Do you read a book just so you know what happens at the end, or because you like the journey there too? Do you read blog posts "just to know" or because you like reading?
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.
You don't get it. You, and I, are in the minority. How do you expect authors to keep writing, when the market will be, eventually, flooded by AI generated slop? It's the same with coding: I no longer see point to write OSS by hand, as every day, 10 projects appear on HN front page, that are 95.9% AI generated.
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.
Flooded markets get bypassed. I see a future where real creatives simply don't post stuff online, and anything online is not trusted. What AI is going to kill is the Internet, not human creativity.
> I see a future where real creatives simply don't post stuff online, and anything online is not trusted.
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.
A) The modern extreme thirst for dopamine predates the Internet. We've had powerfully addictive and destructive street drugs for decades now and art and creativity still thrive.
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.
I feel like I've been meeting people of different ages (strong bias for millenials) that just don't enjoy the internet anymore. And yes, most are addicted to this dopamine drip, yet it makes me optimistic that something _is_ changing.
As an average Joe I have easy access to Taylor Swift on youtube etc. AI junk is also there but I don't choose it and only force fed a very small amount by my friend who likes making it.
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.
It's a good read, thanks for sharing. But the flaw in it, is the fact that you think that the world is built on merit, i.e. Good Taste, as you call it.
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.
The world is built at a balance between good taste and good economics. AI slop is still slop. Reminds me when there were massive booms on outsourcing software to low cost labor markets. Most of the software born out of those markets was slop and not much different than what we see today. Good taste still matters in most work. I am pretty big proponent of AI but I don’t think AI can write a book that I enjoy. Similarly I don’t believe AI can write software end to end without a humans input of good taste. Sure you can brute force it but like those early years of outsourcing I bet it won’t be maintainable or well running.
This might be one of those “the market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent” cases, though.
And for arts and entertainment, where the long term value is less important economically than the immediate click, AI slop is good enough that the percentage of people unable to tell the difference means there’s no point in creating any more except at the highest end or for the love of it.
I’m watching people listen to AI-generated music and not notice (or even prefer it over human-produced music). I’m watching people on FB who can’t tell the most ridiculous AI-generated imagery from reality.
It may not be good enough for you or me; but the average consumer is not all that discerning. They’ll choose whatever gives them a dopamine hit.
I think we are thinking about different things. Slop content has existed long before AI. I agree on the music front there is a possibility but I don’t see it much different than all the low effort lowfi music that flooded the study stations. I don’t see a future yet where engineers or other folks making tasteful content have to worry about their job security. When that time comes there are going to be real concerns from more than just the creative types.
Why do I want authors to keep writing commercially? Books get worse every year, and there is more than a lifetime of great literature even from 500 years ago. Lack of books is just about the last thing I'd consider a problem. This hasn't anything to do with your original point of summarizing books with AI, which is silly.
>I'm an average Joe, who wants to live an average Joe's life, but it's being taken away from me
Literally nothing has been taken from you. Go read the book.
Sounds like you're getting burned out by too much hype-chasing. Follow your interests, and you'll always discover something that AI hasn't solved by itself. And keep in mind that people have always had these concerns whenever something new came along - photography, computers, etc.
This is different. AI is not a "personal computer" or a "digital camera". AI is a change in perspective of our entire society, how it works, and what we define to be human or human-made creation. The end goal of AI is to abolish all work possible. In a world where there is no work for the common man, I'm afraid to imagine what is left there.
> AI is a change in perspective of our entire society, how it works, and what we define to be human or human-made creation.
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.
I agree, with the caveat that the chance of a link in a search result being AI generated is increasing, as well as the sophistication of the generated text, which means a growing percentage of my time is wasted on AI generated content before I realize it.
Well, that's true isn't it? No one is forcing you to consume AI BS content, either close it when you come across it, at least works well on the computer.
As for TV ads or other shit you can't just skip, I guess looking away or do something else than accept it, is the way to go forward there.
AI is a technology. It has no goal. You use a tool, the tool doesn't use you or have goals or plans for you.
> In a world where there is no work for the common man.
"Work expands to fill the time available" (Parkinson's Law). Work hours haven't been reduced even though technology has advanced tremendously over the centuries (they have been reduced due to push for worker's rights).
> I'm afraid to imagine what is left there.
Do not define yourself, or your worth, through work. You work to live, not live to work.
Remember that your perception of the past has been filtered by what survived Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) --- the problem is that this is now doubled with a layer of AI, so it's something like:
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?
