Post #903474
2026-01-24 21:28 UTC
Replies (6)
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@sarna@types.pl 2026-01-24 22:17
@munificent@mastodon.social I agree with a lot that you wrote, especially about the time & effort's relation to meaning. however, I think you're being too charitable to AI in this post. the assumption is that the utility is there - that using AI is actually faster, or you can get a better result in the same time. or that the generated code has more value (err, utility) than mental models in people's heads. I don't see it in the industry at large (where are all the new apps? [1]), and I don't see it in studies [2] (at least the ones not sponsored by microsoft/openai/whatever). I get it that it's smart to assume that The New Model will solve everything in a few weeks. as it's always claimed, but.. do you really want to believe in that? 1: https://mikelovesrobots.substack.com/p/wheres-the-shovelware-why-ai-coding 2: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089
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@isntitvacant@hachyderm.io 2026-01-25 00:02
@munificent@mastodon.social well put! (another element of meaning, other than time, might be “vulnerability”: in the sense that all craft is rehearsal for later work, making something for someone else gives them a marker of where you were and how you thought about that craft. Which can be scary! You put a piece of a version of yourself into the work— as you were when you made that work — and you trust the receiver will value that piece, just as it reflects how you value them.)
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@andrewrk@mastodon.social 2026-01-25 05:33
@munificent@mastodon.social I found it insightful. Thank you
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@skybrian@mastodon.social 2026-01-25 05:44
@munificent@mastodon.social I'm collecting metaphors about AI and one I kind of like is that, when you're using it to clean up your codebase and improve code health, it's sort of like using a pressure washer. You can use it to clean your steps but you wouldn't use it to clean a painting. A lot of the code we write is not that delicate and can stand up to pressure washing, if it has good tests and all that. I can take satisfaction in getting things nice and clean even when it's not hugely meaningful art.
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@zenmumbler@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-01-25 11:33
@munificent@mastodon.social My professional time is mostly dominated by pure utility and the way I've been compensating for a very long time is by having the development part be creative in some way and it's why leaving (parts of) that outsourced leaves basically nothing left. By reading your thoughts on the utility vs meaning things got more clear for me as well. Thank you.
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@oatmeal@kolektiva.social 2026-01-25 11:44
Quoting @munificent@mastodon.social on utility without meaning, or how #AI drains meaning from creator's own work [...] Today, with the help of ChatGPT, I could probably put together a feature-length screenplay in a tenth of the time. It might even be an objectively better screenplay for a better movie. But because I made the screenplay in a tenth of the time thanks to ChatGPT’s help, it would hold only a tenth of the meaning for my brother. If my hypothesis that meaning comes from time sacrifice is true, then by making us more productive, AI eliminates meaning. The claim that AI can "put together a feature-length screenplay in a tenth of the time" is internalized #AIHype - a myth AI companies peddle because their valuations depend on it. As The AI Con documents, "this promise is highly exaggerated." What matters to corporations isn't whether it works, but that the threat can "devalue labor" and make "jobs of huge swaths of labor redundant and unnecessary." Hollywood studios wanted to force writers "to rewrite scripts created (typically, by producers) with AI tools," paying them less "even when the rewriting is so extensive it might as well be a new script." AI is "meant to be a labor-breaking" device that relegates "humans to babysitting scriptwriting...algorithms, available on call but only paid when the media synthesis machines glitch out." But AI remains a promise, not a reality - a glorified Mechanical Turk (to use the orientalist phrasing...) in many fields its being introduced. Modern AI "plays the function of hiding the massive amount of labor needed to make any modern AI infrastructure work." The AI Con documents that Kenyan workers making less than $2/day filter toxic content for ChatGPT, often ending up with #PTSD. "It's not an exaggeration to say that we wouldn't have the current wave of 'AI' if it weren't for the availability of on-demand laborers" performing tasks like data labeling, content moderation, and "red-teaming." The hyped cost savings are impossible to deliver when you account for the massive, underpaid, traumatized workforce required to make AI function at all. See https://kolektiva.social/@oatmeal/115820713773172781 #TheAICon #genai