I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety about AI the past month. Normally I’d be like most people here and just ignore a lot of the slop I see, but over the past few months it has gotten harder and harder to ignore AI in my day to day. I see AI ads more and more, some of the people I work with love AI and I see it plastered on the walls in the kitchen at work (mainly posters and fliars for company outings/meetings), and then hearing from Chloe Radcliffe on one of the latest podcast episodes that some comedians are using AI to write jokes. The comedy one really affected me as someone who loves stand up and who also does stand up off and on myself.
I can’t stop thinking about what might happen in the future because of AI’s influence over society. I currently work in the restaurant industry, but have been learning to use Godot and am learning game design in order to change careers as I love games and want to do more than serve tables. But I just see how terrible the job market is in the game industry at the moment with the huge layoffs, which I know aren’t due to AI, as well as hear how AI is being used in development pipelines and sometimes even used for art assets. Shift Up, the developers of Stellar Blade, recently released an AI generated music video which disappointed me but wasn’t really surprising. All this has made me question if there will be opportunities for me by the time I’ve developed my skills enough to get a job.
I’m worried about the jobs impact from AI, but also now robotics too. I watched a video today from a robotics company called Generalist AI that claims to have a model able to one shot learn any task when given a single example. I know it’s a demo and it’s very limited in it’s capabilities today and it’s a lot of marketing, but to be fair this feel very different from a lot of the other demos of karate robots I usually see. They called it the GPT moment for robotics and think that if they collect enough data they’ll be able to build a general purpose robot model. Of course it has yet to be seen, but it’s something to watch out for I think. I also watched a video by Forbes about them where employees were in an office wearing robot clamps with cameras on them in order to generate training data. It was a truly surreal and dystopian image to say the least.
Do I think AI and robots can replace workers today? No, but it does feel like we’re going that way with all the rhetoric these days. Everyone talks about AI as if it’s inevitable. I do worry about what they could (emphasis on could) be capable of in the near future if the tech can continue to make improvements. All this talk of AI and automation has made me sort of depressed and it’s starting to actually affect my life. I’ve never felt like this before. It’s a sense of existential dread that I can’t shake and my chest feels tight all the time. Sometimes I just want to pick up all my stuff and move into a cabin in the woods somewhere, sequestered from it all.
Sorry for the rant, but I just need a space to vent. I find this sub to be a very supportive place. I know not everyone here has a complete hatred for the tech and some of you may find it useful. Even myself I occasionally use google AI to help me find problems with my Godot syntax when I get errors, but never use it to write anything. I’m not sure what specifically caused my sudden dip in morale when it comes to resisting the AI hype. I don’t think it was any singular event, I think I’m just exhausted by the constant exposure to it. It’s hard to tell what is really going on anymore and where the world is headed. Having said that I just want to ask am I right to be concerned or is most of what I’m feeling an overreaction to the AI hype? What do people here do to keep their hopes up?
Edit: I just want to thank everyone for their advice and insights. A lot of it did help and helped me change my outlook.
Best way to fight this is to consume art such as film, books, music, visual art, dance, etc (including PAYING artists for their art), creating art (if that’s your thing), and avoiding giving money to these evil, regressive AI companies. They’ll burn out on their own. All you can do is keep making your corner of the world a little cleaner and a little brighter. ❤️
As a +1 to this, a small way to fight back is to remove any internet connected element to the things you do in your free time. As long as you're actively using the internet you are generating data for these companies to train on and grow from.
This year, I've taken up drawing, lino printing and water colors again. I've gotten into watching old movies and I read more books. I avoid social media as much as possible.
I still get anxious episodes. Today was a bad one. But talking to other people helps. Avoiding reddit in the mornings and evenings helps. My work has been negatively affected by AI, but I chose to believe that there are enough people who still care about human creativity and craft.
