AI Automation

I didn’t have as much empathy for the artists, I will admit, when we first saw the releases of generative ai art with stable diffusion, dall e, midjourney, etc. As we progressed towards text generation, then it came for writers, etc. The next steps are of course other office knowledge work that involve text / images / moving bits around. Automating moving atoms around seems harder to automate moving bits around. The abstracted-away thinking required to do all this complex stuff, I suppose is hidden away in the GPU mines and the design by their genius human creators.

i should’ve had more empathy for the creatives. i apologize for my predisposition to neglect, nay, internally shit on the creatives. we are all humans, desperately trying to survive and find meaning. i have neglected thee. i do not ask for your forgiveness, i merely want to express my views.

it’s always when they come for you, that you start to learn to care about those that have already been gotten who you have neglected to care for.

So I admit I am very much not cut out for the world of Software Engineering in a capitalist society because it is very competitive and ruthless imo. Like many people, I don’t particularly like that, and I find it painful to constantly adapt and match other people’s levels. I believe I will forever be too soft and not good enough.

I admit to having skill issues and not grinding hard enough. I enjoy the grind sometimes, but for me personally, I would like to believe there will always be a place in the software industry for people not of the top echelon of problem solvers. However, I am always idealistic and maybe that is why I prefer to be alone a lot — I am unable to accept reality (at least in this domain) for what it is — a constant race, with ruthless competition, and a constant need to grind regardless of your innate talents (which I would consider lacking compared to others).

This comes in light of more and more AI news, somewhat jokingly, but also somewhat seriously making me question whether I should continue down the path that I am currently trying to go down. Will there be a career in software development for me, the human, in the next 5, 10, 20 years?

Cognition’s team is absolutely cracked

Many people say that the progress in AI will continue to accelerate, as the historical data might seem to project. Many say that current paradigms of model architecture (transformer) and training design (sgd, backprop, etc.) won’t lead us to agi or whatever. Maybe there will be a plateau, but many optimistic about tech don’t seem to think that way.

I do have a predisposition to technology optimism. Vitalik makes a convincing case here.

I think a question to ponder, however, is whether this future is for everyone? Is this future that the nerds are creating, is it for themselves or for everyone, including the luddites? I’m not sure. There is perhaps an implicit belief that the luddites will just die out and the new generations will naturally adopt the new technologies, as they do, and join into the current modern landscape.

Maybe this is just a cry for help, from a person who is half-refusing to accept and adapt to reality.