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?
> How should people make money? No idea, as in the "prosperous future", everything is replaced by AI.
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's no reason Georgism requires a global mandate. Any level of government that levies taxes can replace their current taxes with land/resource/pollution taxes.
In most countries the national government levies the most tax (usually as income and company taxes), and pays out the most in benefits, so they are the level that needs to change most. There are no global taxes that need to be replaced, just local, state, and national.
UBI didn't work for the Communists, can't see how it's going to happen in a fractious democracy.
I think a the biggest "global democratic mandate" ever seen is functionally a dictatorship... And apart from the Communists, dictatorship don't have the sort of priorities that lead to UBI.
Pick up a (combat) sport. It’s the only thing AI can’t touch/ruin in any meaningful way. At least until robotics get to human level or better, and still then I don’t think robots playing football or doing jiu-jitsu is something people are gonna enjoy participating in or watch. Much like there is no market to watch two non-humans play chess, because who cares other than for benchmarking performance or some ulterior motive.
With all my respect, I wasn't trying to piss on your post, only to communicate how it reads.
On the subject — this wave of tech is intensely overwhelming, I feel you too.
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.
Im confused. Are you asking how to make money or how to spend your time if money was not a concern?
Answering the second question - I can find 48hours worth of things to do in a 24 hour day and none of them would be about work or just lazying around (nothing wrong with it). Life has so much to offer!!! Yeah AI can produce things. But theres a reason id consume human generated art. And thankfully real deep mastery still takes effort and passion!!
AI can do a lot, but it can’t live your life for you.
It can’t raise your kids, explain your choices to your parents, apologize and mean it, or face consequences when things go wrong.
And most importantly—it can’t take responsibility or go to prison for you.
So maybe the point isn’t productivity anymore.
AI does the work.
Humans carry the liability.
One of the most revolutionizing life skills is to learn to seek out the good instead of learning to avoid the bad.
For great books and music, there is probably never a need to read anything published after 2020, or even after 2000. There's more than you will want to read in your lifetime. There's more than you can ever listen to. You'll get tired of music as a whole before that.
Here's some things AI can't do for you: Relationships and interacting with good people, every kind of sports and physical endeavour including any adventure you can think of, enjoying the perfection of nature. Psychedelic experiences and spiritual experiences. All of these require very little or no money.
Human art has always been an imperfect imitation of the creation, and the same is true for anything AI makes.
Maybe a rough analogy: why take a train when you can fly? Flying is faster and often cheaper. If efficiency were the only axis, trains should’ve died long ago. They didn’t. They became alternative infrastructure, used when people care about cost predictability, comfort, scenery, control, or just preference.
AI will do the same thing. Summaries won’t replace books, generated music won’t replace artists, and assistants won’t replace doing things yourself. They’ll replace the lowest friction default. Everything else shifts from “mass” to “intentional”
That doesn’t mean fewer humans have value, but instead it means value becomes less generic. The question isn’t “what’s the point anymore” , it’s “what survives when optimization stops being the only goal?"
The universe is infinitely detailed and incredibly complex. These machines are and will remain for a while anchored to solving problems that we as a species have solved before. Seek the problems and tasks that are novel, that are groundbreaking and meaningful. Seek the boundary of knowledge and craft, what neither human nor machine has done. Seek the problems that require both humans and machines.
> instead of building reliable software, managers seem to push people to use AI more, as long as they ship products.
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.
The point is to go beyond LLM training set. When the knowledge of LLMs, books, expert conversations etc. ends and cannot answer to your questions, you begin to feel where that boundary begins. From that line on, you are alone, and you can invent/discover something novel. Nothing is promised though, and it is the hardest thing to do, but at least the struggle gives a feeling of purpose.
There's a good CCK Philosophy video about AI Art that I think is pertinent here [1]. From my layman's observation, AI is forcing us to reflect on the kind of work we do, how it fulfills us, and maybe even exposing the danger of exclusively finding fulfillment from employment.
To put this in perspective: AI stuff is about talking to ghosts. Yes, there are a lot of things ghosts can do, but they lack something due to being immaterial. Robots are still pretty limited.
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.
I'm co-writing a design doc with Claude Opus 4.5 and it seems to me that it isn't over yet. Ghosts are pretty useful to collaborate with, but I have ideas too. We have power tools now, but that doesn't mean you have to give up. You can learn to use them.
