Is it propaganda if we can see it feel it and use it ourselves? I'm not so sure.

The hype is real, the bubble is real, but that doesn't mean it's meritless.

I have no issues that an isolationist US uses it. I have issues if the US foists the garbage on the EU, just like it now wants to dump Biden's Ukraine war on the EU by insulting Zelensky and deliberately provoking a protective counter reaction in EU leaders.

EU/British leaders are very naive. Just like getting everyone dragged into that Ukraine conflict, the US now drags everyone into AI and makes them pay for it.

Just like the war hype, the AI hype will collapse. In one case the MIC made the profits, in the other case it will be tech bros.

We're not talking about building an ecom store, though, are we?

We're talking about building useful tools. Small things, that work in a way that makes sense to the individual.

Something that could be churned out in a day or two by a competent dev, but is completely out of reach for Joe public.

That's where we're at.

> That's where we're at.

Tools to build web apps and web pages without coding knowledge have been around for over 2 decades. Microsoft Frontpage allowed uses to build a website using a WYSIWYG editor.

Frontpage and other page builders had a much much lower bar for capabilities though..

Even Wix and Squarespace are "building block" tools when you start to layer functionality on top of the designs.. What you can do is limited by what the developers of those tools put in them.

AI lets people build much more bespoke things, and build things that others haven't necessarily thought of (or haven't built tools to build)..

And that can definitely be a double-edged sword of course, because a non-developer might not know when they're wading into dangerous waters...

It could go so wrong, but the vectors for disaster are already innumerable in this world we live in.

I prefer to think about the ways it could go right. To empower people to create is the very purpose of computers, no?

Let's empower a gorilla to handle a chainsaw and see how that goes.

Yeah, but does this really empower people?

Of course ‘letting someone do what they want’ seems like it’d be the most empowering thing, what’s more empowering than free will. But doing it this way will not give you any knowledge or skill, if you’d ever need to code without an AI or would need to understand a deeper concept you’d have no ground to stand on.

Basically it’s the instant gratification vs delayed gratification but for programming. Is instant gratification empowerment? maybe for a moment.