And even things like "doing day to day chores" are being automated away with tools like AI assistants. The only thing you are left to do is to eat and take a sh*t throughout the day. How should people make money? No idea, as in the "prosperous future", everything is replaced by AI.
So my question HN: What's the point anymore? Why keep going and where to?
Sure, if you don't like reading, then it's great you don't have to. But personally I like to read, and be taken on an adventure by writers, that's why I read, I don't read just so I "know what happened".
So everything remains the same, nothing has changed. Nothing been destroyed by AI, it only seems to have destroyed your own perspective.
Becoming a successful writer / musician, is already hard. With software, it was easier, but in my opinion, it will become hard as well. There will be individuals in the software development who are like Taylor Swift, because they know how LLMs work, and how to optimize them to squeeze one more KPI. The rest will just be nobodies.
And sure, if you think you are an extraordinary person, or you were born in the right environment, then you probably don't have to worry. But I'm an average Joe, who wants to live an average Joe's life, but it's being taken away from me. And while the select few might have access to a live Taylor Swift performance, or a personal reading of the latest novel by a struggling author, the rest of us are going to be fed AI slop.
To repeat, I'm not worried. Making music might be easier than before, but having "Good Taste" isn't easier than before, it's still hard. And good stuff isn't just produced and made, they have decisions and choices behind them, and make the wrong ones, your thing ends up sucking.
If you just care about average content then yes, you can probably live on slop. But do you want to? Because no one is forcing you, there is still high quality stuff out there, produced by people with good taste, and it'll remain like that forever.
And while sure, merit / good taste are important, but if you look at the mainstream it's filled with average. Now, from the consumer side you can claim "what do you care about the mainstream, just look for good taste, and you will find it", and I agree with you. But I do not speak about the consumer side, but rather the producer side. As a producer, I want to produce "good taste", but if there is very little demand for good taste things, I might struggle to sustain myself while producing based on merit.
In the end, the reason enshittification exists, is because "good taste" stuff became too popular and the authors decided to capitalize on it (can't blame them when you have a mortgage to pay, and family to feed), and turn it into "mainstream crap".
I guess the point I'm trying to make, is that creating good taste is not easy. And it will become even harder as the mainstream will expand and capture AI generated content, leaving people who believe in creation based on merit, fighting for the crumbs.
That's not a fact, because I never said this, nor is it in the article. What from the article made you believe that I think that?
> but if there is very little demand for good taste things
There isn't, there is huge demand for good things, and it'll only get higher as more people attempt to just produce shit things.
I don’t think people “internet” for trust, but for dopamine.
B) People who are not (or don't believe they are) in full control of their lives, which is most of the non-rich on the planet, generally are subject to having to spend a lot of time doing things they don't want to do, and want some form of escape.
Any medium will be a trap that can catch people who would prefer to escape permanently, whether it's good for them or not. I'm sure you had children and housewives addicted to radio shows in the 1940's.
For creatives who are dedicated to their craft and are not in it for mass-market leverage, this is fine, it's going to be a filter. The people who get caught in these traps are not going to be the ones that can appreciate or support art, even if it's not their fault.
This shift is already well underway. I know a fair number of artists of various sorts (most are writers), and almost half have disconnected their artwork from the internet entirely.
There are two things you're mixing here.
One is how others use AI, the other is how you use AI. No one forcing you to consume content made by AI that you think suck, just turn it off if you don't like it.
Seems really doomsday-like to proclaim "The end goal of AI is to abolish all work possible" when that's not realistically feasible, regardless of what the AI-hypers say. Don't listen so much, and think more.
How? Or do you mean, like, stop using the Internet entirely?
If you don't notice it, then is it really an issue? And if you notice, you're one click/keypress away from making it disappear.
Because the summary is often wrong, and the summary might not even be the point?
> Why read a book, when you can just get AI summary of it?
You've been able to read a good summary by a human for most books on Wikipedia for decades now.
Oh what I wouldn't give to push one out, you entitled pos -- AI.
Just remember that AI can not create art, it can only remember art. AI is not a human, AI is a probabilistic function.
I enjoy AI art. I don't enjoy AI slop. There's a fundamental difference between the two. It's true that the Internet is flooded with low-effort AI slop, but AI is just a tool like any other, and you can create real art with it. It just takes skill.
Here's an experiment: try visiting CivitAI's featured images page[1] and then tell me with a straight face that you'd classify none of those images as art.
That can work for some things. Some things don't actually need reliability. That automated tool that's going to help a dozen people in accounting? Yeah, it's got a buffer overflow, which also can be used for a DOS attack, but who cares? (Unless someone like an AI exposes it to the internet...)
For things where reliability does matter, AIs may be a fad for a couple of years, but it won't last, for exactly the reasons you mention. For a bunch of things, reliability really matters. For those places, you cannot be replaced by AI. Migrate to those places.
That leaves the problem of the next couple years. You may need to look for places that understand, today, that reliability matters more than fast slop.
> Why read a book, when you can just get AI summary of it?
I mean... for books (and movies) that I'm mildly interested in but don't want to take N hours to wade through, I've been reading the Wikipedia summaries for a while. AI is here now, but I still go to Wikipedia, because I actually trust it more than the AI summary.
Cant even be authentic in the internet anymore without being flagged as advertisement or an AI bot, jeez
And often it is hard to see exact value that you can create.