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.
I feel exactly like OP, I was visiting Ask before actually making my own "Whats the point?" post. I think the real issue is this huge community of people who have gone completely gone awry with using LLMs in their own loops and constantly posting and talking about it.
I see dozens of people on HN just posting about how amazing it is to write/compose software now. They're making more software than ever and having the time of their lives. When I read those and I actually go and explore that software they're just OSS tools, I wonder why would anyone want to use this? If everyone was doing as they were they're just asking their LLM to do it instead of looking out for a tool. Even better they'll just ask their LLM to make a tool to accomplish whatever those authors are building.
Then it's this whole new religion of human out of the loop. You feel like you've either gone stale or insane because every one now says adding human into the loop worsens the productivity gains from a model. I highly disagree, I haven't used a single model that handles a substantially complex task flawlessly. If you mention anything about that people don't shutup about harnesses.
Don't get me wrong, I use LLMs, I use them quiet frequently. However it's this obsessive attitude towards them that makes it impossible to get funding or research for anything that's not at least tangentially related them. It's completely burned me out professionally, academically and psychologically.
Imho there are still tasks that can't be done by AI good enough. Wouldn't let clawbot handle my personal relationships. Not even scheduling a football [or dota2] game. Yet alone navigate job. So, maybe level up the goal post? Try do something not-easily-done by AI? Select from your fringe interests [if core is AI powered already]. Anyway, it is a relevant question these days.
Art music books and the like are still there. You can always ignore the AI versions.
Whenever tech has replaced jobs like agriculture when machinery came in people found things to do but probably couldn't foresee working as programmers or influencers or what have you.
It's probably heading for sci-fi type stuff which should be interesting.
Feels a little mean that people are flagging this, I wake up every morning thinking the same thing. I've started reading Humankind by Rutger Bregman in the hope of waking up feeling different.
Going to the example used thousands of times, maybe the horse drivers thought the same way, but guess what? now we have cars, race cars, super cars, flying cars. The engine kept changing, car markets kept evolving.
People kept adapting.
Adapting is the only way or the Penguin way :P
The only way to win is not to play. Opt out of everything. Total ban on usage of anything genAI. Trust me, you'll still be mad at the world sometimes, but in your own life you'll be far happier.
The point is to cultivate the ability to distinguish between real and fake. Soon enough, that ability will be extremely rare, and for the people who really need it, nothing else will do.
"The golden rule of clean architecture is to strive for high cohesion and low coupling."
Perhaps communities will sprout up following that rule?
Regarding money, one needs to ask themselves what will be the impact of tokenized assets?
Perhaps being able to take ownership of kibbutz-like places will give them a sense of belonging and purpose. Doesn't matter how much technology there is, people need to live somewhere and will adapt by finding a place they can optimize for happiness. It'll be like starting a game of Civilization from scratch but with all the advanced technologies intact.
People may also go back to the early-human modes of survival of the first-nations groups. Digital and electric technologies aren't healthy things to be around. Do you want to live in the range of a 10G antenna or near a massive solar array? The naturalists may end up happier and healthier than the tech-heads. It's about taking/using what works for you and leaving the rest.
Worth noting that if someone really had an answer to your questions, would they state the truth here?
How do you know the robots won't come and just kill us all when they can because we have no power/influence/value? Where will people migrate to in order to avoid that? Antarctica? The moon? Underground to avoid weaponized satellites?
Conscience and consciousness really needs to grow with technology, really that's the challenge of today. Always has been.
How will people support the sick, old, disabled and retarded? Start there and work backwards, or how does one avoid those things altogether somehow and go beyond Homo Sapiens?
I remember back in the day, the days of chisel and hammer. I could feel the stone, and the impact of the hammer vibrating into my hand. It was pleasant, and I could feel that every hit really meant something to shape the future of the stone, and thereby the building. Customers and contractors alike told me how great it was to see me work that stone. So I kept swinging that hammer.
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?
I firmly believe that the future is going to be dystopian -- thus I think that techs, especially low-level programming and hardware RE skills are essential.
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.
People still appreciate human art. People don't appreciate AI art because it's fake. If you enjoy AI art, you're probably fake and have no appreciation. That's my take.
Just remember that AI can not create art, it can only remember art. AI is not a human, AI is a probabilistic function.
> If you enjoy AI art, you're probably fake and have no appreciation. That's my take.
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.
