2).
> because you will end up talking for longer than you had hoped
Yes, don't talk to your friend, because our mighty corporations could've benefited from your time if you've spent this time "productively" and instead contributed to our company vision with your excess time and hard work: "make humans unemployable"
This was great. I think about this a lot and have for years now.
When LLMs first showed up I thought “but doesn’t this take away a little bit of what my life is? Don’t I like programming and solving the problems and learning the unexpected things and so on?”
Now I use them extensively, daily, millions of tokens per day, and I still ask that question.
I don’t use them for recipes or toasts or camping trips. I use them for brute-forcing boring stuff. Like, hey we’re making this thing faster. Let’s measure all this stuff, and you come up with whatever I’ve missed to include in benchmarks. Make a benchmark harness for each approach we’ll try. Create tests to ensure none of the changes alter behaviour or outputs of the system. Make it pipe results into this database with this schema. Let’s try these approaches. Which other approaches could work? Keep slamming these benchmarks until statistically significant results appear.
The thing we’re speeding up is usually a single query in the armpit of an application that in prior years I never would have been able to address. But now I can. By doing this I can improve the user experience and scale back our resources and other stuff we like.
Am I missing out? I don’t know. I program less. I get a lot more done. My employer is very happy. My team expresses appreciating my work more than ever. It’s a stark contrast, actually. It feels weird.
I’m still not sure what the answer is. I do miss tinkering. Yet I suppose the point was never me tinkering. It was me having a job to perform for a specific purpose for my employers.
Did it take away a bit of what my life is, or did it change it? I’m still using my brain. I’m still thinking through problems. I’m still finding bugs and mentally tracing them to understand how to work through it with Claude. But the actual moving of bits? I don’t do it anywhere near as much as I used to.
I’m still very conflicted about it.
I’m so disturbed when I see friends and family using AI for ‘real’ stuff. Recipes, images, writing, etc.
I really love it when people put spirit into a piece of writing that, thanks to an algorithm (that's another name for AI, by the way) suggests it to me on HN.
I am pleased that I can share musical discoveries with friends that were recommended by an AI, or make them laugh with some absurd image that fell out of Dall-E.
I am happy that, with the help of an AI, i can make a news reader that is full of bright patterns, instead of dark ones, that i can share with my friends so that their standard of life is ever-so-slightly better.
Reducing the commentary to "tool bad" is lazy, even when beautifully phrased
I've been pondering the question: "What does it mean to live well with AI?"
We are certainly scrambling for productivity with "token maxxing" and scrambling for entertainment with AI companions, but I haven't seen many thoughtful takes on how AI might look in a life well-lived.
I sometimes feel like technologists actually desire to remove the humanity from the world because it's messy and they don't understand it and therefore they fear it.
I asked Claude what he thinks about this blog post and was surprised by the level of self awareness (you cant call it like that but I dont have better word)
The problem is that we have incentivized efficiency over authenticity even in our inter-personal relationships. It's a systemic issue. It makes it very hard for most of us to resist the sirens of "let me just rephrase this important message so that it sounds more elegant/well-written/relevant/...". In the current cultural and societal context you need to swim against the current to _not_ be using AI for everything. So I don't think this is over-dramatization. Overall, on a societal level, we truly are moving in a direction where we are robbing ourselves of real, authentic moments by using AI because it's "convenient/efficient/easy/etc...". Even at work.
I don't see anything over-dramatic. He's writing about a real problem affecting real people, and he's not exaggerating. Just because you believe you are balancing things properly doesn't mean everybody should just shut up about it.
I think its fascinating how many people in tech think there's a clearly defined and agreed upon "right way" of using this technology that everyone knows and abides by. Paul Graham, for example: https://x.com/paulg/status/2058871512451412457
It's like we memory holed the last 20 years of social media that was supposed to be all upside; just democratic, global connectionism, empowerment, etc. I have too much exposure to people using AI in various, even sometimes subtle "wrong ways" to really agree.
I'd have thought people that are technologists at heart would have understood the benefit of the next Industrial Revolution but all anyone wants to do is whine about it.
It's a real shame this somewhat interesting tech is entirely under the control of the most insane, inhuman, sociopathic monsters produced by our modern society. There's lots of genuinely cool, interesting uses for this tech, but instead of exploring those uses, the monsters have used it to drive a wrecking ball crane into the middle of our society and then call us morons for not saying "thank you sir, may I have another round of beatings, please?" as they tear down everything our society worked to build over hundreds of generations and plunder the copper pipes from the wreckage. Whatever uses the tech may possibly have had, they're all tainted with the stench of the 5-day-old corpse the tech bros keep shoving into our faces and telling us is the only food we're allowed to eat, and I want nothing to do with any of this AI/LLM crap.
The poem is absolutely on point. Nobody wants to consume AI content, especially on the parts that should be all-human.
At the same time the poem is published on Substack, instead of a hand-crafted custom blog.
There are 1) the tools that let us surface the human, then there is 2) the human, and then there comes 3) the factory generated business (someone doesn’t care but has to do it) content pretending to be human to sell stuff to humans. The human 2) is drowned out by the “had to do it” 3) while there is a small corner of some of us who are making 1) tools to surface and reward more 2).
> because you will end up talking for longer than you had hoped
Yes, don't talk to your friend, because our mighty corporations could've benefited from your time if you've spent this time "productively" and instead contributed to our company vision with your excess time and hard work: "make humans unemployable"
I know sarcasm can be missed in writing, but I find it hard to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one.
seems like unironically a lot of people here are all for that, yes
I think you totally missed the point of this post.
i read it as adding onto the post
They wouldn't have quoted the first "because..." and used the opening, "Yes, " if they were participating in the joke with the author.
