Most active commenters
  • sfn42(7)
  • zwnow(6)
  • eesmith(4)
  • AnonymousPlanet(3)

←back to thread

628 points cratermoon | 34 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
Show context
gyomu ◴[] No.44461457[source]
Broadly agreed with all the points outlined in there.

But for me the biggest issue with all this — that I don't see covered in here, or maybe just a little bit in passing — is what all of this is doing to beginners, and the learning pipeline.

> There are people I once respected who, apparently, don’t actually enjoy doing the thing. They would like to describe what they want and receive Whatever — some beige sludge that vaguely resembles it. That isn’t programming, though.

> I glimpsed someone on Twitter a few days ago, also scoffing at the idea that anyone would decide not to use the Whatever machine. I can’t remember exactly what they said, but it was something like: “I created a whole album, complete with album art, in 3.5 hours. Why wouldn’t I use the make it easier machine?”

When you're a beginner, it's totally normal to not really want to put in the hard work. You try drawing a picture, and it sucks. You try playing the guitar, and you can't even get simple notes right. Of course a machine where you can just say "a picture in the style of Pokémon, but of my cat" and get a perfect result out is much more tempting to a 12 year old kid than the prospect of having to grind for 5 years before being kind of good.

But up until now, you had no choice and to keep making crappy pictures and playing crappy songs until you actually start to develop a taste for the effort, and a few years later you find yourself actually pretty darn competent at the thing. That's a pretty virtuous cycle.

I shudder to think where we'll be if the corporate-media machine keeps hammering the message "you don't have to bother learning how to draw, drawing is hard, just get ChatGPT to draw pictures for you" to young people for years to come.

replies(16): >>44461502 #>>44461693 #>>44461707 #>>44461712 #>>44461825 #>>44461881 #>>44461890 #>>44462182 #>>44462219 #>>44462354 #>>44462799 #>>44463172 #>>44463206 #>>44463495 #>>44463650 #>>44464426 #
raincole ◴[] No.44461707[source]
People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. Humans have been looking for easier and lazier ways to do things since the dawn of civilization.

Tech never ever prevents people who really want to hone their skills from doing so. World record of 100m sprint kept improving even since car was invented. World record of how many digits of pi memorized kept improving even when a computer does that indefinitely times better.

It's ridiculous to think drawing will become a lost art because of LLM/Diffusal models when we live in a reality where powerlifting is a thing.

replies(20): >>44461789 #>>44461829 #>>44461944 #>>44461983 #>>44462378 #>>44462425 #>>44462566 #>>44462584 #>>44463027 #>>44463112 #>>44463267 #>>44463461 #>>44463609 #>>44463974 #>>44464030 #>>44465371 #>>44465680 #>>44466064 #>>44467092 #>>44498406 #
1. zwnow ◴[] No.44461789[source]
My guy its not only about the art its about killing passion and the lifeline of people. Your take is incredibly ignorant to people who value human created work. These things will kill industries. What jobs should people work in, who got their income cut by LLMs? Force them into blue collar work?
replies(2): >>44461936 #>>44461942 #
2. worldsayshi ◴[] No.44461936[source]
Your point is very valid. It is the luddite argument. And that is valid. But the problem is never the technology itself but, as you point out, the loss of livelihood and meaning and especially the shifts in power from the many to the few.

We need to learn to make technology truly benefit the many. Also in terms of power.

replies(1): >>44461972 #
3. JW_00000 ◴[] No.44461942[source]
But isn't that the same as saying: what about all the horse carrier drivers who lost their jobs due to cars? What about all the bank tellers we lost after inventing the automated teller machine?
replies(4): >>44461978 #>>44462007 #>>44462324 #>>44462908 #
4. zwnow ◴[] No.44461972[source]
Yes, fully agree. Can't believe we live in a timeline in which big tech companies steal data from the many, use this data to train models, sell this data while also convincing technological illiterate people their propaganda machines (social media) is useful to them... Now they want to buy nuclear power plants too. Im sure nothing will go wrong there.
replies(1): >>44462918 #
5. zwnow ◴[] No.44461978[source]
There is a difference in killing off passion work and mundane work. We are also killing off empathy while we are at it.
replies(2): >>44462094 #>>44462198 #
6. AnonymousPlanet ◴[] No.44462007[source]
Not exactly. It depends on how many professions get extinct at the same time. If you have ever lived in a place that is in an economic decline because professions have moved abroad and the new professions replacing the old ones just don't provide the scale or only benefit a few in society, you know where things might be headed.
replies(1): >>44462276 #
7. dale_glass ◴[] No.44462094{3}[source]
I don't think there's a real difference. Thinking a job is "mundane" IMO is mostly a case of not working that job. Many "mundane" jobs have depth and rewards, even if not in every instance.

