It's interesting to notice which fields try to garner positive publicity by emphasizing that they DON'T use AI. There is increasing negativity about AI generally but it is quite revealing for an organization to try to make their refusal to use it a big part of their identity. Maybe I can start offering artisanal software development services to go after that sweet hipster dollar - code done 100% by hand, cruelty-free.
1. Most of the negativity about AI seems to relate to the economic effects, not the technology itself.
2. From what I've seen, the average person is still unable to identify AI created content, websites, etc. The website this post is about is clearly vibe coded (looks like everything including the copy is from Claude) but I'd guess that only a small fraction of the people who see it will recognize that.
Yeah. LLMs (and the associated hype) are changing my job for the worse. While I agree it's useful sometimes, it's lead to a huge amount of pressure to eliminate the fun parts of my job (design and coding) and replace it with more soul-sucking drudgery (code reviews). There's also been a general increase in pressure that seems like it could lead to burnout through decrease in slack and/or stress from a reduction in quality and understanding.
From what I see, average people can't even identify "slop". Lots of people use AI at work, to ask questions, etc. They just don't like the idea that this might cost them their jobs, and that a small number of people are getting ridiculously wealthy.
How do you define average person here? I have friends who are not into tech, but use instagram or ChatGPT. They can tell. It’s just matter of using it enough times.
For the work, I don’t think it’s just “costing the job” fear. It’s so many more things. Someone everyone is even more overworked, the amount of babysitting they require which everyone just seem to not talk that much about. Design docs and code that are increasingly weirder to read, sometimes make sense and other time look like they make sense but not really, the docslop, commit messages slop, I can go on.
It’s mix of people issue where it’s race to bottom to increase utilization, which leads to less than ideal experience. Technology is great but it’s definitely getting more trust than it should when we accept the output. I think everyone would be much happier, and technology would have much better reputation if everyone just slows the f down and uses it bit more reasonably. What is reasonable, you figure that out by slowing down and actually thinking about the problem you are trying to solve … not just prompt your way out for everything.
> Design docs and code that are increasingly weirder to read, sometimes make sense and other time look like they make sense but not really, the docslop, commit messages slop, I can go on.
The "average person" I'm referring to is not an engineer/developer. It's an office worker, grandmother, HVAC technician, etc. Non-techies who use the internet for entertainment and information.
From where I sit, most of them can't tell an AI-generated image from a real one (when the latest models are used), don't read something and think "it looks like Claude wrote this", etc.
I think its just matter of time. We can tell, not because we are into tech or not-"average person", but because we have seen outputs of these systems enough times as well as actively use it.
AI is in growth phase, and as more people use it more they will be able to tell particularly as they interact first hand with it.
Going back to your original point, people don't hate "slop" because they think it will cost their job (maybe some people). People hate slop, because they are forced to read it most of the day and if you want to do your job well closely babysit, verify and rearrange. The overall expectation of quality has declined over quantity.
I'm not saying its not productivity booster. But the way its used to increase quantity and then map it to productivity. This results in to two things (1) more work for people so worse WLB (2) increased dissatisfaction with work because the quantity is high and maybe you can call it X% productivity boost, but maybe with X/2% productivity boost you may get Y% quality boost, wlb and satisfaction with your work.
> AI is in growth phase, and as more people use it more they will be able to tell particularly as they interact first hand with it.
Have you ever looked at the content and interactions on social platforms like Facebook? I hate to be that guy, but it's not only that the average person is just not that smart, it's that the average person doesn't care.
If the AI content tells them what they want to hear or seems informative or entertaining, they'll eat it up.
It's the same reason some of the most obvious scams continue to fool millions upon millions of people.
Into which of those categories do we place "company guts its support-system into uselessness by firing all the people and putting in 'AI' which mainly runs customers in circles"?
Is it an economic effect because the company was enticed into it by the promise of cost-cutting, or is it a technology issue because the "AI" system can't handle exceptional situations? Perhaps it's a third thing, where "AI" is an excuse for one side to violate a social/legal norm.
We put it into the "irrelevant" section because AI is no worse than a human support drone who has no useful knowledge nor permission to act. It is one of those cases where AI is only tangentially related to the actual problem.
