I still don't think that's true. It's just the medium that changes here.

A better analogy than the printing press, would be synthesizers. Did their existence kill classical music? Does modern electronic music have less creativity put into it than pre-synth music? Or did it simply open up a new world for more people to express their creativity in new and different ways?

"Code" isn't the form our thinking must take. To say that we all will stunt our thinking by using natural language to write code, is to say we already stunted our thinking by using code and compilers to write assembly.

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miltonlost 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

AI for writing is not like a synthesizer. It's a player piano, and people act as if they're musicians now.

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margalabargala 3 days ago | parent [-]

I totally disagree.

Importing an external library into your code is like using a player piano.

Heck, writing in a language you didn't personally invent is like using a player piano.

Using AI doesn't make someone "not a programmer" in any new way that hasn't already been goalpost-moved around before.

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caconym_ 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Heck, writing in a language you didn't personally invent is like using a player piano.

Do you actually believe that any arbitrary act of writing is necessarily equivalent in creative terms to flipping a switch on a machine you didn't build and listening to it play music you didn't write? Because that's frankly insane.

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margalabargala 3 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, the language comment was hyperbolic.

Importing a library someone else wrote basically is flipping a switch and getting software behavior you didn't write.

Frankly I don't see a difference in creative terms between writing an app that does <thing> that relies heavily on importing already-written libraries for a lot of the heavy lifting, and describing what you have in mind for <thing> to an LLM in sufficient detail that it is able to create a working version of whatever it is.

Actually can see an argument that both of those are also potentially equal, in creative terms, to writing the whole thing from scratch. If the author's goal was to write beautiful software, that's one thing, but if the author's goal is to create <thing>? Then the existence and characteristics of <thing> is the measure of their creativity, not the method of construction.

	▲	caconym_ 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		The real question is what you yourself are adding to the creative process. Importing libraries into a moderately complex piece of software you wrote yourself is analogous to including genai-produced elements in a collage assembled by hand, with additional elements added (e.g. painted) on top also by hand. But just passing off the output of some genai system as your own work is like forking somebody else's library on Github and claiming to be the author of it. > If the author's goal was to write beautiful software, that's one thing, but if the author's goal is to create <thing>? Then the existence and characteristics of <thing> is the measure of their creativity, not the method of construction. What you are missing is that the nature of a piece of art (for a very loose definition of 'art') made by humans is defined as much by the process of creating it (and by developing your skills as an artist to the point where that act of creation is possible) as by whatever ideas you had about it before you started working on it. Vastly more so, generally, if you go back to the beginning of your journey as an artist. If you just use genai, you are not taking that journey, and the product of the creative process is not a product of your creative process. Therefore, said product is not descended from your initial idea in the same way it would have been if you'd done the work yourself.

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biophysboy 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's why I made a caveat that AI is only bad if it limits your creative development. Eno took synthesizers to places music never went. I'd love for people to do the same with LLMs. I do think they have more danger than synthesizers had for music, specifically because of their flexibility and competence.

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leptons 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A synthesizer is just as useless as a violin without someone to play it.

You could hook both of those things up to servos and make a machine do it, but it's the notes being played that are where creativity comes in.

I've liked some AI generated music, and it even fooled me for a little while but only up to a point, because after a few minutes it just feels very "canned". I doubt that will change, because most good music is based on human emotion and experience, something an "AI" is not likely to understand in our lifetimes.