AI coding tools are effective for many because, unfortunately, our work has become increasingly repetitive. When someone marvels at how a brief prompt can produce functioning code, it simply means the AI has delivered a more imaginative or elaborate specification than that person could envision, even if the resulting code is merely a variation of what has already been written countless times before. Maybe there's nothing wrong with that, as not everyone is fortunate enough to work on new problems and get to implement new ideas. It's just that repetitive work is bound to be automated away and therefore we will see the problems in Rich's rants.

That said, luminaries like Rob Pike and Rich Hickey do not have the above problem. They have the calibre and the freedom to push the boundaries, so to them the above problem is even amplified.

Personally I wish the IT industry can move forward to solve large-scale new problems, just like we did in the past 20 years: internet, mobile, the cloud, the machine learning... They created enormous opportunities (or the enormous opportunities of having software eat the world called for the opportunities?). I'm not sure we will be so lucky for the coming years, but we certainly should try.

This is all just cynical bandwagoning. Google/Facebook/Etc. have done provable irreparable damage to the fabric of society via ads/data farming/promulgating fake news, but now that it's in vogue to hate on AI as an "enlightened" tech genius, we're all suddenly worried about.. what? Water? Electricity? Give me a break.

The about-face is embarrassing, especially in the case of Rob Pike (who I'm sure has made 8+ figures at Google). But even Hickey worked for a crypto-friendly fintech firm until a few years ago. It's easy to take a stand when you have no skin in the game.

Not to be pedantic but AI absolutely sent those emails. The instructions were very broad and did not specify email afaik. And even if they did, when Claude Code generates a 1000loc file it would be silly to say "the AI didn't write this code, I did" just because you wrote the prompt.

False equivalence. He isn't a hiring manager, and AI _has_ been used to justify hiring fewer entry level employees.

If you haven't heard of Rich Hickey, then you're fortunate to have the opportunity to watch "Simple Made Easy" for the first time: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtk3HCgTa8

> A human writing twelve polemic questions, many of which only make sense within their ideological worldview or contain factual errors, because they wanted to vent their anger on the internet has been considered substandard slop since before LLMs were a thing.

Maybe by people who don't share the same ideological worldview.

I'll almost always take human slop over AI slop, even when the AI slop is better along some categorical axis. Of course there are exceptions, but as I grow older I find myself appreciating the humanity more and more.

Rich Hickey designed Clojure.

What factual errors did you the human notice

AI has an image problem around how it takes advantage of other people's work, without credit or compensation. This trend of saccharine "thank you" notes to famous, influential developers (earlier Rob Pike, now Rich Hickey) signed by the models seems like a really glib attempt at fixing that problem. "Look, look! We're giving credit, and we're so cute about how we're doing it!"

It's entirely natural for people to react strongly to that nonsense.

Why are you even here then? Go ask your LLM of choice to spit out 100 articles for you to read? You can even have it generate comments!

I think it is likely your wish will be fulfilled, ai slop posts and spam emails for everyone, at a scale that will be monumental.

Many people are, indeed, being forced to use AI by their ignorant boss, who often blame their own employees for the AI’s shortcomings. Not all bosses everywhere of course, and it’s often just pressure to use AI instead of force.

Given how gleefully transparent corporate America is being that the plan is basically “fire everyone and replace them with AI”, you can’t blame anyone for seeing their boss pushing AI as a bad sign.

So you’re certainly right about this: AI doesn’t do things, people do things with AI. But it sure feels like a few people are going to use AI to get very very rich, while the rest of us lose our jobs.

Why not both? When you make tools that putrefy everything they touch, on the back of gigantic negative externalities, you share the responsibility for making the garbage with the people who choose to buy it. OpenAI et al. explicitly thrive on outpacing regulation and using their lobbying power to ensure that any possible regulations are built in their favor.

> "AI isn't doing things, people and corporations are..."

Where have I heard a similar reasoning? Maybe about guns in the US???

I'm sympathetic to your point, but practically it's easier to try to control a tool than it is to control human behaviour.

I think it's also implied that the problem with AI is how humans use it, in much the same way that when anti-gun advocates talk about the issues with guns, it's implicit that it's how humans use (abuse?) them.