YHK - yet another hacker news clone

I think the issue I see with that stance is that frontier models can now perform asset generation via deterministic code. This is different than the 3D diffusion models of yesteryear. Is that manner of AI asset generation (which is really just through code generation) worse than other AI code in a project (i.e. resolving this bug)? If so, why? (I do not have good answers myself)

I'd be pissed if I entered a contest (and asking for a refund if I paid to enter as this criteria was not disclosed) thinking that I was allowed to make the best game I could make regardless of tech used, only to find out that my max possible score was 66% because shadow judges were biased against me.

It feels like the old reddit moderator meme where the rules are made up and the points don't matter because all it takes is one salty mod.

IMO just make categories for AI use and not. The hard part is that people will cheat.

It would be kind of like having a traditional woodworking contest and people show up with stuff made with power tools and cnc routers.

I was trained as an animator at one point. The process was to do the storyboards, layout, key drawings, map out the timings, slug out the dialog, and then send it off to a company in Korea that would in-between and produce the final product.

That Korean studio has been replaced by a machine. Fiscally, that is unpleasant for those animators, but they're really talented and now they can also hire such a machine to implement their ideas if they want to.

Disney was doing this in 1930. In-betweeners and the ink-and-paint girls were the machine. Nasa was doing it in the late 40's. Women were the computers.

Putting software into those roles loses us nothing that is human. As you say, all that matters is the output, not the input.

And if you want to do a project where you think the input is what will impress somebody, because you manually assembled 50k bottlecaps, that's still an available form. Sometimes that works and people care a little more because it was done directly.

All of this sort of already happened, dozens of times. Socks, knives, screws, engines, a million different things that used to be about mastery and are now about understanding.

Understanding is hard. Making that the requirement leaves a bunch of people behind. We're going to have to figure out how to support them, we can't keep having a society that depends on the moral value of work when work is unavailable, but as you say, there is no going back.

> Whether what was made is unique, interesting, creative

Not this.

That is not what technology is for.

If you want unique, interesting and creative - you can have it anytime, just like our ancestors living in a cave or a jungle.

Technology is for something else. You can scratch your head with a hammer - that is not what a hammer is for.

This has been the case for far longer than AI has been a consideration. We all know that counting lines of code isn't a mark of quality, and yet we venerate those that put in all the hours to get something done.

I would say you need to go a step farther than that. The output needs to be impactful. Increased MAU (or GH stars, downloads, etc.), lowered support load, lower ops costs, whatever it might be.

I think this will always be the front line of competition.

Who has unique knowledge (dare I add taste?!), and is willing/able to give a project the most focus and time?

This has really emphasized the difference between developing software and building a business.

Developers everywhere are now doing side projects and developing software that would have taken 10 person-years in 2022. They’re discovering the hard way that software alone does not create a business product that customers might pay for.

Developing software is cheap now, but creating a business remains hard. All of the attempts I’ve seen to use AI to develop and grow a business have only turned real customers away.

Similar to all other crafts after industrial revolution. This of course will only be viable for a small and niche portion of software market.

"Why couldnt they hire a specialist for a few days"

Which is question that I think is willfully ignored by the pro-ai crowd.

AI is useful. It helps people go faster at a lot of things. It's also been trained on a scale of copyright violation that exceeds all modern measures of capacity.

The implications of this are willfully ignored by those who stand to profit from it.

It is simply unethical, unfair, and devoid of empathy for society to simply "march forward" and leave behind the millions of people it spent the last 60 years demanding more of.

These problem needs to be resolved before we can morally and socially embrace AI.

We already have a distinction between people who define and design software and people who implement it. Product owners, UX designers, business analysts, solution architects etc

Perhaps you can expand?

I am very interested in discussing and reading about the impact of AI on the job market.

However, I think that topic deserves a separate discussion focused only on the broader economic story. When articles start blending every possible anti-AI angle into one generic critique it gets hard to separate the real difficulties from authors who don’t like the fact that the world is changing.

A common story I’m noticing is that established figures with comfortable positions are terrified of AI, while the newer, younger, less experienced entrants are more excited about what it can do for them. It makes sense: If you spent your career grinding your way up a skill and experience ladder you are naturally going to be resistant to anything that threatens your position in the hierarchy of the world. Having hard-earned skills and a history of having done the hard work was a moar for your career and reputation.

Now a lot, but not all, of those old skills is 80% achievable by a kid with a $20 Claude plan. That moat you spent an entire career building became a lot less valuable for maintaining your position, and it happened suddenly over a couple years.

That’s why it’s difficult to interpret articles like this. It’s hard to separate out the valid critiques from the author’s own rationalization for their dislike of AI disruption.

You see people brag about how "they" "made" something, with neither the qualifications nor the vision to motivate me to care. If I wanted vibecoded slop, I could just cut out the middle man, like everybody else with a Claude subscription.

But this stuff really does shine when competent people such as myself - an expert, gentleman, scholar, etc. - use it for things like exploring a new topic, rubberducking design ideas, diagnosing problems, and sometimes go the extra mile.

Software projects are full of incidental, boring stuff, and it makes a meaningful difference to be able to say to Claude things like "please compare the performance of these 5 different approaches, and show me your notes". But just like a colleague, it has no clue what your actual intentions are unless you tell it, and you can't communicate those intentions if you don't know them yourself - and crucially, you can't know them if you don't have the expertise to know what you actually want.

This doesn't feel like cheating at all, and I don't relate to the choir of disillusioned programmers who feel demotivated by the introduction of LLMs in their workflow. I mean, maybe their work wasn't all that interesting to begin with? I don't know. I get that it sucks to feel replaceable.