I care about the code and what it is like to read it three weeks from now. I care about the people using this software I'm working on, I want their lives to be spent doing less pointless stupid shit. I think, maybe, that's an ok outcome. Non dystopian. That it's maybe a better world if the people that can contribute the most, are the ones that have passion. That "care" becomes the most highly appreciated skill. That smells good to me. Maybe I sleep good tonight. Maybe it's the wine.
It's awfully hard to find people who do give a shit and even harder to interview for it. It doesn't scale with money, which is exactly why but companies don't look for it.
The results don't lie; it's why companies like Google who hire the most expensive people in the world regularly fail to release something like Antigravity in a stable form when people are building these things solo.
Corporations end up buying these startups for massive amounts of money. It works for everyone because the startups are compensated well for giving a shit and corporations just sit on the gold mine making sure the money keeps flowing.
But it's a good point you raise here. I disagree to an extent - AI will give more of a shit than many humans. It's the main reason many people lose their jobs over it.
So it stands to reason that startups will continue to be AI-resistant. There's a lot of hype that you can build "anything". But where are the alternatives to Facebook, Jira, MS Teams, Stack Overflow, Stripe, and all these other proven business models that everyone hates but is forced to use anyway?
Corporations aren't people. LLMs aren't people. Personification of these things is the source a great deal of trouble.
People will say there is more to it than that, I mean, ethics is a big branch of philosophy, but I think "you feel bad when you do something wrong" is what makes you a moral subject.
I'd say that animals are moral subjects in that they are sensitive to ruptures in relationships and expectations. The first time I fell off a horse the horse was a lot more shook up than I was. A cat doesn't feel guilty about killing a bird (not against the values of cats) but does seem to feel guilty about breaking a vase.
See also
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be...
Pass that wine.
Eaglo•1h ago