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Ask HN: Not sure about the future of tech

21 points xblpob | 2 comments | 12 May 25 22:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.449s | source

The last few years working in tech have been pretty brutal and now with all of the AI hype in full swing I have never felt like more of a replaceable cog in a machine.

It’s always seemed like a little bit of a race to cash out as quickly as possible by promising the world, selling, then letting everyone else deal with the fallout but now it seems like everyone is seeing the door about to close in front of them so they need to extract every ounce of productivity from those below them to get out while they still can.

I don’t want to be treated like a component in someone’s vehicle that you just swap out for a new one after you’ve burned it out which is what my entire job feels like more than ever.

I’m not excited about “AI” and I think while useful to some extent it will do more harm than good as our monkey brains scramble to make sense of what it is and fight each other for control over it. Does anyone else feel like this? What are the alternatives for someone who still likes programming but doesn’t want to be doing it professionally anymore if it means I’m going to have to be harnessed to the front of the dog sled while my boss screams “mush!”

1. maxcomperatore ◴[13 May 25 20:24 UTC] No.43977291[source]▶
this is my opinion and feel free to debate or whatever.

ai is the end of all knowledge work. phd level intelligence and reasoning is cheap and fast. its so good its economically non viable to NOT leverage it, and then it will be non viable to hire humans instead of orchestating AI. As we approach AGI any person sharp with ai tools and self motivated and with domain knowledge will replace entire teams. I expect huge big tech layoffs. The problem lingers is that no matter if ai cant do your job, it can do the job of a hell lot of people, and if all that people are unemployed and in gigs eventually the economy will collapse, doesn't matter if you are a writer or a HVAC, and see robots if you are the last. The issue isn’t just job loss, but the velocity of change. Capitalism isn’t designed for near-instantaneous obsolescence. Government wont do shit because this is a gazillion dollar industry and also they are still figuring out what's the internet. Jobs wont be created at the same pace they are destroyed, and AI will be able to take on those roles too. Companies will follow what shopify and duolingo did. even the pope is concerned, hence its name. AI will disrupt ALL industries. hell, even ai art is objectively better and cheaper than human art.

This is my opinion. Feel free to discuss or whatever.

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2. 3dsnano ◴[17 May 25 10:39 UTC] No.44013349[source]▶
> even ai art is objectively better and cheaper than human art.

Ok I’ll bite on this. I think this reflects an incomplete understanding of what art is, and why humans make it. Sure, with enough prior examples and a bajillion tokens, you can reference the likeness of all the greatest artists who ever lived, and create stunning representations. No doubt magical.

But are these LLM-dreamed works better than what humans make? I dunno man, I think it’s a different class entirely. It’s not right to compare the two and say one is objectively better than the other.

I have come to understand that humans create art from feeling, and those gifted humans use their own personal tastes and sensibilities to transform these feelings into a representation. A human artist can generally express why and how they made what they did. They can explain the meanings and symbolism, with deep personal significance.

Art, and most works dreamed from LLMs, does not come from human feeling. It comes from examples, distilled millions of times over. But the feeling is not there.

LLMs do not understand quality. They do not have good taste. However I do feel that a lot of people don’t care about this. People want shortcuts, and most likely that’s what they’ll get, and what will be incentivized.