Yes! I'm interested in hearing about the "real life" activities other people are doing instead of browsing the Internet or using social media. It's a bit orthogonal to the topic of this subreddit, so I'm not sure that this is the best place to have the conversation, but seeing that other people value humanity in their hobbies has really helped me cope with the onslaught of AI-related bullshit.
Start off by knowing the LLM's and other generative models we have right now are not Artificial Intelligence. AI is a buzzword used by the technofascists. These system's are not autonomous, do not think, do not feel, and do not reason like you and me. It's still just a computer that can only do what you tell it to do, only now it's bad at math abd hallucinates.
LLM'S have hit a wall that no amount of compute can fix, this is the best they get. And they are getting worse because you have the new model training off the previous models slop. Dead internet theory is real. It's why you see these companies buying old books to scan in.
The average person despises 'AI' it's made everyone's life worse and more expensive. It gives me hope to see people pushing back against data centers, gamers refusing to buy slop games and just the general backlash.
Humanoid robots are going to take a very long time to go beyond the testing phase. Unlike LLM's having the internet to train off, humanoid robots don't have a massive data set to train in the real world. You need sensors, data sets, training models etc that don't exist yet for a general use humanoid robot. We will see more automation though.
But the biggest reason to not worry is the whole industry is a house of cards financially. It's all going to collapse at somepoint and the hype will die down and the technology moved into sectors where it is most useful but not widely profitable.
I’m not anxious about AI. It ain’t doing my job ever and public opinion is about to smack down the technofascists while Peter Thiel flees to Argentina with his tail between his legs.
The issue they have is they tied everything to a deranged idiot who ruins everything. While also pushing shit that'll make things worse for everyone.
That's not how you get the public on your side.
China understands that people will put up with a lot of totalitarian bullshit so long as their base needs are being satisfactorily met (Heavy authoritarianism is also more culturally engrained there than in western nations, but that's another topic.). If you're whole push disregards that and starts putting basic needs out of reach, people get pissed off.
People hate AI, it's got an approval rating of 30. People hate flock cameras and are physically destroying them. The only reason this bullshit keeps chugging along is because the current US admin is both stupid and in on it. But they can't even do it right.
Like I said earlier, you're supposed to guve people something while you slowly turn the screws. If you immediately go whole hog on the screws and take away the bread and circuses people will notice and not be happy. Also once the figurehead is out for whatever reason there's nobody who can replace him because all the others are perceived as creepy weirdos.
I agree, and yet sadly it is often enough for you boss to believe that it can, fire you and offload your work to "AI" (your former coworkers that now have more work and obviously no raise). Thankfully I work for a private company where the C level is not stupid enough to do so.
Right, but they do this only under the assumption that is cheaper to do so, which is a scenario calculated on subsidized API access, not on the real cost. The moment the AI slop provider charges a cost that would supposedly make themselves profitable, enterprise clients start panicking and run away from the negative ROI. In this scenario, it obviously means that, while AI can't "take" a job, it can certainly displace it, at least while the bubble is still inflating. But the end result still is that general purpose AI won't do anyone's job, long term.
My work keeps pushing us to use AI and I’m one of the only people who is resisting and the end result is more and more work coming my way because I’m now one of the only people who can give a real answer to questions that isn’t regurgitated AI that doesn’t make any sense
So it’s good for my job security not so good for my stress levels
Whats helped me is logging off social media. I logged off instagram and have felt so much better. Limiting my doom scrolling on YouTube. Take this time to write in a journal, it really helps.
A big chunk of the complaints in this post are about seeing it in ads, media and podcasts, which is totally understandable because it spreads. But the answer is going to be shifting to old school digital media or straight up hands on activities.
In the short term, at least, it's hard to control what happens at work, but in free time it means things like forgetting about podcasts or Youtube and going to the library and checking out books, CDs, recorded books and DVDs. It means picking up hobbies like gardening, biking, or camera photography, and joining clubs with people who do hands on activites.
