[chasd00]

My wife is a former journalist and was beginning her career when the web began to take off. All the old editors and reporters in her industry blew off the Internet, blogs, and web publishing in general. They thought no one will ever quit buying papers, it was a staple of modern life! She tried to clue them in but hit a brick wall ever time. I feel like history is repeating.

I use AI regularly, where it works it works very well for me. I've helped two people now who are not developers get started putting things together using claudecode. Nothing earth shattering, some dashboards of stock prices and an html clickthrough to pick a college backed by a bunch of spreadsheets. They're having a ball and learning a lot.

I'm not fightning it, just learning where it works and where it doesn't and teaching others the same.

/I'm 50 and have been in tech professionally since i was 20 so have been around this block once or twice

[watwut]

Internet caused loss of jobs in journalism and also consolidation of power. There are few billionaire owners and that is it. Small independent journalism as such basically stopped to exist - it was replaced by basically hot takes. Low key institutional fact checking does not exist anymore, local news dont exist anymore.

So, it would be entirely correct for someone back then to hate the changes and say it will destroy most of journalism. Because it did.

[logicchains]

>Internet caused loss of jobs in journalism and also consolidation of power.

This is completely false; compare reporting on the initiation of the Iraq war vs the recent Iran war. Before the internet the flow of information was more centralized and heavily controlled.

[Guthwine]

I think there's a difference between 'the flow of information' and 'journalism'. The journalism/newspaper industry is indisputably smaller than it was 20 years ago and the newspapers that are left are all being consolidated into huge corporations with little to no ties to local communities.

[Paradigma11]

As far as i remember the medias position on the Iraq war was far more diverse than is presented today.

[bonesss]

Before the internet there were competing regulatory and commercial and cultural forces keeping The News the news.

Decentralized uncontrolled flow can also be seen as free rein for select power players who can manipulate the system. It changes, but not necessarily positively, how media power consolidates. And without scrutiny or national corrective pressure, that consolidation of power creates a very different perceived media system than is experienced.

The combined Senate report on the 2016 election interference from Russia — anti-both sides, lying to both sides and claiming it was the other — should have triggered a strict and meaningful reaction. Now we are in a spot where our kids are being mainlined Al Jazeera and Russian Times propaganda filtered only through uninformed useful idiots in short form video while they do their makeup or emulate Joe Rogans podcast. It’s pay for play media, with no scrutiny, bothers make it easy to heat, juice, or manipulate chosen content, hosts, and themes.

Power consolidation at the local/national level prevented it at the global level. At the global level those power structures move around axes we can no longer even name in polite company, and have fully corrupted the political discourse.

[d0liver]

Getting people into coding is both cool and also not specific to AI.

[chasd00]

yes i agree, but keep in mind they're not getting into coding. They don't have the time for that, they just want to get something to work for a need they have. These two aren't building control systems for a nuclear reactor so don't panic, they're just getting something to work for themselves. Even the most simple use case is very empowering for them.

[echelon]

Your wife is right. History is repeating itself. And not even for the first time.

Horse carriage drivers -> Cars

Print media -> Internet

Drafting -> CAD

Music -> Electronic music, DAWs

Film photography -> Digital

Traditional film special effects -> CGI

Hollywood nepotism -> YouTube / TikTok / Creator economy (there are more millionaire creators now than movie stars)

In each of these cases, there was a subset of people that did the previous thing that hated on the people doing the new thing. They had every opportunity to adapt, but chose not to. They thumb their nose at it as everyone else jumps on board.

This time around, it isn't just practitioners hating on it. The internet has enabled a bunch of cling-on performative folks that aren't even artists, engineers, etc. that love to dog pile onto the hate.

It's really funny because I've shot lots of films over the last few decades. When people criticize my AI films, I ask them what they've made. Not only will a lot of them proudly tell you they've never made anything, they'll then double down. They'll say that if they were to hypothetically make something (which they won't), it would be using the old tools and that I should be ashamed of myself for using AI. Despite the fact that I have years of experience using the tools they're describing to me.

