sofal

Why is it that we still enjoy music despite not knowing how it was created? Why is it that we still enjoy visual art despite not knowing how it was created?

We can keep throwing counterexamples at each other forever. You can find an endless number of examples wherein the provenance of an activity or piece of work is important to the enjoyment of it, and I can find endless examples where the provenance is unnecessary. What will this prove?

I guess since we're not talking about art anymore, and are instead talking about the veracity of information, we can safely agree. If I read a news story, I do value that information higher to the extent I am convinced it is actually true information. If I read someone's autobiography, I do value that to the extent that I trust them and that it is coming from them. A piece of fiction, however, or music, or visual art, is something that can stand on its own and be appreciated or not without having to assume this context. The context and provenance can certainly color the appreciation, but it is no longer necessary.

Your entire argument hinges on being able to tell the extent to which generative AI was used in the creation of any given piece of art, which capability you will not have. You therefore fall into the category the commenter mentioned in that your perception of the value of a piece of art can be heavily influenced by someone convincing you it was AI generated, regardless of the facts.

I'd question your assumption that the software would be "great". I think we're seeing the volume of software increase faster than before. The average quality of the total volume of software will almost certainly decrease. It's not a contradiction for productivity in that respect to increase while quality decreases.

Well, yeah. I like getting computers to automate things and solve problems. Typing in boilerplate and syntax is just a means to that end, and not even remotely the most interesting part. I don't like managing my own memory garbage collection either, so I prefer to use tools that handle that for me.

I mean, I guess when I was really early in my career I'd get a kick out of writing a clever loop or whatever, and I drank deep from all the low level coding wisdom that was available, but the scope of what I care about these days has long since expanded outward.

I don't think this is why. I listened to a recent podcast with Michael Truell and he made clear they think the TUI is an inferior form factor. This feels more like a reactionary move than a visionary one.

I can't tell whether I'm supposed to be the technical type or the artist type in this analogy. In my music making hobby, I'd like a good AI to help me mix, master, or any number of things under my direction. I'm going to be very particular about every aspect of the beat, but maybe it could suggest some non-boring chord progressions and I'll decide if I like one of them. My goal as an artist is to express myself, and a good AI that can faithfully take directions from me would help.

As a software engineer, I need to solve business problems, and much of this requires code changes, testing, deployments, all that stuff we all know. Again, if a good AI could take on a lot of that work, maybe that means I don't have to sit there in dependency hell and fight arcane missing symbol errors for the rest of my fucking career.

I don't acquire skills and apply them just to be able to apply them. I use them to solve problems and create things. My learned skills for processing audio are for the purpose of getting the audio sounding the way I want it to sound. If an AI can do that for me instead, that's amazing and frees up my time to do other things or do a lot more different audio things. None of this is scary to me or impacts my personal dignity. I'm actually constantly wishing that AI could help me do even more. Honestly I'm not even sure what you mean by AI doing audio editing, can I get some of that? That is some grunt work I don't need more of.

I'm constantly disappointed by how little I'm able to delegate to AI after the unending promises that I'll be able to delegate nearly 100% of what I do now "in the not too distant future". It's tired impatience and merited skepticism that you mistake for fear and coping. Just because people aren't on the hype train with you doesn't mean they're afraid.

Exactly how broke do you think this guy is that taking a career break is a sign of instability?

You can get burned real bad by this if the specific product SKU gets discontinued and the price spikes 10x because now they're called Tide Pods Original.

I mostly agree with you, or at least I think you're providing important pushback that needs to be considered. Porn is largely a weird religious boogeyman, and scary stranger kidnapping stories seem to be a form of lucrative fear porn to attract conspiracy minded types. My access to the internet as a teen fueled my curiosity and computer technology exploration in a way that was crucial for where I've ended up today. I actually installed a keylogger to get the internet password that my parents guarded, and I've never regretted it. Blanket luddite rules for kids seem to me to be lazy at best.

That being said, here are some of the things I worry about:

- The internet is no longer a niche playground for nerds, and much of it has become a mainstream entertainment megahub, very highly cultivated for your bland engagement. When I was growing up, I had to constantly fiddle with and troubleshot several layers of software in order to explore, interact with friends online, and play games. It was almost like a barrier to entry. These days, I'm not entirely sure I would have fiddled with anything and might have just skipped to the gaming & media consumption part. After all, it just works now, and the media is more engaging than ever. There seem to be fewer incentives for learning and creativity.

- I'm more concerned about bad behavior modeling than I am about the moral panic nonsense. I want to make sure that whatever personalities my kids are having a social/parasocial relationship with aren't encouraging trollish and abusive behavior.

- I'm also concerned about misinformation. Most people generally are very bad at gauging the trustworthiness of information online. Ironically even the people who cry the most about how media distorts your worldview tend to have that exact problem. I want to teach my kids critical thinking and how to evaluate information based on several important criteria. This will have to be an involved process, and I want to be able to contextualize heavy sources of misinformation while they're being exposed to it.

None of these problems are well addressed with a luddite approach, but they do need careful attention.

Exactly. Actually funny jokes from amateurs tend to have risen out of an order of magnitude more failed attempts. You can't encourage the funny one without inviting a ton of bad ones.

The idea that politics in academia are so fierce because the stakes are so low is a meme that has been around for many years, so perhaps it's just the first time you heard it?

I'm not convinced of the meme despite its cleverness or the many blog articles discussing it. I don't think it would get less politically intense if the stakes were raised.

How about: I'd like to know what's happening during an active shooter event at my son's school. Is there a loudspeaker for that?

This actually happened to me, and guess where all of the official police updates were posted.