I don't know how you can claim to love technology but hate AI so much -- it's a technological achievement. Yeah it's disruptive and that makes it dangerous if not managed, and I'm not exactly optimistic we'll manage it, but why aren't you curious about how it works? How to make it integrate with society better? How to deal with the myriad issues surrounding IP, rights, likeness stuff... there is a lot of fascinating work being done around AI to figure this all out.
Were you only interested in technology so you could be one of the chosen elders holding a rare and valuable skill? Bummer if so, I think that ship has sailed. If not sunk altogether.
Otherwise? I guess learn plumbing? I think we're still a few years away from Claude telling me "You're absolutely right! Let me unclog that toilet for you" :D
Do you read a book just so you know what happens at the end, or because you like the journey there too? Do you read blog posts "just to know" or because you like reading?
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.
You don't get it. You, and I, are in the minority. How do you expect authors to keep writing, when the market will be, eventually, flooded by AI generated slop? It's the same with coding: I no longer see point to write OSS by hand, as every day, 10 projects appear on HN front page, that are 95.9% AI generated.
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.
Flooded markets get bypassed. I see a future where real creatives simply don't post stuff online, and anything online is not trusted. What AI is going to kill is the Internet, not human creativity.
> I see a future where real creatives simply don't post stuff online, and anything online is not trusted.
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.
Had the same thought but feels too overly optimistic.
I don’t think people “internet” for trust, but for dopamine.
A) The modern extreme thirst for dopamine predates the Internet. We've had powerfully addictive and destructive street drugs for decades now and art and creativity still thrive.
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.
I feel like I've been meeting people of different ages (strong bias for millenials) that just don't enjoy the internet anymore. And yes, most are addicted to this dopamine drip, yet it makes me optimistic that something _is_ changing.
People bought paintings after photography was invented, and they still do.
As an average Joe I have easy access to Taylor Swift on youtube etc. AI junk is also there but I don't choose it and only force fed a very small amount by my friend who likes making it.
I think you don't get it :) I've written more about how I see it being here: https://emsh.cat/good-taste/
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.
It's a good read, thanks for sharing. But the flaw in it, is the fact that you think that the world is built on merit, i.e. Good Taste, as you call it.
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.
The world is built at a balance between good taste and good economics. AI slop is still slop. Reminds me when there were massive booms on outsourcing software to low cost labor markets. Most of the software born out of those markets was slop and not much different than what we see today. Good taste still matters in most work. I am pretty big proponent of AI but I don’t think AI can write a book that I enjoy. Similarly I don’t believe AI can write software end to end without a humans input of good taste. Sure you can brute force it but like those early years of outsourcing I bet it won’t be maintainable or well running.
This might be one of those “the market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent” cases, though.
And for arts and entertainment, where the long term value is less important economically than the immediate click, AI slop is good enough that the percentage of people unable to tell the difference means there’s no point in creating any more except at the highest end or for the love of it.
Sorry ai slop is no where good enough. Not sure what hype you are consuming.
I’m watching people listen to AI-generated music and not notice (or even prefer it over human-produced music). I’m watching people on FB who can’t tell the most ridiculous AI-generated imagery from reality.
It may not be good enough for you or me; but the average consumer is not all that discerning. They’ll choose whatever gives them a dopamine hit.
I think we are thinking about different things. Slop content has existed long before AI. I agree on the music front there is a possibility but I don’t see it much different than all the low effort lowfi music that flooded the study stations. I don’t see a future yet where engineers or other folks making tasteful content have to worry about their job security. When that time comes there are going to be real concerns from more than just the creative types.
> But the flaw in it, is the fact that you think that the world is built on merit, i.e. Good Taste, as you call it.
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.
Why do I want authors to keep writing commercially? Books get worse every year, and there is more than a lifetime of great literature even from 500 years ago. Lack of books is just about the last thing I'd consider a problem. This hasn't anything to do with your original point of summarizing books with AI, which is silly.
>I'm an average Joe, who wants to live an average Joe's life, but it's being taken away from me
Literally nothing has been taken from you. Go read the book.
Sounds like you're getting burned out by too much hype-chasing. Follow your interests, and you'll always discover something that AI hasn't solved by itself. And keep in mind that people have always had these concerns whenever something new came along - photography, computers, etc.
This is different. AI is not a "personal computer" or a "digital camera". AI is a change in perspective of our entire society, how it works, and what we define to be human or human-made creation. The end goal of AI is to abolish all work possible. In a world where there is no work for the common man, I'm afraid to imagine what is left there.
