alt Hacker NewsWhen AI first happened, I was afraid I was going to eventually lose my job. And while I've been lucky since, many did, and that hurt a lot. When people are losing something to automation, regardless of the economics of the situation, you cheer for the humans, or at least hope that society keeps being fair to those who are most affected.
Now I see communities being affected. When you kill PRs, you not only kill the code contributions, but also massively impact the other, non-tangible contributions like ideas, eyes on code, etc. That feels way worse.
I'm conflicted, confused and afraid, HN. Look at what I just wrote, yet I use claude and deepseek and all the skills and complex harnesses and MCPs and whatnot... But all now seems like a transition phase. Transition to f-ing what though?
A lot of questions cannot be answered unless we dedicate a meaning to our lives. Human touch? Too late? Also: I liked a song and it was sonos. I unliked it after discovering. I feel so stupid, so often.
Sorry for the unhinged digression.
I love Ladybird (have a sticker on my laptop to prove!), I hope they thrive.
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> Now I see communities being affected. When you kill PRs, you not only kill the code contributions, but also massively impact the other, non-tangible contributions like ideas, eyes on code, etc. That feels way worse.
These "contributions", while they did exist in small quantities, mostly were not actually what you've described there.
Instead, those boiled down to unsolicited opinions, hostile takeover attempts, value extraction, general drama and just overall overhead over simply building code.
This was not always the case, but the GitHub model of building FOSS (and removal of all friction) certainly made it the new default.
Said model was always unsustainable, but the burn rate made it sustainable enough so that we could just throw more humans at the problem to replace the burnt-out ones.
AI pushed the burn rate over the replacement rate.
=> We will likely see more projects adapt this or a similar stance I think.
First off, to have conflicting feelings about something is really normal and doesn't immediately point to a problem, it's extremely human, and I feel similar to you to. I'm a creative + programmer, I hate to see what's happening in some communities yet I too use agents for development, it'd be like avoiding Google + SO when they first appeared, feels like there is a clear "before/after" moments with those, and with LLMs as well.
I don't really have anything useful to add here, I think, just that you aren't alone in feeling conflicting feelings here. New things usually are like that, comes with incredible benefits in some areas yet seem to strip humanity away from others, some people use it to produce fluff and crap, others essentially gain new abilities and use those to build even better stuff. I don't think there is any universal truths here, sadly.
You can stop at any time. It's an unfortunate reality that many will not pay much mind as long as it's other people who are being harmed, but why support something morally and financially when it's now destroying something you personally care about?
It doesn’t help to know that using and supporting private LLMs is only making openai/anthropic/google/etc even richer. I myself cannot justify its usage.
Side question: what's wrong with Sonos playing a song? Are they generating AI music now?
> When people are losing something to automation, regardless of the economics of the situation, you cheer for the humans
As in cheer for the humans because they've been liberated from the drudgery they have lost?
AI first happened in the 1950s
Is cursing not allowed..?
> Transition to f-ing what though?
The future is a bit fuzzy, always. That said, here's my take on it.
> Transition to f-ing what though?
Not jobs. Those will be gone once ai can do them cheaper than humans. ai can already do many (most?) of them better than humans. The jury is still out on the cost aspect. Judging by r/LocalLlama, the lower cost is not that far off. There may be some structural adjustments around compute pricing before that happens, though.
In the EU, humans will probably be ok. They have a strong tradition of focus on human needs. Because of lower average salaries [1] than the US [2], human employment will likely carry on longer as well.
In the US, those folks that have capital will likely be ok. They'll be able to purchase services from ai companies and invest in ai companies and corporate armed forces (ai-populated, not human) to protect the Haves. Those that don't have capital? Who knows? America hates poor people, women and minorities.
China? No idea. Though I hear that their demographics are upside-down, so there'll be fewer people to support over the long-term. That they'll supply the robotics and goods for the rest of the world is not in doubt: cheaper electricity from solar/wind, advanced ai and robotic tech, science and industry moving forward while the US regresses, hard.
India? Hard to say. No social net of any consequence. Not enough capital to go full ai/robotics, human labor way cheaper than ai/robotic labor at the moment, so maybe they'll survive as that last major bastion of human work for some time to come. But their economy is growing, and they have a lot of people, so at some point they'll come to that same fork in the road. Hopefully they'll have serious social safety nets by that time.
Africa? In a lot of ways, they're similar to India on the human labor costs side, so their future hasn't been written yet either. India can probably fend off an invasion by rapacious US corporates with ai/robotic armies looking for resources because of sheer numbers, but Africa, fragmented, is a different story. Maybe China will be their friend? If you think this scenario is outlandish, look into the history of European companies colonizing the world. You didn't think the East India Company with its massive private armies were government-owned, did you? Likewise with the Spanish/Dutch/Portugese expansions. The govt. takeovers didn't happen until much later, tens of decades later.
South America? They're an interesting case. Brazil may take a trajectory similar to the EU. Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay too. The others are a ?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
> Also: I liked a song and it was sonos. I unliked it after discovering. I feel so stupid, so often.
This is asinine. Keep depriving yourself of things you enjoy I guess?
I think your response is reactionary.
how was open source managed before GitHub ? you had to find a mailing list, be involved in the mailing list - ask questions, make a proposal, then create code after -- code goes through x rounds in the mailing list. finally it is merged if it suits direction of the project.
this willy nilly of opening pr's while not being an active member of a community I would say decimated open source.
"I was afraid" .. "hurt a lot" .. "I hope that" .. "that feels" .. "I'm conflicted" .. "I'm confused" .. "I'm afraid" .. "human touch" .. "I liked" .. "I feel so stupid".
Maybe, just maybe, you're not thinking rationally/logically about the situation and instead are mostly operating on emotion and feelings?
>But all now seems like a transition phase. Transition to f-ing what though?
It feels like being in the middle of a tornado. But I think it helps to turn off screens, sit in a desk, and calmly remember first principles and consider them slowly.
Quoting obama, "reality has a way of catching up with you".
I see a lot of talk, but iOS is not delivering a decade of features and fixes on each yearly release. Literally no one does, if anything people are complaining that existing functionality is breaking down. So it can't be true that we're at 10x productivity, and this fact will eventually catch up with us.
Let's be human, and remember that many people are emotionally invested. Juniors want this to be a chance to shine in a market that otherwise rejected them. CEOs placed their bet on AI and don't want to walk that back. Seniors want to signal that they are not obsolete. AI companies will poison discourse. But all this smoke will eventually clear.