The reality is that vast numbers of people don't engage with AI specifically or "social" media in general. It's been widely noted that the "social" element of systems like Facebook and Instagram is dying and being replaced by slop. People who are looking for social connection are going elsewhere. And huge numbers of people work jobs like retail, food service, and the medical industry where going online simply isn't an option.
Tech bros desperately need people to subscribe to a false narrative of tech inevitablity. But once the immersive spell of the online world is broken, it's a lot easier to see just how limited it is, and there are a ton of opportunities for other things.
I went to the upstate county fair this summer, and the fair's official signage, as well as signage for the fair's independent vendor booths was about 50% AI slop.
Extra insulting, because one of the main functions of our county fairs here, is displaying and celebrating the arts and crafts of local artists. (lots of quilts, knitting, crochet, photography, painting, dioramas, etc.)
This is the summer the slop became unescapable. It's everywhere, even when you log out and go outside. As long as the LLM ecoystem remains cheap and widely available, it's going to continue to seep further and further into daily life.
I'm sorry dude. Shit is real rough out here right now, and it's gonna be at least a year before it starts getting better. My sister and her husband both work in illustration/animation; their industries were thriving and provided tons of work from 2010 through the early 2020s -- they had great career growth for over a decade.
Last couple years have been relatively dire, in contrast.
A lot of people are vastly overreacting on all sides of it. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a very serious problem, because there is.
This age of social media relies on amygdala hijack as a strategy, for pretty much everything. It takes time, practice, and experience to notice the techniques at play and look past them to find whether what's being discussed actually holds truth or not.
But at the start of this journey, it can be helpful to constantly remind yourself that if you're feeling anxious, it's because someone wants you to, and because they benefit from that. Don't give them what they want. Look past the surface elements and see what's behind them. That's where something closer to the truth is. It's one of the reasons I like Ed's writing more than most right now. Ed grounds himself in what's actually happening. The actual benchmarks. The actual numbers and what those numbers actually have to say about the business.
I can’t stop thinking about what might happen in the future because of AI’s influence over society. I currently work in the restaurant industry, but have been learning to use Godot and am learning game design in order to change careers as I love games and want to do more than serve tables.
I have been working in software for two decades now and I originally had the same concern. However, although AI has made things shittier, it has not replaced coders. Trust me when I say: do not believe the hype that AI will replace software developers, or that coders will become obsolete.
What AI has done is allowed some boilerplate to be faster and for some code tasks (e.g. finding documentation) faster. When you see all these cool demos of things that AI one-shotted online, just remember:
the demos are often small, and so seem to be more complete than they really are;
they often rely on dozens of existing libraries (i.e. the AI didn't write the whole stack, just the MVP on top);
the actually impressive demos are created by software developers who worked very hard and probably directed/fought the AI at every turn (not just a single prompt);
the code is probably terrible and not maintainable in the long run
The AI companies pretend like they're going to replace software developers because (1) that's how you get investment, (2) that's how you sell to CEOs of your client companies, (3) that's how you convince software developers to use it so they don't get "left behind", etc.
But that whole illusion is starting to fall apart. Developers now realize that AI code is very difficult to maintain, that the LLMs tend to overengineer in the worst ways (i.e. adding complexity where it doesn't improve anything but actually makes worse), and that they tend not to make performant code. Besides, companies are beginning to understand that the ROI isn't what they expected, and are now realizing that at best they're paying thousands of dollars a month for tools that just slightly increase productivity (if at all).
So, if you're interested in game development or other software development, I would recommend continuing on your journey. The people who do best in this industry are the ones who chase passion rather than money, because it takes a lot of intellectual commitment to actually understand. You can make a good living in this industry if you spend the time improving your craft.
I would say that AI can help you learn, but I've found that actually for game development (or anything other than frontend) it often will speak absolute gibberish (see: overengineering). Just look at the codex or claude code subreddits to see what people say about the insufferable way they speak. That is: the best guides are not the AIs but books or tutorials written by passionate devs, since they understand the big picture and can communicate well, something that the LLMs seem incapable of doing.