> AI is a change in perspective of our entire society, how it works, and what we define to be human or human-made creation.
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.
> just turn it off if you don't like it.
How? Or do you mean, like, stop using the Internet entirely?
Notice that it's bad/slop/shit, turn it off, do something else.
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.
I agree, with the caveat that the chance of a link in a search result being AI generated is increasing, as well as the sophistication of the generated text, which means a growing percentage of my time is wasted on AI generated content before I realize it.
Sorry, I thought your contention was that nobody is forcing me to consume AI BS content.
Well, that's true isn't it? No one is forcing you to consume AI BS content, either close it when you come across it, at least works well on the computer.
As for TV ads or other shit you can't just skip, I guess looking away or do something else than accept it, is the way to go forward there.
> The end goal of AI is
AI is a technology. It has no goal. You use a tool, the tool doesn't use you or have goals or plans for you.
> In a world where there is no work for the common man.
"Work expands to fill the time available" (Parkinson's Law). Work hours haven't been reduced even though technology has advanced tremendously over the centuries (they have been reduced due to push for worker's rights).
> I'm afraid to imagine what is left there.
Do not define yourself, or your worth, through work. You work to live, not live to work.
Remember that your perception of the past has been filtered by what survived Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) --- the problem is that this is now doubled with a layer of AI, so it's something like:
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?
> destroyed by AI: art, music, books
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 an image of a room, but a model can't work off a sense of nostalgia visiting grandma to create a feeling of that room.
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.
> How should people make money? No idea, as in the "prosperous future", everything is replaced by AI.
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.
I predict global slavery to emerge sooner than UBI will become a reality. Call me a pessimist if you wish
There's no reason Georgism requires a global mandate. Any level of government that levies taxes can replace their current taxes with land/resource/pollution taxes.
In most countries the national government levies the most tax (usually as income and company taxes), and pays out the most in benefits, so they are the level that needs to change most. There are no global taxes that need to be replaced, just local, state, and national.
UBI didn't work for the Communists, can't see how it's going to happen in a fractious democracy.
I think a the biggest "global democratic mandate" ever seen is functionally a dictatorship... And apart from the Communists, dictatorship don't have the sort of priorities that lead to UBI.
Pick up a (combat) sport. It’s the only thing AI can’t touch/ruin in any meaningful way. At least until robotics get to human level or better, and still then I don’t think robots playing football or doing jiu-jitsu is something people are gonna enjoy participating in or watch. Much like there is no market to watch two non-humans play chess, because who cares other than for benchmarking performance or some ulterior motive.
I struggle to think this is not an advertisement written for ClawdBot, if so — please consider that ethics of this post is unclear.
I just saw it recently and it made me depressed. Not affiliated and didn’t use it myself.
What makes you think that?
I'd say the fact that it mentions a relatively obscure project specifically.
Yes, specifically this.
That product came out recently so will be top of mind. And maybe was the final straw for the OP when trying to find something to focus on?
Edited out the name, for you.
Cant even be authentic in the internet anymore without being flagged as advertisement or an AI bot, jeez
With all my respect, I wasn't trying to piss on your post, only to communicate how it reads. On the subject — this wave of tech is intensely overwhelming, I feel you too.
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.
> Cant even be authentic in the internet anymore without being flagged as advertisement or an AI bot, jeez
The sad state we got ourselves into..
Im confused. Are you asking how to make money or how to spend your time if money was not a concern?
Answering the second question - I can find 48hours worth of things to do in a 24 hour day and none of them would be about work or just lazying around (nothing wrong with it). Life has so much to offer!!! Yeah AI can produce things. But theres a reason id consume human generated art. And thankfully real deep mastery still takes effort and passion!!
AI can do a lot, but it can’t live your life for you.
It can’t raise your kids, explain your choices to your parents, apologize and mean it, or face consequences when things go wrong. And most importantly—it can’t take responsibility or go to prison for you.
So maybe the point isn’t productivity anymore. AI does the work. Humans carry the liability.
One of the most revolutionizing life skills is to learn to seek out the good instead of learning to avoid the bad.
For great books and music, there is probably never a need to read anything published after 2020, or even after 2000. There's more than you will want to read in your lifetime. There's more than you can ever listen to. You'll get tired of music as a whole before that.
Here's some things AI can't do for you: Relationships and interacting with good people, every kind of sports and physical endeavour including any adventure you can think of, enjoying the perfection of nature. Psychedelic experiences and spiritual experiences. All of these require very little or no money.
