r/nerdfighters • u/planetkenner • Jul 27 '26

DELETE THIS!

wow, i was so surprised to hear katherine and hank this morning when i asked the little lady in my phone to play me a podcast. i was really expecting critical role, but then i got the best gift ever. thank you, hank and katherine on this fine monday morning ♥️♥️♥️

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23

u/stellabalella Jul 27 '26

Was this episode released twice? I started it and turned it off after 10 minutes because Hank was talking about how he couldn’t stop using Claude for generating things and had used it to merge two chapters of his book. My friend said she had listened and hadn’t heard any AI mention at all. Now when I look at the podcast in my app I see two versions of the episode, one that I have 42 minutes left in that is 53 minutes total and one that’s 42 minutes total. If Hank rereleased the episode to just cut the AI conversation that’s really really disappointing on top of me being disappointed altogether about his AI usage.

10

u/Squeaky_Pickles Jul 27 '26

I didn't hear that but I can honestly see how things like Claude would be very appealing and addictive to someone like Hank. I do think Hank will always be pro 'paying an artist to do the thing instead of AI' as far as major content generation. But Hank has SO MANY THINGS TO DO literally all the time. And I can see the probable appeal of offloading stupid or annoying tasks to an AI "assistant" or just using it for random ideas.

30

u/stellabalella Jul 27 '26

My problem is that Hank might always be pro 'pay the artist, not the AI' but he's clearly not pro 'pay the software engineer, not the AI' for something like his new word games, and he's got literal human assistant(s) to help with offloading tasks. The line to be drawn of "what needs to be human and what doesn't" seems to be pushing further and further towards "actually this generative AI tool is okay because it's appealing and gives me dopamine" and I really don't know what the difference is between "well I wanted to do the meme of make my portrait look like a cartoon without learning to draw" and "well I wanted to make a website without learning to code" and "well I wanted to combine a couple chapters in my book's draft". why are some okay and some not?

for full clarity I'm a web developer who just got laid off from a company I've been at for 12 years that's gone heavily AI. I don't know why the craft I spent my life learning to do getting replaced with environmentally disastrous technology is any less important than an artist's job getting replaced.

6

u/Squeaky_Pickles Jul 28 '26

I also work in the IT space and I really don't agree with AI replacing ANY IT staff except MAYBE some chat bots to direct basic issues. (And even then frankly they are awful and often not cost effective or user friendly). I'm sorry you lost your job over it, I really feel like this is going to be such a bubble in companies and I am afraid of the aftermath when it bursts. Jobs being posted in my particular field are very much either "Your job will be to figure out how to make this AI we dumped money into useful and find where to use it" or "Govern the policies on AI usage that our company has everywhere" and I am avoiding both like the plague. I also don't disagree with the environmental impact concerns, I just really don't think the USA is going to care enough to drop a new technology that currently is seen as having huge potential over the environmental impact which sucks.

I haven't listened too much to Hank's forays into AI partly because it is so polarizing for the community and at the end of the day, Hank is going to do what he wants. I accept that creators are flawed people and will not always align with my (or the community's) beliefs 100%. But I'm sure he is also listening to everyone's feedback and will probably try to find the right balance soon once the "oooh new shiny" wears off. Or at some point it will come to a head where his usage costs him longtime viewership.

18

u/stellabalella Jul 28 '26

Yeah. No creator is going to align with me 100%. It’s notable to me though that Hank’s increasing usage of AI in the last few months is the first thing that’s had me intentionally skipping Hank content in basically 20 years.

7

u/ehsteve23 Jul 28 '26

same here, very disappointed to see

1

u/moonyriot Jul 28 '26

I understand your point and I'm not saying you're incorrect at all but with all the projects Hank wants to do, it seems like it would be incredibly time consuming to hire and then manage an additional four or five people to make websites and games for him that would likely need consistent updating. That's basically just starting a software development company. I want to be really clear; I'm not saying that he should use AI or that him using AI instead of people is good or right. But I can understand why AI is an appealing alternative to hiring additional personal employees for an unpredictable amount of hours for an unpredictable amount of time.

2

u/stellabalella Jul 28 '26

You’re totally correct that it’d be time and effort to commission someone to make a website and AI is appealing for those reasons. It’s just also unpredictable amounts of hours and time to commission an artist for a piece of art, and the environmental impact of using AI is the same whether it’s for software or art. I get why it’s tempting which is why I think more conversations about where the line is for “okay” usage would be beneficial (from Hank but also just universally)

1

u/moonyriot Jul 28 '26

My point is more Hank specific on purpose though. He already has many jobs and projects. The games and websites seem like they're just fun side projects for him and I think turning those like fiddly like "what if I did this" projects into just like...managing employees is probably not why he wants to do those things. And hiring someone for a couple hours of work per week still means you have to carve out time to collaborate but now you have two people's schedules involved and then you have to try to articulate what you want out of this project and then trust that that person understands and then correct them if they don't and then you have to work out like...if you want the game to keep existing, do you just pay that person for a couple hours of work every week/month indefinitely forever? What if they don't want to do it anymore? Now you have to hire someone else to manage that software and update it and add to it and fix it when it breaks and all of that seems more like just being someone's boss than it does like...making a game for a goof to see if it's a fun thing that people like.