jaredcwhite

It's about data centers AND it's about AI.

Nice try with the gaslighting. Google's AI "summaries" get things wrong all the time even now.

Only people actually do care about the process by which the products they use were created. It's our job, as experts who build things, to educate our audiences why and how we build what we build.

Meaningful percentages of people already hate the obvious slop being thrown in their faces. The more they learn of the slop infecting the inside of the digital products they use—and the resulting enshittification—they will seek out worthy alternatives.

This is starting to veer into "smoking bans in the restaurants is discrimination against smokers."

It's not discrimination to ban a practice which has been proven to be harmful. AI slop is harmful to readers, as well as being harmful to produce. Whatever issues one might raise, for instance someone who is not a native English speaker, we can find alternative solutions which are better for the environment and better for human minds.

I'm of the deepest conviction AI-generated text should not show up at all. Proving that however can be difficult (obvious LLM tells aside). Requiring evidence of authentic human authorship is also difficult, though increasingly I lean towards communities where that is a given for any legitimate shares.

Whatever the answers are to help gaming become more affordable/keep beloved indie studios humming, generative AI is not it at all.

Since you know very little about Jarred, why are you not investigating all of the issues raised about how Jarred has run that project from the get-go?

It's not childish in the least for someone who does know the background to point out those issues.

Write code like an agent will never touch it, that's my motto.

(Because it's true.)

I disagree with your assertion that "most people don't care if the movie was…fully AI generated with human text prompting". And more than disagree, I believe conclusive proof is out there that people absolutely do care.

It's a real issue, and it feels like a bad faith claim that people are "jumping" on the issue as a distraction.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can call out wealth inequality and oligarchy, and also talk about the very real water issue with regard to data centers (and electricity, and loss of rural land, and other many other aspects).

I can't eat data centers. Almond milk, OTOH, is a great non-dairy substitute for my cereal.

The golf courses in my town provide infinitely more value to me than anything from Google.

And I don't even golf.

You can't tell the critics they're completely wrong and not actually address anything they're saying, lol.

Ed Zitron already completely defeated the comparison that this is just another dot com boom/bust with eventual payout. You're telling yourself a just-so story.

in an old-timey cartoon voice

"Now he tells me!"

bonk

I cannot even describe in words how much I don't care about this. I'm actually looking the angles of why this is a very good thing, being that I'm a pro-craft activist who is completely opposed to the dangerous proliferation of LLMs.

We were literally told that because of the Computer/Internet revolution, the entire nature of business was changing…politics too! Companies would become collectives, employees would have immense power to set their own goals and be radically UX-focused, profits would be widely distributed, and the old corporate structures & crony capitalism would largely be done away with. In a certain sense, becoming a software engineer was to be birthing a new form of leftism.

That largely turned out to be complete and utter hogwash. The instant capitalists realized they had extracted enough out of that myth to gain ultimate power and reassert dominance, they pounced. 2020-2026 has been a boiling-frogs-in-pots shift from collectivism to an extreme sort of New Oligarchy. Software engineers weren't making the world a more fair, creative, and democratic place. LOL! The exact opposite, in fact, has occurred.

Yes, of course we're grieving. But using agents to generate "code" isn't the issue. That's merely a symptom, one among many. The root cause? Societal systems based on pure greed and bigoted supremacy which were NEVER properly dismantled. The new leftism of tech? Nothing but a mirage. Millennials got played.

And wow did we fall for it.

My only hope at this point: Gen Z will succeed where we clearly failed. Our best hope is to listen to them, partner with them, help them channel their rage into action, and take control back from the tech moguls and oligarchs.

Every few years, I hear something like this. And every time, I wonder who is going to believe them, because almost without exception when I purchase organic produce it tastes noticeably better.

Perhaps one could argue "well, that's not because it's certified organic, it's because it's a smaller farm that uses these other crop-growing techniques blah blah blah". OK. Irrelevant. The point is, when I buy conventional produce, and then I buy organic produce, the organic stuff is clearly higher quality. Even better? Go to a farmers market and buy directly from the source.

Cool, can you reply to the person's original reply to me in which they made fun of the point I was making—how "disgusting" it is that Apple…allows photo editors in the App Store?

After all, don't be snarky!

[flagged]

I've been saying this for forever. Not only isn't it, broadly speaking, true that "users don't care if/how/why…" with regard to how products & services are made, but furthermore: it's our job as craftspeople to make people care! We should be open about the tools and processes we use to make things. Even if it's less obviously artistic than, say, a John Wick movie (where it's undeniable just how much people DO care about the creative process behind it).

It's weird. I still remember 2008, when GitHub's claim to fame was that it was "the easiest (and prettiest) way to participate in the collaborative development of software."

Now they want to end that collaboration, and turn it into automation. Many C-suite executives right now are smiling bigly. Meanwhile, we're leading the exodus. Turns out, we still want the easiest and prettiest way to participate in the collaborative development of software, and GitHub ain't it!

Same. I've been a programmer for over 30 years. I'll be a programmer for another 30 years, sans the LLMs. There's nothing about the technology which appeals to me in the slightest.

I've used and paid for Dropbox for well over a decade. Other than the rare hiccup every few years (usually due to switching machines/OSes or whatnot), it's been rock solid and a true workhorse. I know there are many other options, including iCloud Drive which I use sparingly, but Dropbox is a service I trust. I hope it continues in that manner and they don't destroy their reputation with a woebegone "pivot to AI".

This page rather reeks of LLM slop itself.

If not…well I don't know what to call this style of writing exactly but I see it all the time on LinkedIn (or some annoying startup landing page) and it's very upsetting to me.

"You asked a simple question. They lobbed a document."

"Your wall of text suppresses dialogue. They can't reply, can't push back, can't clarify. It's a weapon disguised as helpfulness."

"Let it sharpen your thinking, not replace it."

Why structure sentences like this? Maybe go read some well-written novels, a solid essay or two…or at the very least, write in a normal conversational style?

Ah, the classic "But just you wait, the next version will be better!" fallacy.

It's a fallacy because the reality is often not that…in fact sometimes the reality ends up worse. (See "enshittification", a process whereby technology gets worse over time, not better.)

It's funny because it's (almost) true.

Yeah I'll pick two, thanks.

Virtually every person I talk to on a regular basis either (a) generally hates AI but uses it in specific ways because of the utility they perceive, or (b) hates AI and won't use it at all.

The idea that "distain for AI" is limited to "one 'elite' or another" is most definitely not borne out by any polling data. "Of course this goes for practically any cause" seems to be an opinion based on air. Many, many people across all social strata (except maybe millionaires/billionaires) are deeply invested in a wide variety of causes to make the world a better place.

Booing is a valid form of debate. We could shout "your arguments are not made in good faith and you are a bad actor" but a boo accomplishes the same thing and is far more effective.