Having said this, it would probably lead to even more interesting music, art and all the things you mentioned, because the bar was raised.
Some people crave the connection to the human experience through your examples. And personally, I wouldn't care in the least about any "work of art" created by a model. A model could produce the sequel to Grapes of Wrath, but I wouldn't care, because what experience did it have to motivate it towards it?
A model can generate a dance song, but it cannot feel the bass in their chest to know why the bass is there.
Art is about the human connection.
If we taxed land ownership a la Georgism and then taxed negative externalities like pollution, we could give everyone UBI and probably kick back and take it easy for a bit.
Of course this would require a global democratic mandate bigger than the world's ever seen, so I'm not waiting up on it.
There are lot of maintenance chores that ClawdBot can't do. It's not going to cook for you, rake the leaves, shovel the snow off your sidewalk, or pressure-wash your steps. You can still find some satisfaction in doing these things.
Claude is sort of like a ghost dog in that it makes sure you know that it's up for doing whatever you want to do, but you're still in charge.
90% of everything is AI-generated, of the 10% which is left, 90% of it is crap, leaving just 1% of articulate, interesting, well-crafted content.
So, either work to create that 1% of interesting content, or filter/curate to find it.
I will note that there is a _lot_ of interesting old work which has dropped off the radar --- Hermann Hesse's _Magister Ludi_/_The Glass Bead Game_ was a book which greatly inspired me in my youth (arguably, it's why I use programming tools such as: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor ) --- read it?
My current role should be ok for a few years, but hard to know if we will need any developers in 5 or 10.
I'll still program. I'm barely touching current "AI" other than certain bits of code completion that are on by default in VS and are the right mix of occasionally useful (saving a few tens of keystrokes) and easy to ignore when not. When it gets to the point where I can't compete without using LLMs heavily, I'll have to do something else. Perhaps wait tables somewhere with Spanish customers as I'm trying to learn the language, it won't be much or a pay cut because by the point where someone of my years can't compete at all, almost anyone will be able to do a shite job with LLMs so programming will be heading towards being a minimum-wage job anyway.
> Everything else is being destroyed by AI: art, music, books, personal websites.
Yours doesn't have to be. I started writing bits to go online again after many years not bothering. It isn't intended for public consumption, I'm deliberately doing nothing that would be called SEO in fact I'm going anti-SE in some ways, though it isn't hidden should I chose to pass a link to someone or if they decide to pass it on further. It is intended for me and a select few, if someone else finds it somehow and likes it then good the them, and much of the point of making it is the joy of making something. Everyone else using LLMs isn't going to take that from me.
> Why read a blog post, when Google AI Summary can just give you the summary?
Because the summary may be wrong, or technically correct but with entirely the wrong tone or missing key details a summary should have. Or because you want to read the post - you don't have to use the summary.
I don't read the summary generated as part of most searches these days, reading them is optional. I don't make effort to stop them being made though (using porn mode, adding “fuck”/“fucking” to search terms, etc.) - hopefully making them waste resources on generating things that are never used will et noticed and they'll ramp that down a bit at least for accounts like mine.
> Why read a book, when you can just get AI summary of it?
Before AI, did you just skip to the last few pages to see what happened? If not, then just keep reading like you did before.
Avoiding the slop books that are flooding the market ATM might be more of a concern, but there was plenty written before the LLM bubble started to keep you in things to read for a lifetime.
> The only thing you are left to do is to eat and take a sht throughout the day.*
Other hobbies. I like trail running (or if in a slower mood, country walking), AI isn't going to stop me doing that. HEMA and other activities with friends too.
> How should people make money? No idea, as in the "prosperous future", everything is replaced by AI.
That is a completely different question to the rest where you are asking about things that you would do for enjoyment, and is a bigger societal and philosophical concern than I have time to chew on right now…
> What's the point anymore?
Same as it was before: do what you need to do to survive, then do what you need to do to enjoy any remaining time after that. Perhaps I'm helped here by being back on the up after a couple of years recovering from proper burnout: I know the way things are going won't make me feel worse than that, and I survived that. Current politics and other social issues away from tech on the other hand…
> Why keep going?
When all hope feels truly lost, at least keep going out of spite.
> Why keep going and where to?
To paraphrase The Wild One: Where have ya got?!
My main critique is that we don't do everything merely for the "end" of it, we do it for the "why" or the journey.
No IA system will ever provide the "why".
Also, the humanity will develop an immune system for slop.
Then I was told about some electrical chisel that was supposed to make my life better. Sure, I made more money, but the work was gone. It just shakes; it doesn't vibrate. I get numb, not proud. I have to take breaks, because my hands can't handle it. It's awful. What's the point, I asked?
But then I started talking to my colleagues during those breaks. I even discovered I had a relative in common with one. While chipping away at stone, no one ever wanted to stand close to me, and I had spent all this time proudly creating stone chips all day long! I still chip away at stone sometimes, but only when there's no one else around to talk to at breaktime.
---
You are not going to be able to stop change. The world never stood still, it's just that changes happen step-wise, and it's unlikely any one step affects _you_ profoundly. This time, the step affects you (and me.) You are standing in front of a steamroller and shouting "stop!"
We'll find a new way to be humans. It won't look like the Instagram times. It won't look like the Myspace times. It won't look like the Rolodex times. It'll be new. What can you do with it that makes you happy?
jjgreen•2h ago