I've heard people express that they liked working in retail. By extension somebody must have enjoyed being a bank teller. After all, why not? You get to talk to a lot of people, and every time you solve some problem or answer a question and get thanked for it you get a little rush of endorphins.

Many jobs that suck only suck due to external factors like having a terrible boss or terrible customers, or having to enforce some terrible policy.

replies(1): >>44462148 #
8. zwnow ◴[] No.44462148{4}[source]
This sounds like a strawman tbh, I have worked retail for years and I do not know a single person enjoying retail work. Especially not cashiers. I can understand what you are on about, but do you think this is the majority of people? The issue is being able to support yourself which these mundane jobs hardly are able to. Personally I want these mundane things automated because I don't want to interact with people. I appreciate art though and I want to support human art. I appreciate everything from ancient architecture and stone cutting to renaissance paintings to basement drawings of amateurs. Art used to have character and now its all the same AI slop. Video games will become unplayable for me in the near future. Advertisements will be fully AI slop. Sure there are still artists out there, but they get overshadowed by AI slop.
replies(1): >>44462277 #
9. badpun ◴[] No.44462198{3}[source]
A lot of people who are passionate about creative fields work jobs that are pretty mundane, e.g. painting drab environmental textures every day for the next iteration of Call of Duty, or cutesy barfy crap for the next Candy Crush Saga. The jobs are very rarely alligned with their own taste and interests, plus they're terribly dull because, as a specialist, you're constantly working only one specific kind of assignments.
10. nostrebored ◴[] No.44462276{3}[source]
What do you think happened in the rise of industrial agriculture?
replies(1): >>44462414 #
11. dale_glass ◴[] No.44462277{5}[source]
I mean, retail has many different instances of it. Yes, I can imagine working in a busy supermarket owned by a giant like Walmart would be unpleasant.

But imagine working in a nice cafe in a quiet small town, or a business that's not too frantically paced, like a clothing store. Add some perks like not always doing the same job and a decent boss, and it shouldn't be too bad. Most any job can be drastically improved by decreasing the workload, cutting hours and adding some variety. I don't think being a cashier is inherently miserable. It's just the way we structure things most of the time makes it suck.

Just like you think a human touch makes art special, a human touch can make a mundane job special. A human serving coffee instead of a machine can tell you about what different options are available, recommend things, offer adjustments a machine might not, chat about stuff while it's brewing... You may end up patronizing a particular cafe because you like the person at the counter.

12. girvo ◴[] No.44462324[source]
No, this is far far more wide reaching and it’s intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.

It’s why it’s so exciting.

replies(1): >>44463624 #
13. AnonymousPlanet ◴[] No.44462414{4}[source]
We're talking about places that even after decades haven't recovered. What do you think is happening there right now?

There's a common fallacy that tries to argue that it'll be alright over time, no matter what happens. Given enough time, you can also say that about atomic wars. But that won't help the generations that are affected.

replies(1): >>44464745 #
14. eesmith ◴[] No.44462908[source]
The number of bank tellers did not drop after ATMs starting in use. https://conversableeconomist.com/2015/03/03/atms-and-a-risin...

That said, yes, what about them? These are people with real skin the the game - people who spent years learning their craft expecting it will be their life-long career.

Do we simply exclaim "sucks to be you!"?

Do we tell out-of-work coal miners to switch to a career in programming with the promise it will be a lucrative career move? And when employment opportunities in software development collapse, then what?

All while we increasingly gate health care on being employed?

replies(1): >>44464800 #
15. worldsayshi ◴[] No.44462918{3}[source]
It's all downstream from the way the economy works, and the economy is (I think) downstream from the tools we use to coordinate effort. If we can evolve the way which we handle resource allocation, trust and effort coordination I emphatically believe there's at least some some hope that we can create an alternative economy. Which it seems that we urgently need as a civilization.
16. erwincoumans ◴[] No.44463624{3}[source]
Agreed. However, according to the author LLM's mostly produce crap, and he doesn't seem to be able to imagine (or want?) that to improve (beyond crap/hallucination and become very useful to many).
replies(1): >>44463776 #
17. zwnow ◴[] No.44463776{4}[source]
Tell me how is it going to be useful to the many? Even better marketing emails? More precise targeted advertising? Even more automated job application rejections? Mass firings due to AI replacing most office jobs?