Human art has always been an imperfect imitation of the creation, and the same is true for anything AI makes.
Maybe a rough analogy: why take a train when you can fly? Flying is faster and often cheaper. If efficiency were the only axis, trains should’ve died long ago. They didn’t. They became alternative infrastructure, used when people care about cost predictability, comfort, scenery, control, or just preference.
AI will do the same thing. Summaries won’t replace books, generated music won’t replace artists, and assistants won’t replace doing things yourself. They’ll replace the lowest friction default. Everything else shifts from “mass” to “intentional”
That doesn’t mean fewer humans have value, but instead it means value becomes less generic. The question isn’t “what’s the point anymore” , it’s “what survives when optimization stops being the only goal?"
The universe is infinitely detailed and incredibly complex. These machines are and will remain for a while anchored to solving problems that we as a species have solved before. Seek the problems and tasks that are novel, that are groundbreaking and meaningful. Seek the boundary of knowledge and craft, what neither human nor machine has done. Seek the problems that require both humans and machines.
> instead of building reliable software, managers seem to push people to use AI more, as long as they ship products.
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.
The point is to go beyond LLM training set. When the knowledge of LLMs, books, expert conversations etc. ends and cannot answer to your questions, you begin to feel where that boundary begins. From that line on, you are alone, and you can invent/discover something novel. Nothing is promised though, and it is the hardest thing to do, but at least the struggle gives a feeling of purpose.
Per my understanding.
AI makes things cheaper and simpler, but real human-made/produced goods will become a luxury in the future.
There's a good CCK Philosophy video about AI Art that I think is pertinent here [1]. From my layman's observation, AI is forcing us to reflect on the kind of work we do, how it fulfills us, and maybe even exposing the danger of exclusively finding fulfillment from employment.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT-bIYFdq9I
To put this in perspective: AI stuff is about talking to ghosts. Yes, there are a lot of things ghosts can do, but they lack something due to being immaterial. Robots are still pretty limited.
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.
That’s my point. Technology is a dead end now. The only thing left to do is go back to doing mundane physical work in order to feed yourself.
I'm co-writing a design doc with Claude Opus 4.5 and it seems to me that it isn't over yet. Ghosts are pretty useful to collaborate with, but I have ideas too. We have power tools now, but that doesn't mean you have to give up. You can learn to use them.
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.
I feel exactly like OP, I was visiting Ask before actually making my own "Whats the point?" post. I think the real issue is this huge community of people who have gone completely gone awry with using LLMs in their own loops and constantly posting and talking about it.
I see dozens of people on HN just posting about how amazing it is to write/compose software now. They're making more software than ever and having the time of their lives. When I read those and I actually go and explore that software they're just OSS tools, I wonder why would anyone want to use this? If everyone was doing as they were they're just asking their LLM to do it instead of looking out for a tool. Even better they'll just ask their LLM to make a tool to accomplish whatever those authors are building.
Then it's this whole new religion of human out of the loop. You feel like you've either gone stale or insane because every one now says adding human into the loop worsens the productivity gains from a model. I highly disagree, I haven't used a single model that handles a substantially complex task flawlessly. If you mention anything about that people don't shutup about harnesses.
Don't get me wrong, I use LLMs, I use them quiet frequently. However it's this obsessive attitude towards them that makes it impossible to get funding or research for anything that's not at least tangentially related them. It's completely burned me out professionally, academically and psychologically.
Maybe humans can focus on cybersecurity and fraud? That’s not going away with AI
Imho there are still tasks that can't be done by AI good enough. Wouldn't let clawbot handle my personal relationships. Not even scheduling a football [or dota2] game. Yet alone navigate job. So, maybe level up the goal post? Try do something not-easily-done by AI? Select from your fringe interests [if core is AI powered already]. Anyway, it is a relevant question these days.
Existentialism might say, "there isn't one; there never was; the meaning you felt has gone somewhere else, like a kite suddenly slack on the string."
You have to find out where the winds are blowing, especially your winds.
Retrieve your kite and find another hill. <3 is what I am doing. Not leaving industry exactly, but reshuffling my sources of meaning
Art music books and the like are still there. You can always ignore the AI versions.
Whenever tech has replaced jobs like agriculture when machinery came in people found things to do but probably couldn't foresee working as programmers or influencers or what have you.