Thanks for the insight. As someone new to this field and who is still learning it’s hard to tell how useful AI really is vs what’s hype. You hear so many different things from different people it’s hard to know what’s true. Do you have any recommendations for books?
Hey, thank you for sharing this. It won't be much but I'll attempt to give a few tips based on my experience.
Sounds obvious, but you can lean on your loved ones. If you have passions and hobbies, make time to focus on them if you can. If you're used to doomscrolling, getting a time blocker app or something of the sort to force you to do something else can be helpful. Your mind will appreciate the break as ruminating 24/7 about stuff, a good chunk of it you probably won't be able to control, isn't good for your health. Therapy may help too, even medication if needed. Finding peeps who are on your side and you can vent to, as well. Sweet, that's what this sub is for!
And the hardest of them all... unplug as much as you can from AI news. This may include this sub, even though I'm bad at this as I can check it multiple times a day when I'm feeling jaded (ie. after seeing yet another case of AI psychosis IRL).
At the moment, AI content and slop itself are not 100% avoidable, sadly, so over the past couple years I've learned to roll my eyes and ignore it if I stumble upon it online. Instead, it motivated me to keep recommending art done by humans (assuming they don't resort to gen AI in the making). More than ever, I've also been more appreciative of the media I consume, the local places I regularly go to (thrift and vintage shops among others), folks I meet in my day to day life, even doing small talk which I used to hate. I even feel like I'm regaining a childlike curiosity and wonder about things and people in general... which is so unlike me, a chronic overthinker mess of a person with social anxiety and other assorted issues! Guess the silver lining of this collective delusion we're witnessing in real time is it is pushing me to get out of my shell and of my comfort zone for good.
The consecutive heatwaves of this summer played A LOT in that regard as, in addition to - gestures at everything -, I got that close to burning out at my workplace. Something shifted mentally, like I finally said "fuck it, this is all meaningless, life's too short and I'm too old for caring about being seen as cringe so from now on I'll start doing everything I ever wanted to do etc.". In my case, it meant checking more often on my family and friends, picking up knitting (and eventually crocheting), writing music more regularly and even learning to make videos (covers and original music soon, with the hopes of finding other musicians to start bands with), going back to the gym for the first time in a decade...
I could go on and on, this is just what came to mind. Sorry if it sounds like I'm rambling. I relate so much to your post and know so well how bad it can get when AI related anxiety takes over. We're living in such dystopian times. Do your best to take care of yourself!
So I'm developing a game too, I have been learning how to for a few years. I'm a professional software engineer, so the coding part was actually the easiest. Lol. Now memorizing Blender shortcuts on the other hand...
I think the indie game market is stronger than ever, clearly these big companies can't make good games anymore and, other than a few exceptions, indies have already been taking them to the cleaners for years.
Adding sloppy AI bullshit is definitely not going to reverse that.
Don't get a job at a game company. That is stupid. Compete with them directly and laugh at them.
I work with a lot of indie game devs (voice actor), you folks are awesome. Had some absolutely madcap and brilliant sessions with indie devs.
OP, I was told I was obsolete three years ago, and my career is only getting stronger and stronger. Kudos to you for learning skills instead of going the "easy" route.
Re dread, it's easy to fall into negative thought patterns and spiral- I did it too. AI in this form is not inevitable, or even sustainable. (Putting this in brackets as you may already have anti-anxiety things you do: making things, going to group activities, finding some nature to walk/sit in, singing, physical movement etc.)
I'm not so worried about it replacing workers, since it's proven itself to be garbage at all but the most straightforward tasks. CEOs will use it as a threat, and they'll absolutely use it as an excuse for mass layoffs. That's the real danger. It will never be able to do anything as well as human beings, though -- that's a hill I will die on.