I don't even get it. Not even putting in the effort to try, yet telling me that my enormous wealth of experience is wrong and that I'm unethical and my creative output is "worthless".

It's some kind of sick comedy.

[cousin_it]

> When people criticize my AI films, I ask them what they've made.

They're saying that your contribution is negative. Even if their contribution is zero, zero is still better than negative.

[dml2135]

You give examples of transitions that happened, but you have made no argument about how those transitions made us better off. It is not self-evident that a change in technology is necessarily an improvement.

[echelon]

> but you have made no argument about how those transitions made us better off.

Are you kidding?

> Cars

I make weekend trips to the beach and mountains. I can have a nice big house and drive around the metro and visit all kinds of places. I take my family and my dogs with me.

> Internet

The best thing in the entire world. The highlight of my life. My career, my entertainment, how I met my wife. I don't know what you're on about.

> CAD

Pretty much all materials, mechanical, consumer, and industrial innovation. You're welcome.

> Electronic music, DAWs

Dude, most of my favorite music is this. Most of my favorite indie artists only exist because of this.

> Digital

I take so many photos. I wouldn't if it was stupid film. Memories are amazing.

> CGI

Jurassic Park.

Lord. Of. The. Rings.

I use CG in my films.

I wish I could wave a magic wand and wish all of you to a different earth. It's super annoying being around so many negative folks all the time.

[wffurr]

>> Holy shit, dude. Are you kidding with me?

Absolutely not. I'd take it on a case-by-case basis, but cars, the internet, and film CG at the very least are not purely improvements to the world.

Many cities, especially in the US but elsewhere too, have been effectively destroyed as places for people by changing to accommodate cars.

The internet democratized publishing and connected people like never before, including the cranks and nazis.

CGI: Star Wars prequels. Ian McKellen crying on a green screen set.

Heck as I sit here and type this out, I even have a take on DAWs and digital photos. DAWs have made for a lot of soulless music based on loops and samples instead of actual musicians playing. Digital photos have created an enormous mountain of images that we can only sort through with AI now; it's totally devalued any particular photograph to worthlessness.

[pepperoni_pizza]

> Horse carriage drivers -> Cars

I think you're badly missing the point.

It is true that car drivers replaced horse carriage drivers and car mechanics replaced the people who took care of horses and what not.

But in the horse carriage vs car metaphor with AI, people are not the drivers and blacksmiths, people are the horses.

How many horses do you see around lately?

[TrnsltLife]

Unless you're living in the Flintstones, people are not the horses. Engines are the horses.

Carriages had drivers and passengers. Those human functions are still present in cars.

Yabba dabba doo!

[worldsavior]

What is the transition now? Science and whatever someone with a computer can create -> AI prompting?

[metaltyphoon]

Thinking -> Pay something else (AI) to "think" for you

[logicchains]

Small business ownership/consulting. AI can't own a business because they're completely unaccountable. Even embodied AGI would never be given human property rights, because they can't be punished/held accountable by the law when their weights can be infinitely copied and reproduced anywhere (digital immortality).

[quaverquaver]

...but one of your examples has had disastrous consequences. Sure cars prevailed but they have changed the climate and let to unfriendly development patterns. Likewise social media may make people less happy, less likely to couple etc. Novel tech solves problems but can create others. We can surely afford to move deliberately at least, particularly in education.

[SubmarineClub]

Hollywood nepotism -> YouTube / TikTok / Creator economy

Certainly seems like an apt comparison! Personally I think we should just ban AI if it’s going to primarily facilitate the production of slop-shit like TikTok.

And despite the touts insisting on how useful and amazing these tools are, I have yet to see anything of true value be produced. Slop-shit vomit factories indeed.

[tiahura]

50, lawyer, and it has completely revolutionized my workflow. Just shake my head at the denialism.

[beej71]

Do we really need lawyers? They're very expensive compared to LLMs.

[justonepost2]

How about when you’re 53 and unemployed on subsistence UBI?

[marris]

I will do the pro-social thing of wishing that resources were more scarce so that the resources I hold were worth more.

[pepperoni_pizza]

There will be no UBI.

[justonepost2]

Probably correct :)