> I think the big AI players really need a coherent plan for this if they don't want a lot of mainstream and eventually legislative pushback.

That's by far not the worst that could happen. There could very well be an axe attached to the pendulum when it swings back.

> Not to mention it's bad business if nobody can afford to use AI because they're unemployed.

In that sense this is the opposite of the Ford story: the value of your contribution to the process will approach zero so that you won't be able to afford the product of your work.

You can be poor and creative at the same time. Creativity is not a luxury. For many, including myself, it's a means of survival. Creating gives me purpose and connection to the world around me.

I grew up very poor and was homeless as a teenager and in my early 20s. I still studied and practiced engineering and machine learning then, I still made art, and I do it now. The fact that Big Tech is the new Big Oil is besides the point. Plenty of companies are using open training sets and producing open, permissively licensed models.

>> I also am wearing machine-fabricated clothing and enjoying a host of other products of automation.

> I'm not really a fan of the "you criticize society yet you participate in it" argument.

It seems to me that GP is merely recognizing the parts of technological advance that they do find enjoyable. That's rather far from the "I am very intelligent" comic you're referencing.

> The very least you can do is not impede those trying to fight for those futures if you can't/don't want to fight yourself.

Just noting that GP simply voiced their opinion, which IMHO does not constitute "impedance" of those trying to fight for those futures.

> I'm not really a fan of the "you criticize society yet you participate in it" argument.

Me neither, and I didn't make such an argument.

> You seem to forget the blood shed over the history that allowed that tech to benefit the people over just the robber barons. Unimaginable amounts of people died just so we could get a 5 day workweek and minimum wage.

What does that have to do with my argument? What about my argument suggested ignorance of this fact? This is just another straw man.

> We don't get a benficial future by just laying down and letting the people with the most perverse incentives decide the terms. The very least you can do is not impede those trying to fight for those futures if you can't/don't want to fight yourself.

What an incredible characterization. Nothing about my argument is "laying down", perhaps it seems that way because you do not share my ideals, but I fight for my ideals, I debate them in public as I do now, and that is the furthest thing from "laying down" and "not fighting myself". You seem to be projecting several assumptions about my politics and historical knowledge. Did you have a point to make or was this just a bunch of wanking?

There is a way for us to both get what we want out of software development without ideologically crusading against each other's ideals. We can each have these valid opinions about how generative technology personally integrates into our lives.

Of course, that might be less and less true about our work as time goes on. At some point in the future, hiring an engineer who refuses to use generative coding tools will be the equivalent of hiring someone today who refuses to use an IDE or even a tricked out emacs/vim and just programs everything in Notepad. That's cool if they enjoy it, but it's unproductive in an increasingly competitive industry.

I dunno, I take a more McLuhan-esque view. We’re not here to save the world every single time repeatedly.

I do say the same thing about the bomb. It was very cool science and engineering. I've studied many of the scientists behind the Manhattan Project, and the work that got us there.

That doesn't mean I also must condone our use of the bomb, or condone US imperialism. I recognize the inevitability of atomic science; unless you halt all scientific progress forever under threat of violence, it is inevitable that a society will have to reckon with atomic science and its implications. It's still fascinating, dude. It's literally physics, it's nature, it's humbling and awesome and fearsome and invaluable all at the same time.

> Not paying any attention to societal effects is not cool.

This fails to properly contextualize the historical facts. The Nazis and Soviets were also racing to create an atomic bomb, and the world was in a crisis. Again, this isn't ignorant of US imperialism before, during or after the war and creation of the bomb. But it's important to properly contextualize history.

> Plus, presenting things as inevitabilities is just plain confidently trying to predict the future.

That's like trying to admonish someone for watching the Wright Brothers continually iterate on aviation, witnessing prototype heavier-than-air aircraft flying, and suggesting that one day flight will be an inevitable part of society.

The steady march of automation is an inevitability my friend, it's a universal fact stemming from entropy, and it's a fallacy to assume that anything presented as an inevitability is automatically a bad prediction. You can make claims about the limits of technology, but even if today's frontier models stop improving, we've already crossed a threshold.

> Anyone who says they do is a liar.

That's like calling me a liar for claiming that the sun will rise tomorrow. You're right; maybe it won't! Of course, we will have much, much bigger problems at that point. But any rational person would take my bet.

What are you talking about? He goes into plenty of data, domain relevant definitions, specific cases, etc? Links to reliable sources for every numbers claim, of which there's several per paragraph, shows graphs, pictures, and does a lot of math (all of which I manually checked myself on paper as I went through). Also, the writing style is very much not ChatGPT-like, especially with all of the very honest corrections and edits he's added over time, which an AI slop purveyor wouldn't do.

The deep analysis starts at this section: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake...

You can't just dismiss anything you don't like as AI.