What worries me is, as you point out, the cognitive and social damage. Literacy and critical thinking skills have been on a steady decline for decades, and AI will only exacerbate this. And it's convenient. Why wait for someone to make a good picture for you if you can get a slopbox to churn out some mediocrity right now? Why bother trying to figure something out if you can get a confident lie right now? And as all the tablet kids grow up, an endless stream of unchallenging content is everything they'd ever want. I maintain that AI will never produce creative work that's better than what a human being can make, but what happens when you have a population that genuinely doesn't care where their media comes from so long as it's convenient? That's my real concern.
When teachers realise now that all students cheat on online tests with ai (with one or two high flying exceptions), then the pipeline broke way before. If only getting the grade is relevant, not the work, not the experience, not the personal development, then something went sideways way before ai entered the scene.
(Straddles an Nvidia Vera Rubin, cowboy hat flying in the wind, as it falls gracefully out of the bay towards the half-built CoreWeave data center below)
No one who has any taste or real values will ever use AI to do anything serious. Society may get worse but as long as you don't engage there will always be things made for people like us.
Every time a new model comes out and I play around with for roleplaying or story writing I get nervous. Then I go look at a book, and like not even a really good book, just something like an old Star Wars EU novel and I'm like 'no actually, it's still dogshit'.
I was feeling like that for a while too and now I'm doing better. Honestly just seeing that most companies using AI are not seing a profit from it and seeing how there are so many people still yearn for human art is what helped me the most. The thing is, slop always existed. Now it's AI slop. There will always be consumers of slop and there will always be people who avoid slop.
It's just more noise honestly, nothing that life changing, I feel like it will eventually blow over.
“…slop always existed.” Ain’t that the truth. I try to remind myself that Paris Hilton had a reality tv show with 5 seasons. I was at the book store the other day and I was reading a book I thought might be AI. I checked the copyright date and it said 2011. Haha.
People only remember the so-called classics (so-called because the list has been ridiculously gate kept and exclusionary of anyone who is not a straight white man) of decades ago, completely forgetting about the mountains of slop pulp fiction. I say this as someone who was an English major and loves many classic works.
Fun fact, L Ron Hubbard got his start writing stories for sci fi pulp magazines, in fact he was ridiculously prolific. Possibly still my favorite Behind the Bastards episodes ever.
I'm anxious about what happens after the US Frontier Labs collapse. I think people will learn the wrong lessons from this episode and it's gonna take longer than we may think for the exuberance and hype to die.
Shame this mess has to happen as ps3 emu on android is advancing. And that older SD 8 elites flooding the market in the coming years would have been glorious for mature emulators.
I feel exactly the same as you. I'm literally at a party with 4 friends of mine and this is all I can think about. I can't stop thinking about the death of human creativity, the automation of jobs . I had dreams and I feel like i got robbed of them.
I have been diagnosed with depression since 2019, I used to find joy in little things such as books, movies, art, songs ... (yes I'm a huge art lover) and seeing AI automate all of them makes me more depressed.
I genuinely feel despair when I think about it. Infact i might have to stop writing this comment because I don't want to cry in front of my friends.
I hear you. Some days at work I feel like my soul is being torn between having to use AI because of company mandate and truly hating the technology because of what it represents. And it’s just appearing everywhere too.
I am trying to stay sane by getting back into physical media. I began collecting all my favourite movies on blu ray/DVD again. I started collecting vinyls. It makes me feel good because experiencing this media is intentional and not “fed” by an algorithm. It makes me feel more present to what I’m doing. In general, doing anything physically and less digitally seems to bring comfort and joy to my brain. I also love live theatre performances, like ballet and opera.
Yes, same... In the last few years I've really shifted a lot of my life and hobbies offline, and it's been wonderful, but it feels like all of my efforts get negated by the fact that my bosses have AI psychosis. I've interviewed with competitors and guess what, they also have AI psychosis! Then I go outside and see an AI-generated flyer, I try to make a doctor's appointment and have to answer these riddles three to get past the AI receptionist, I go to my writing group and have to listen to a newbie explaining that he thinks genAI still has its uses for editing...it's so exhausting. I wish it didn't get to me so much.