Whats the benefit of LLMs to the many who barely can operate a search machine?

I am sorry but thinking this will benefit the many is delusional. It's main use is making rich people richer by saving expenses on people's wages. Tell me, how are these people going to get a job once their skills are made useless?

replies(3): >>44464022 #>>44466031 #>>44466647 #
18. AlexeyBrin ◴[] No.44464022{5}[source]
I'm not an LLM enthusiast, but I can think of at least one example where these are useful to the many: decent/fast translation from one language to another. It won't be perfect, but it is usually good enough when you are visiting a foreign country for a few weeks and you have no time or interest in learning the language.
19. sfn42 ◴[] No.44464745{5}[source]
If you live in a dead town with no opportunities then you either make your own opportunities or you move to a place with opportunities.

If you just sit on your hands complaining about the lack of opportunities then you won't get any sympathy from me. People aren't entitled to live wherever they want, humanity's entire thing is adaptability. So adapt. Life is what you make it.

replies(2): >>44465090 #>>44465456 #
20. sfn42 ◴[] No.44464800{3}[source]
Yeah. If society no longer needs your job then you need to find something else to do. Doesn't have to be software, we mine other things than coal. We need builders, plumbers, electricians, lots of possibilities.

Software dev opportunities won't collapse any time soon, any half decent dev who's tried vibe coding will tell you that much. It's a tool developers can use, it's not a replacement.

replies(1): >>44467258 #
21. zwnow ◴[] No.44465090{6}[source]
Humans are entitled to live wherever they want. Capitalists destroying rural regions with false promises (prosperous jobs) is a thing since the industrialization. Should all people move to overrun big cities? Small once established markets are getting destroyed by big discounters or stuff like Amazon. Also adapting is and never was a thing for most people. I dont know where you got that from but this isn't the wild west anymore. People are trying to set up a life for themselves without moving every 2 years. Entitled city person viewpoint.
replies(1): >>44465259 #
22. sfn42 ◴[] No.44465259{7}[source]
There's plenty of rural areas with plenty of opportunities. Cities are not the only option. If I lived in a dead mining town I'd move elsewhere. You can blame corporations or whatever you want, doesn't matter whose fault it is. Complaining and blaming doesn't solve anything. Finding solutions does. Stop complaining, start finding solutions. I grew up in a beautiful rural place. I'd like to live there, but what I like even more is not having to drive for over an hour to work every day. So I moved. I also went to university in my late 20s and some of my peers were in their 40s and 50s.

People adapt to all kinds of stuff all the time. Saying adapting isn't a thing for most people is ridiculous. Of course it's a thing. It's what you do when your current situation isn't working. You adapt.

replies(1): >>44469453 #
23. AnonymousPlanet ◴[] No.44465456{6}[source]
When I say 'place' that includes entire countries. Adapting then depends on the kindness of strangers towards foreign refugees.

I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the near future something like "Adapt. Life is what you make it" could be read in big bold letters above the entrance of a place like Alligator Alcatraz.

replies(1): >>44473219 #
24. rolandog ◴[] No.44466031{5}[source]
Exactly... Why is it that every time a science fiction writer comes up with a new dystopian future to warn humanity about something, there's always a bunch of psychopaths that go "ooh, blueprints for a get-rich-at-the-expense-of-everyone-else scheme!"?
replies(1): >>44466939 #
25. ctoth ◴[] No.44466647{5}[source]
I'm just a regular developer - not rich, not running a company. I used to maintain accessibility apps for blind users (QRead for ebooks, various Twitter clients back when their site was barely screen-reader compatible). Had to abandon them when I got a day job - no energy left for wrestling with deprecated APIs and broken CI pipelines.

Now with Claude Code, I've cleaned up years of technical debt, added proper test coverage, got everything building in CI again with automated release-on-tag. (Yes, CC will literally debug your GitHub Actions yaml.) My blind users are getting updates again after years of nothing.

I'm nobody special. By basic statistics, if LLMs are this useful to one random developer, they're probably useful to millions of others maintaining their own small projects.

Yes, job displacement is a real concern. But the idea that LLMs [only] help the wealthy get wealthier? I'm living proof that's not true. I'm using them to resurrect accessibility tools that the market wouldn't support. That's not exactly a venture capital use case.

26. immibis ◴[] No.44466939{6}[source]
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

(Original source: https://xcancel.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538?... )

27. eesmith ◴[] No.44467258{4}[source]
If society no longer needs my job, society should help.

What's your solution to the miners of West Virginia?

https://www.wvva.com/2025/06/25/coal-miners-face-layoffs-fed...

