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I hate hearing about it because it triggers some anxiety about my role (SE) changing to the point where it's not something I have any interest in. Producing software in the corporate world is absolutely soul draining; endless meetings, direction from fools, overheads like mandatory compliance/learning, all of the rituals that come and go because someone with authority read some garbage on LinkedIn. Besides pay, the only redeeming quality of the job is that for some part of the day, I get to just be inside my head, working on problems and coming up with solutions. Sometimes a few of us team up and we figure things out together. The software is the fun and rewarding bit.

If AI lives up to its hype, which is a whole other subject, then I expect to see the two things I like about my job vanishing quickly - the pay, and the problem solving.

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As not to take up another top-level post: I am also quite bored of people sharing anything created with AI. I remember when I first saw the AI Jerry Seinfeld video; I was genuinely surprised/amused at what AI was capable of. It's all completely uninteresting now, though. I have friends (some in IT..) sending me scores that ChatGPT awarded them based on what ChatGPT 'thinks' their moral value is. It seems some are completely taken by the appearance of intelligence.

It has at least been interesting to me to reflect on how I can still appreciate media that humans make when I find AI media so repulsive. I did not think I cared so much about what was behind the picture or video I was watching, or that someone spent real effort to make something. To be honest I still don't understand it - maybe it's none of those things.

[potholereseller]

> It has at least been interesting to me to reflect on how I can still appreciate media that humans make when I find AI media so repulsive.

A relevant analog is the arguments about whether independent bands were more real than those who had signed with labels -- about whether money/popularity corrupts art. I never took a side on that, but I do think that most music isn't worth listening too, simply because it's so saccharine and cliched.

So to generalize, Sturgeon's Law is evenly distributed: 90% of everything -- including sci-fi, music, and AI-generated stuff -- is worthless. 90% of AI content is slop, because it is prompted by people who have no taste whatsoever; not bad taste, just zero taste; not everyone is gifted. In the hands of people with refined taste (whether good or bad), they can use AI to produce that 10% of worthwhile AI stuff; but those with refined taste know how to keep AI content from distracting from the larger work, so you never know they are using AI at all.

I don't think society-wide refinement of taste is possible; Sturgeon's Law is here to stay. Instead, we need a corrolary to Sturgeon's Law, which provides a solution to the problem: you can't overturn Sturgeon's Law; you can only build filters to avoid the crap. I can't say how to build such filters, but we can start thinking about them.