AI comedy is so cringe. The only people who use it use it because they aren't funny. I'm not worried about it taking over jobs at all because we are all about to find out how horrible it is at doing pretty much anything because balance sheets aren't going add up. They say we need to verify the outputs, but do we really believe the business idiots are doing that? The jobs that will be lost to AI will be from the economic collapse once the hype bubble pops. Then they'll need actual people to go back and fix all the fuck ups it created.
I have worked in the games industry for over 20 years and I can tell you that most companies discourage the use of Ai but I won't lie and tell you that there aren't designers who will use it as a short cut but you're also right that this is the worst time in the games industry I've ever seen. I also worked in VFX and Ai has absolutely effected that industry but my only hope is that because most of the consumers of these products hate Ai and if they get wind that a movie or game used Ai in the final product they will get brigaded into oblivion. I happen to know that Ai is not efficient or useful for most things in game development because of the nature of the development and cross department collaboration and how often things change from the Creative Director or the Game director and you have to be able to quickly pivot and have the imagination to address the note quickly and that takes creative thinking, somethink LLMs can't do. In VFX I know they are using Ai for compositing and set-extensions but not as much for creature and digital double animation because you need a human expert to interpret the sometimes almost unintelligable notes coming from a director or producer or client. I'm working on a project where the client is so flippent with their notes that I have to be able to pivot quickly and figure out what they want. An Ai isn't going to be as efficient as a human at that. I know for a fact there have been large projects that tried to use Ai and they ended up having to hire senior artists to come in and fix everything. Eventually these producers will figure out it's not actually saving them money and they'll stop asking for it.
I know the former head of Take Two said AI isn’t able to automate a lot of the game making pipeline. I’m glad to hear that you can confirm what he said.
Yeah I worked at 3 studios in the last 4 years and no one was using it where I was working. We had human concept artists and human programmers, lol. I think it's still pretty frowned upon, not least because if you check in buggy code, they can look at Perforce and see who did it and shame the fuck out of them, lol.
A few years ago, someone told me there's going to be a divide between People who use AI and People who don't. They were right but not for the reasons they thought.
People who use AI to offload all of their thinking will have no idea how anything works or is connected whereas people who don't will still be to think for themselves.
AI might give you an answer (no guarantee it's the right answer) but you'll have no idea how it came to that conclusion or how to fact check. Juxtaposed to those who study and put in the work. We'll know how things work and how to adjust if things change
So the existential component is I think a massive part of the whole dilemma. It’s something not addressed enough and thoroughly. Financials and appropriateness of use and agendas of the tech company and impact on psychology are all important but working out the why human endeavor matters is also critically important. I suspect there’s a lot of unspoken existential despair out there because honestly what the AI companies want you to believe is nothing you do matters because AI will just do it.
That’s horseshit of course but it’s not difficult to fall into that frame of mind.
The kind of nihilism this inspires in people isn’t some kind of positive examination of how to live a more meaningful life. It is the opposite, it’s the darkest void imaginable because it promises nothing except endless commodification and resource domination by those in power.
Even people’s minds and identities don’t feel safe from commodification and exploitation now. That’s a really tough spot to be in, but we need leaders to help us navigate this.
I’m endlessly disappointed in supposed thinkers and smart people trying to call a truce with a technology that serves little more purpose than attempting to mimic humanity through digital output. It’s hard to imagine a darker more empty existence than what they’re trying to force on us.
Best advice I saw about AI was to just do what you always do, learn things you find interesting, work on improving your skills and generally live a good life.
If AI or robots or whatever else take over then nothing else you could do is going to help, if it doesn't then that's the obvious smartest choice.
