I've finally understood what my beef with AI is

And it's not what you think.

Beyond everything that's wrong with AI as it's currently deployed - i.e. the fact that's basically owned and run by nefarious surveillance capitalists in bed with fascists, and it's mostly used to replace honest people and things with cheaper mediocrity - what's wrong with the technology for me finally clicked in my head today.

My first - indirect - encounter with AI was a few years ago - quite a few years in fact, come to think of it. I went to a forum for mechanical keyboard enthusiasts and asked whether someone remembered some obscure folding full-size keyboard I used to own back in the 90s. I lost that keyboard years ago and I'd been trying to identify which brand / model it was for years. I figured if anybody knew what it was, it would be one of that forum's dwellers.

So I described the keyboard as best I could, and someone immediately came up with the correct device. Wow! I had been looking for so long, and just like that, this man gave me the answer! I thanked him profusely and told him he had a good memory. "Nah" he said, "I just asked AI."

That instantly deflated me. This guy really hadn't done anything other than forward my question, and that elusive keyboard of mine was one question away in some search engine. I should have been excited to finally find out what it was, but somehow instead it felt hollow and totally pointless all of the sudden.

Fast forward a few years, the same thing happened with my builder the other day: I asked him if he could build a boardwalk in the backyard, so my disabled wife could go get some fresh air safely. I started explaining what I wanted and sketching things on a piece of paper. At some point, he simply got on his feet, whipped out his cellphone, shot a picture of the backyard and asked ChatGPT to draw a boardwalk to my specifications. And in 2 seconds flat, it came up with a photo of the finished thing. And for the second time, it felt totally hollow, and the whole project felt meaningless. It was what I wanted for sure, but it's now how I wanted it - if that makes any sense.

And today at work, I was playing with a model on a powerful server we just bought, to evaluate how to use AI locally for coding purposes, and at least avoid running cloud services from fascist America. And yeah, it works: it produces code that, if not very good, is plenty good enough if I'm very careful, particularly for the amount of time it takes to spew out the code.

And it felt completely, utterly hollow.

And then it hit me: my job as a traditional software engineer is coming to an end. I'm very senior, so I'll be among the last ones the chopping block, but I'll get the chop alright. And it's okay: I've been obsoleted. It's fine. It's progress. It came quicker than I anticipated, but fundamentally I have no issue with that.

But here's what's bothering me: there's no effort needed into anything anymore. You get what you want with zero effort and zero sense of accomplishment. So what's the point of anything really?

I'm a lazy SOB, so I love the idea of getting shit done without lifting a finger. But somehow everything has become so effortless that it leaves me empty. Kind of like asking a computer to solve a crossword: it'll be done in less than a second and it'll be super efficient, but it makes the crossword pointless.

For instance, I'm a fan of 360 photography. I take pride in reworking the nadir in all my shots (don't ask...) AI could clean it up in seconds and probably do a better job than me with Gimp. But what's the point? I don't want to do that! It's tempting, but then I'd be totally disinterested in the photo after AI is done cleaning it up. So I do it myself.

Likewise, if I have a technical problem, I'll look for the answer the traditional way, with a search engine. I know I could probably ask Google's AI thing and it would probably give me the right answer rightaway, but then what would I have learnt? And more importantly, what's the point of learning anything if the answer is always there? So I refrain. And yet it's tempting...

AI makes everything pointless and bland, and it leaves me empty and not wanting for more.

The other thing is this: I know people say our jobs won't disappear, they'll change: we won't code anymore, we'll direct a machine that codes for us. We'll apply our experience to guide a machine that will do the grunt work for us. It's like we'll all have the equivalent of a very dumb university student with the entire world's knowledge at their disposal, pissing code for us and talking too much, but never complaining.

But you know what? I'm not interested in doing that. It's fucking boring to me - the same way I would find my professional life completely boring if I had an actual university student code monkey I could legally give orders to. I simply have no interest in doing that.

I do marvel at the technology that underpins AI, and what it can do is fascinating - even in its current, completely fucked up and dumb-as-a-brick state. I've done AI work in the 80s, so I appreciate how far we have come, and I never thought I'd see anything like that in my lifetime. And I totally get that people are excited by the technology. But me? I find the whole thing intensely uninspiring. Impressive, yes, but boring to tears.

Just like the proverbial horse carriage driver, I've been obsoleted by cars. And again, it's fine: it's progress. I get it. And yes, as a good, experienced horse carriage driver, I could probably recycle my career and become a decent car driver for the few years I have left on the job. But I'm simply not interested. If the horses are gone, I'm plain and simply bored out of my mind, however good the cars are.

That's my beef with AI. That's what I realized today: it's a bright future I'm utterly indifferent to, that holds zero excitement for me.

And quite frankly, considering the tidal wave of it that's hitting the entire world right now, it left me quite depressed for the rest of the day. So I hit the bottle tonight. It's one of those days I guess...