This was great. I think about this a lot and have for years now.
When LLMs first showed up I thought “but doesn’t this take away a little bit of what my life is? Don’t I like programming and solving the problems and learning the unexpected things and so on?”
Now I use them extensively, daily, millions of tokens per day, and I still ask that question.
I don’t use them for recipes or toasts or camping trips. I use them for brute-forcing boring stuff. Like, hey we’re making this thing faster. Let’s measure all this stuff, and you come up with whatever I’ve missed to include in benchmarks. Make a benchmark harness for each approach we’ll try. Create tests to ensure none of the changes alter behaviour or outputs of the system. Make it pipe results into this database with this schema. Let’s try these approaches. Which other approaches could work? Keep slamming these benchmarks until statistically significant results appear.
The thing we’re speeding up is usually a single query in the armpit of an application that in prior years I never would have been able to address. But now I can. By doing this I can improve the user experience and scale back our resources and other stuff we like.
Am I missing out? I don’t know. I program less. I get a lot more done. My employer is very happy. My team expresses appreciating my work more than ever. It’s a stark contrast, actually. It feels weird.
I’m still not sure what the answer is. I do miss tinkering. Yet I suppose the point was never me tinkering. It was me having a job to perform for a specific purpose for my employers.
Did it take away a bit of what my life is, or did it change it? I’m still using my brain. I’m still thinking through problems. I’m still finding bugs and mentally tracing them to understand how to work through it with Claude. But the actual moving of bits? I don’t do it anywhere near as much as I used to.
I’m still very conflicted about it.
I’m so disturbed when I see friends and family using AI for ‘real’ stuff. Recipes, images, writing, etc.
Is programming ‘real stuff’ too, though?
This does not just apply to AI. Uber, AirBNB, Facebook, etc. all basically serve as paid surrogates for what once was done by community.
Sometimes it feels like all digital technology is simply an enterprise to replace human to human contact.
I really love it when people put spirit into a piece of writing that, thanks to an algorithm (that's another name for AI, by the way) suggests it to me on HN.
I am pleased that I can share musical discoveries with friends that were recommended by an AI, or make them laugh with some absurd image that fell out of Dall-E.
I am happy that, with the help of an AI, i can make a news reader that is full of bright patterns, instead of dark ones, that i can share with my friends so that their standard of life is ever-so-slightly better.
Reducing the commentary to "tool bad" is lazy, even when beautifully phrased
I've been pondering the question: "What does it mean to live well with AI?"
We are certainly scrambling for productivity with "token maxxing" and scrambling for entertainment with AI companions, but I haven't seen many thoughtful takes on how AI might look in a life well-lived.
Beautiful piece.
I sometimes feel like technologists actually desire to remove the humanity from the world because it's messy and they don't understand it and therefore they fear it.
Hypocrite didn't even use AI to write this lovely poem.
Reminds me of that silly Adam Sandler movie Click (2006).
In that movie only the protagonist had the magic remote to fast-forward through existence. It was a tragedy of self-destruction.
But what if everyone gets the remote at roughly the same time?
Beautifully expressed. Using AI to remove even more opportunities for human contact is a tragedy.
This is really beautiful and tragic at the same time. Very well written.
Really beautiful piece.
I asked Claude what he thinks about this blog post and was surprised by the level of self awareness (you cant call it like that but I dont have better word)
Or just use AI when it makes sense, and call your friends too. Why do we have to over-dramatize everything?
The problem is that we have incentivized efficiency over authenticity even in our inter-personal relationships. It's a systemic issue. It makes it very hard for most of us to resist the sirens of "let me just rephrase this important message so that it sounds more elegant/well-written/relevant/...". In the current cultural and societal context you need to swim against the current to _not_ be using AI for everything. So I don't think this is over-dramatization. Overall, on a societal level, we truly are moving in a direction where we are robbing ourselves of real, authentic moments by using AI because it's "convenient/efficient/easy/etc...". Even at work.
I don't see anything over-dramatic. He's writing about a real problem affecting real people, and he's not exaggerating. Just because you believe you are balancing things properly doesn't mean everybody should just shut up about it.
I think its fascinating how many people in tech think there's a clearly defined and agreed upon "right way" of using this technology that everyone knows and abides by. Paul Graham, for example: https://x.com/paulg/status/2058871512451412457
It's like we memory holed the last 20 years of social media that was supposed to be all upside; just democratic, global connectionism, empowerment, etc. I have too much exposure to people using AI in various, even sometimes subtle "wrong ways" to really agree.
"Ten scenarios that I invented in which AI is making my life miserable."
Or you could use AI to explain to you how you missed the point.
I'd have thought people that are technologists at heart would have understood the benefit of the next Industrial Revolution but all anyone wants to do is whine about it.
I see this false equivalency argument everywhere. Just because one revolution had one effect does not mean they'll all have the same outcome.
It's a real shame this somewhat interesting tech is entirely under the control of the most insane, inhuman, sociopathic monsters produced by our modern society. There's lots of genuinely cool, interesting uses for this tech, but instead of exploring those uses, the monsters have used it to drive a wrecking ball crane into the middle of our society and then call us morons for not saying "thank you sir, may I have another round of beatings, please?" as they tear down everything our society worked to build over hundreds of generations and plunder the copper pipes from the wreckage. Whatever uses the tech may possibly have had, they're all tainted with the stench of the 5-day-old corpse the tech bros keep shoving into our faces and telling us is the only food we're allowed to eat, and I want nothing to do with any of this AI/LLM crap.