Nothing that he said is just him espousing the truth. It is the world as he and all the other AI-pilled people wish it to be. It is a world they want to convince everyone is inevitable. There are still a lot of people outside of tech bubbles that don't like the direction AI is going and don't want to embrace what these companies are doing or how the government is handling it.

And honestly, do people really think everyone is just going to become an "energized creator"?

AI is not as big of a productivity boost as compilers were but it is not zero. Back then, SQL was created and marketed as something “managers could use”, another parallel to the current cycle. This whole hype cycle is something we’ve seen before and IMO, we should know better how to handle it this time around. It’s a bit disappointing to hear the same arguments every time.

This has nothing to do with programming or productivity. I am addressing the fact that people like DHH and his fans are in the habit of framing the future as written and that you can either embrace it or get crushed. Embracing it is giving OpenAI, Anthropic, et. al your approval to keep on going. I'm not denying that AI can do the job a lot faster.

Keeping the comparison to compilers, people in the 60s refusing the transition weren’t crushed, their skills were devalued. The open models work well enough at coding to keep up without buying OpenAI or Anthropic products.

People who are expert at assembly are still extremely valuable.

But as a percentage, there are a lot fewer of us then there used to be.

Given that we know he's literally a fascist (it's in all his political posts) that jives. "Embrace what we want or get mercilessly crushed" is a very fascist position.

i have nothing else to say to you other than good luck

This is really looking at the problem from the wrong angle. It’s not that we don’t need all those degrees. The problem is that tech companies are making so much money that it makes other industries practically irrelevant when it comes to return on investment. It has thrown the economy completely off balance.

I was talking to the turbine engineer at lunch one day and the way he put it is this:

There are about five companies who hire people with his background. They all go through boom and bust cycles together. When he graduated they were in a bust cycle and nobody was hiring new graduates, so he found a job in software. He was glad because the pay and working conditions are better, and at the time (a few years ago) it seemed like software engineering was a safe career with lots of employers, which turbine engineering was not.

Really interesting link, thanks!

Strongly agree. Perhaps an economy shouldn’t be organized around money.

How would you propose an economy not be organized around money? Any examples you could think of that have worked well? I would also ask that in doing so if you can consider how these changes would work with today's nation states and the scale of 8 billion people or so too.

Regardless of what answers there are to an alternative (there are many, with both flaws and benefits that could work better or could be worse in practice), the question “how would it work at scale” is probably impossible to answer thinking in the framework of what currently exists. The people who benefit from the existing systems would make it impossible for anything else without disrupting power, which, if you view an economy built around profit as something that could not be sustainable into the far future, could be necessary.

This comment isn’t trying to be biased any specific way, just trying to be realistic while also saying alternatives exist but would likely be disruptive for better or for worse.

What will happen is not about what people prefer to happen or not. China grew rapidly too and the west is fearful of their success and that is why Americans are ramping up their Ai and drones and all that believing that spending money will deliver supremacy. There are/were many paths to success traditionally speaking and somethings will work and somethings wont. It is not a decision based phenomena. Its an outcome based on zillions of variables. Whether money will win or not and that everyone will benefit via AI is matter of conjecture.. Who knows.. Place your bets!!

I’m not sure people in the west are scared of China. I think it’s more so about the method in which they grew their economy. The downside for China’s model is the west can simply not buy their products except where required so there’s nothing to really be scared of.

What’s to be scared of anyway? Isn’t China a peaceful nation that abides by international law?

Absolutely not.

The PRC has land claims against almost every bordering country, which are many in number. It does wolf warrior diplomacy, surreptitiously moves border posts, and so on.

It also pretends to abide by international treaties but when a ruling against their absurd claims in the South China Sea were refuted, they rejected the ruling.

In the age of AI it uses from the same playbook as Russia to sow discontent and create internal conflict within countries in Asia.

It captures and kills dissidents abroad.

I find answers to this question meet idealogical hand waving more than concrete action plans or examples of success. YMMV

Let's start with the basics. Let's ban unlimited money from politics first (ban SuperPacs and return to 90s era political rules).

If rich people want to influence politicians, there should be hard caps on money and advertising.

There's nothing wrong in saying too much money is now destroying too much of the good parts of our country. Starting one step at a time is better than trying to build a massive reform that goes no where.

Once money in politics calms down, the next steps should become more obvious as the noise from the Billionaires no longer drown out our attention.

Perhaps you meant "financialization" instead of "money", b/c money is literally what makes up an economy.

No, labour and resources are what makes up an economy. The money is "only" the primary mediator

You can have billions in nominal units but it is inflated to worthlessness when resources or labour disappear

> The money is "only" the primary mediator

I have nothing to say to this sort of disingenuous characterization.

economy != money, economies have existed before markets have existed

Wouldn't that mean the cost of metering it is more than they make from metering it? I don't think that is the case.

Hacker News doesn't like to ruffle any feathers.

Silicon Valley is full of sociopaths and cowards.

You are both using a different definition of sharing I believe. When people have an expectation of privacy, use by others should be forbidden. Tech has gone completely off the rails with the use of private data.

This kind of thing is one of the reasons I really hate how AI is coming to fruition. These companies get a whiff of something valuable and they use their vast resources to take it for themselves. For everyone else, the only recourse is extreme secrecy.

They did use “AI” but not an LLM. If they had, I am sure OpenAI and friends would be shouting it from the rooftops.

More than that I hope considering what it costs to make the thing.

That is just an extremely defensible lower bound for a single person.

Some kind of Lê Chatelier principle applies where if everyone has access to AI then its value is actually diminished somewhat.

I came in first place by a mile just holding the gas button. Not much if a “game” but I guess the elements are there.