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.