It's probably heading for sci-fi type stuff which should be interesting.
Feels a little mean that people are flagging this, I wake up every morning thinking the same thing. I've started reading Humankind by Rutger Bregman in the hope of waking up feeling different.
[0] https://rutgerbregman.com/books/humankind
Agreed, after years of software development only in the last couple of months have I started to think that maybe I need to reskill.
My current role should be ok for a few years, but hard to know if we will need any developers in 5 or 10.
Stop consuming mainstream media and you'll feel more sane.
Extrinsic motivation vs intrinsic motivation.
I don't draw to do better than the AI, I do it because I like drawing. You have more free time to do what you want.
But maybe the goal was never to build the thing, it was to impose your individuality and uniqueness upon others.
Going to the example used thousands of times, maybe the horse drivers thought the same way, but guess what? now we have cars, race cars, super cars, flying cars. The engine kept changing, car markets kept evolving. People kept adapting. Adapting is the only way or the Penguin way :P
The only way to win is not to play. Opt out of everything. Total ban on usage of anything genAI. Trust me, you'll still be mad at the world sometimes, but in your own life you'll be far happier.
> Why read a blog post, when Google AI Summary can just give you the summary?
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.
Because it's interesting and fun.
No point, buy tinned food and head for the darkest part of the forest.
The point is to cultivate the ability to distinguish between real and fake. Soon enough, that ability will be extremely rare, and for the people who really need it, nothing else will do.
Efficiency is not the same as meaning. If you only valued the output, you’ve already lost
"The golden rule of clean architecture is to strive for high cohesion and low coupling."
Perhaps communities will sprout up following that rule?
Regarding money, one needs to ask themselves what will be the impact of tokenized assets?
Perhaps being able to take ownership of kibbutz-like places will give them a sense of belonging and purpose. Doesn't matter how much technology there is, people need to live somewhere and will adapt by finding a place they can optimize for happiness. It'll be like starting a game of Civilization from scratch but with all the advanced technologies intact.
People may also go back to the early-human modes of survival of the first-nations groups. Digital and electric technologies aren't healthy things to be around. Do you want to live in the range of a 10G antenna or near a massive solar array? The naturalists may end up happier and healthier than the tech-heads. It's about taking/using what works for you and leaving the rest.
Worth noting that if someone really had an answer to your questions, would they state the truth here?
How do you know the robots won't come and just kill us all when they can because we have no power/influence/value? Where will people migrate to in order to avoid that? Antarctica? The moon? Underground to avoid weaponized satellites?
Conscience and consciousness really needs to grow with technology, really that's the challenge of today. Always has been.
How will people support the sick, old, disabled and retarded? Start there and work backwards, or how does one avoid those things altogether somehow and go beyond Homo Sapiens?
I remember back in the day, the days of chisel and hammer. I could feel the stone, and the impact of the hammer vibrating into my hand. It was pleasant, and I could feel that every hit really meant something to shape the future of the stone, and thereby the building. Customers and contractors alike told me how great it was to see me work that stone. So I kept swinging that hammer.
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?
Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?
A gramme is better than a damn
I firmly believe that the future is going to be dystopian -- thus I think that techs, especially low-level programming and hardware RE skills are essential.
only thing left is... to take a sht
Oh what I wouldn't give to push one out, you entitled pos -- AI.
Hopefully your perspective will change over time, because it's short sighted.
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.
> [chucking out slop instead of quality software]
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?!
People still appreciate human art. People don't appreciate AI art because it's fake. If you enjoy AI art, you're probably fake and have no appreciation. That's my take.
Just remember that AI can not create art, it can only remember art. AI is not a human, AI is a probabilistic function.
> If you enjoy AI art, you're probably fake and have no appreciation. That's my take.
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.
[1] - https://civitai.com/images
I don't know how you can claim to love technology but hate AI so much -- it's a technological achievement. Yeah it's disruptive and that makes it dangerous if not managed, and I'm not exactly optimistic we'll manage it, but why aren't you curious about how it works? How to make it integrate with society better? How to deal with the myriad issues surrounding IP, rights, likeness stuff... there is a lot of fascinating work being done around AI to figure this all out.
Were you only interested in technology so you could be one of the chosen elders holding a rare and valuable skill? Bummer if so, I think that ship has sailed. If not sunk altogether.
Otherwise? I guess learn plumbing? I think we're still a few years away from Claude telling me "You're absolutely right! Let me unclog that toilet for you" :D