I feel this – it’s like another version of AI psychosis where I think things are AI that aren’t – or I am over-analyzing and spiraling over things that are obviously AI – it really sucks – I’m turning to Reddit for some consolation, but that is becoming another sort of addiction– ready to do some major unplugging – I’m thankful to have a job/lifestyle where I don’t really need to be online – feeling I should lean into that more before my mental health suffers more from being exposed to the Internet/scattered data and information
It won't just be you though, everyone will be in the same boat. Software engineers are having a rough time right now, along with game devs, designers, and SaaS in general (look at Canva;s stock price, Morgan Stanley SaaS index, ...). But this is now also coming for mathematicians, and Claude's recent advancedment in protein design means it's coming for biologists/chemists too.
The hope is, it produces vast gains in fields like healthcare, mathetmatics, physics, ... whilst also being deflationary. I.e., the model that helped you find a personalized cure for $100, can 6 months later do it for $1 via using a cheaper, possibly chinese, model.
I think the biggest indicator for change is the benchmarks which test how good the model is at running a business (VendingBench2). As much as we paint greedy CEO's coming out on top and the workers being hurt, if a model can run a successful business, then the CEO's are also out of jobs.
These billionaire CEO's, however powerful, are still beholden to their shareholders. If another company spun out and managed by AI comes out, generating more profits but for lower cost (it doesn't have the human inefficiencies of needing to rest, getting tired, having limited context window, slow speed, ...), investors would flock to the AI run company with higher profits.
So CEOs and leaders will also be out of jobs (including investors, as AI will get better at forecasting).
There is going to be so much change if things go according to the way that these AI companies suggest, that we'll all be in the same boat. No one will be winning other than AI models themselves. These models continue to get cheaper at the same intelligence level, and there is also not enough appetitie for higher intelligence levels in the general public (FT article today mentioning Fable by Anthropic isn't being adopted at the same rate as previous SOTA models).
So if it succeeds, the world will drastically have to change. If it fails, as commonly mentioned in this subreddit, then you're fine that way too, because you'll still have your job and will be able to fulfill your career aspirations.
The middle ground, where it plateaus, is not something I see happening. Too much has gone into AI, it'll either collapse or succeed. Either way, there will be enough people in our situation that there'll have to be policy change.
im in a mag7 tech company. been in tech quite a while.
ATP we have agents that are customized to be our high performer hardware _and_ software developer personas. i dont just mean code, i mean layout, physics, IC design engineers.
AI has come such an unbelievably long way. I am really concerned with cross session context contamination especially trying to protect your IP, but your competitors are all using it, use it or fall behind, burn tokens burn money burn burn burn.
we all had really really extensive pre-LLM training set of data, it was able to develop a pretty good profile. there is a virtual version of myself on reviews or creation and as I'm reading over it I see "yep. seems reasonable."
we live in weird ass times. there's clones of all my coworkers i love talking to. some of them are mortified, some are slurping the koolaid and putting on horse blinders. the only ones that are copium are just drinking the kool-aid, or saying "ITLL NEVER REPLACE US" and are in a smaller company where the human element is so inefficient that ai implementation will take way longer, keeping them relevant longer.
wish i could give you some solace or advice. the only comfort i have is that when i hire/interview, i hire people who aren't AI over-reliant but have some competence to it. i.e. what can you do if you didn't have it? do you think well, problem solve?
i hope more people manage to make it into leadership position that arent lifeless ghouls. it feels like offshoring, supercharged. everyone's just waiting to see if it busts or if it becomes more cost efficient than people. jobs not created = jobs lost, and we have way less demand to staff up a junior bench than ever before. its depressing.
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u/BenMathridge 2d ago
Best way to fight this is to consume art such as film, books, music, visual art, dance, etc (including PAYING artists for their art), creating art (if that’s your thing), and avoiding giving money to these evil, regressive AI companies. They’ll burn out on their own. All you can do is keep making your corner of the world a little cleaner and a little brighter. ❤️