"As West Virginians face possible cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, they are also being hit hard in the job market."

"“I’m worried for the people that are laid off, and are they going to be able to find another job? You know, are they my age? How are you going to start over? You’ve got to find a job back in what you know, because you can’t start over at my age,” said Ricky Estes, a former Coal Mining Safety Representative, who was laid off. "

"Even before these possible cuts, affordable healthcare can be hard to find currently in the mountain state"

I mention mining -> programming because that was the hyped solution a decade ago, eg, https://www.wtrf.com/community/from-coal-to-coding-new-progr... .

How well did that work out?

I wasn't talking about the recent LLM fad, but rather the decades of mass government funding of STEM[1], and programming training in particular (like Joe Manchin's Mined Minds), with the carrot of a high-paying job at the end, leading to a surplus of coders who, as a result, flood the job market and lower salaries and individual employee power.

[1] STEM government funding doesn't seem to end up in, say, marine biology or sociology or the theory of unbounded operators or other fields of science and math that don't make companies a lot of money.

replies(1): >>44472953 #
28. arbitrary_name ◴[] No.44469453{8}[source]
And that is extremely difficult at a large scale. Especially when you reduce safety nets and heighten the consequences of failure. A lack of healthcare, poor rural hospitals, extortionate tuition at colleges, high housing costs; these all make it extremely difficult to adapt.

Sure, you can smugly say that the hard-working will survive. But i don't want to imagine what the USA will be like millions of unemployed and under-provisioned Americans. Poverty and the process of falling off the socio economic ladder is ugly for everyone, unless you're wealthy enough to afford to insulate yourself from the consequences.

The fact that this nuance appears to be lost on you makes me suspicious of your motives for posting your opinion.

replies(1): >>44473347 #
29. sfn42 ◴[] No.44472953{5}[source]
I'd suggest that Mr. Estes find a different mine to work at if he insists on continuing to work in mining. He could also pivot to other industry, safety is a big deal in most industry. I'm sure they would consider him at many locations for similar positions.

I'm not opposed to having programs to help these people, not at all. I'm from Norway where we have free healthcare, education, social security nets etc. I'm all for that stuff, it benefits all of us.

All I'm saying is if new opportunities don't fall into your lap you need to find them yourself.

replies(1): >>44474342 #
30. sfn42 ◴[] No.44473219{7}[source]
I think it's pretty clear that I'm not referring to Palestinians, Ukrainians or Syrians etc here. I support refugee programs but I also acknowledge that we have limited resources. We can't help everyone. We can't just open the borders and let everyone in.

I hadn't heard about alligator Alcatraz until now, I'm not American so I don't keep up with all of Trump's shenanigans. I feel compelled to make it clear that I in no way support Trump. The fact that the US has elected that clown not once but twice is frankly embarrassing.

31. sfn42 ◴[] No.44473347{9}[source]
I'm not talking about large scale. I'm also not talking about politics, which I assume is what you're implying re my motives. I don't have any motives, I'm not even American. I don't really care about all the crazy stuff happening over there. They got what they voted for, meanwhile the world is wondering how they elected that clown not once but twice.

The ironic thing in all this is that these rural people you're talking about are probably the exact people responsible for electing him. Evokes images of leopards eating faces and such.

32. eesmith ◴[] No.44474342{6}[source]
Since you are from Norway you likely aren't aware that there aren't significant other mining jobs in West Virginia.

Or other jobs in West Virginia, with its long history of coal mining, with profits ending up in the pockets of mine owners, not employees.

Since you think people are only looking for jobs that fall in their lap, I'm certain you have no idea of the issues.

So, now you need find a new job yourself, and it requires a specific training, so you spend your savings on a one year training program, only to find that, once done, the job market has changed and now you also need two years of job experience .. then what?

In the meanwhile, your breathing has gotten more difficult. You think it might be black lung. Your union helped pass the law which helps provide health and financial support to miners who get black lung, and you became a miner expecting this protection, but Trump DOGE'd it so who knows when you'll get your legally required support.

replies(1): >>44475414 #
33. sfn42 ◴[] No.44475414{7}[source]
Then move out of West Virginia. Or find something that works in WV. Those are their options.

I also can't say I have much sympathy for people who voted for Trump and then got screwed by Trump. West virginians overwhelmingly voted red. You can't vote against social security nets and then complain that you dont have a social security net.

Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, red blooded patriots. No one can tread on you.

replies(1): >>44478443 #
34. eesmith ◴[] No.44478443{8}[source]
Bless your heart.