Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

[fnoef]

I love technology. But I'm no longer optimistic about the future. It seems like AI is not going to go away, and instead of building reliable software, managers seem to push people to use AI more, as long as they ship products. Everything else is being destroyed by AI: art, music, books, personal websites. Why read a blog post, when Google AI Summary can just give you the summary? Why read a book, when you can just get AI summary of it? Why pay artists for music, when you can just generate endless amount of AI music?

And even things like "doing day to day chores" are being automated away with tools like AI assistants. The only thing you are left to do is to eat and take a sh*t throughout the day. How should people make money? No idea, as in the "prosperous future", everything is replaced by AI.

So my question HN: What's the point anymore? Why keep going and where to?

[embedding-shape]

Do you read a book just so you know what happens at the end, or because you like the journey there too? Do you read blog posts "just to know" or because you like reading?

Sure, if you don't like reading, then it's great you don't have to. But personally I like to read, and be taken on an adventure by writers, that's why I read, I don't read just so I "know what happened".

So everything remains the same, nothing has changed. Nothing been destroyed by AI, it only seems to have destroyed your own perspective.

[fnoef]

You don't get it. You, and I, are in the minority. How do you expect authors to keep writing, when the market will be, eventually, flooded by AI generated slop? It's the same with coding: I no longer see point to write OSS by hand, as every day, 10 projects appear on HN front page, that are 95.9% AI generated.

Becoming a successful writer / musician, is already hard. With software, it was easier, but in my opinion, it will become hard as well. There will be individuals in the software development who are like Taylor Swift, because they know how LLMs work, and how to optimize them to squeeze one more KPI. The rest will just be nobodies.

And sure, if you think you are an extraordinary person, or you were born in the right environment, then you probably don't have to worry. But I'm an average Joe, who wants to live an average Joe's life, but it's being taken away from me. And while the select few might have access to a live Taylor Swift performance, or a personal reading of the latest novel by a struggling author, the rest of us are going to be fed AI slop.

[mmarian]

Sounds like you're getting burned out by too much hype-chasing. Follow your interests, and you'll always discover something that AI hasn't solved by itself. And keep in mind that people have always had these concerns whenever something new came along - photography, computers, etc.

[fnoef]

This is different. AI is not a "personal computer" or a "digital camera". AI is a change in perspective of our entire society, how it works, and what we define to be human or human-made creation. The end goal of AI is to abolish all work possible. In a world where there is no work for the common man, I'm afraid to imagine what is left there.

[WillAdams]

Remember that your perception of the past has been filtered by what survived Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) --- the problem is that this is now doubled with a layer of AI, so it's something like:

90% of everything is AI-generated, of the 10% which is left, 90% of it is crap, leaving just 1% of articulate, interesting, well-crafted content.

So, either work to create that 1% of interesting content, or filter/curate to find it.

I will note that there is a _lot_ of interesting old work which has dropped off the radar --- Hermann Hesse's _Magister Ludi_/_The Glass Bead Game_ was a book which greatly inspired me in my youth (arguably, it's why I use programming tools such as: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor ) --- read it?

[cpt_sobel]

> destroyed by AI: art, music, books

Some people crave the connection to the human experience through your examples. And personally, I wouldn't care in the least about any "work of art" created by a model. A model could produce the sequel to Grapes of Wrath, but I wouldn't care, because what experience did it have to motivate it towards it?

[MSFT_Edging]

A model can generate an image of a room, but a model can't work off a sense of nostalgia visiting grandma to create a feeling of that room.

A model can generate a dance song, but it cannot feel the bass in their chest to know why the bass is there.

Art is about the human connection.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

> How should people make money? No idea, as in the "prosperous future", everything is replaced by AI.

If we taxed land ownership a la Georgism and then taxed negative externalities like pollution, we could give everyone UBI and probably kick back and take it easy for a bit.

Of course this would require a global democratic mandate bigger than the world's ever seen, so I'm not waiting up on it.

[fnoef]

I predict global slavery to emerge sooner than UBI will become a reality. Call me a pessimist if you wish

[perilunar]

There's no reason Georgism requires a global mandate. Any level of government that levies taxes can replace their current taxes with land/resource/pollution taxes.

In most countries the national government levies the most tax (usually as income and company taxes), and pays out the most in benefits, so they are the level that needs to change most. There are no global taxes that need to be replaced, just local, state, and national.

[prewett]

UBI didn't work for the Communists, can't see how it's going to happen in a fractious democracy.

I think a the biggest "global democratic mandate" ever seen is functionally a dictatorship... And apart from the Communists, dictatorship don't have the sort of priorities that lead to UBI.

[ilya-pi]

I struggle to think this is not an advertisement written for ClawdBot, if so — please consider that ethics of this post is unclear.

[fnoef]

I just saw it recently and it made me depressed. Not affiliated and didn’t use it myself.

[elric]

What makes you think that?

[flashgordon]

Im confused. Are you asking how to make money or how to spend your time if money was not a concern?

Answering the second question - I can find 48hours worth of things to do in a 24 hour day and none of them would be about work or just lazying around (nothing wrong with it). Life has so much to offer!!! Yeah AI can produce things. But theres a reason id consume human generated art. And thankfully real deep mastery still takes effort and passion!!

[cherry19870330]

AI can do a lot, but it can’t live your life for you.

It can’t raise your kids, explain your choices to your parents, apologize and mean it, or face consequences when things go wrong. And most importantly—it can’t take responsibility or go to prison for you.

So maybe the point isn’t productivity anymore. AI does the work. Humans carry the liability.

[carlosjobim]

One of the most revolutionizing life skills is to learn to seek out the good instead of learning to avoid the bad.

For great books and music, there is probably never a need to read anything published after 2020, or even after 2000. There's more than you will want to read in your lifetime. There's more than you can ever listen to. You'll get tired of music as a whole before that.

Here's some things AI can't do for you: Relationships and interacting with good people, every kind of sports and physical endeavour including any adventure you can think of, enjoying the perfection of nature. Psychedelic experiences and spiritual experiences. All of these require very little or no money.

Human art has always been an imperfect imitation of the creation, and the same is true for anything AI makes.

[tungstenVapor]

Maybe a rough analogy: why take a train when you can fly? Flying is faster and often cheaper. If efficiency were the only axis, trains should’ve died long ago. They didn’t. They became alternative infrastructure, used when people care about cost predictability, comfort, scenery, control, or just preference.

AI will do the same thing. Summaries won’t replace books, generated music won’t replace artists, and assistants won’t replace doing things yourself. They’ll replace the lowest friction default. Everything else shifts from “mass” to “intentional”

That doesn’t mean fewer humans have value, but instead it means value becomes less generic. The question isn’t “what’s the point anymore” , it’s “what survives when optimization stops being the only goal?"

[hxugufjfjf]

Pick up a (combat) sport. It’s the only thing AI can’t touch/ruin in any meaningful way. At least until robotics get to human level or better, and still then I don’t think robots playing football or doing jiu-jitsu is something people are gonna enjoy participating in or watch. Much like there is no market to watch two non-humans play chess, because who cares other than for benchmarking performance or some ulterior motive.

[huevosabio]

The universe is infinitely detailed and incredibly complex. These machines are and will remain for a while anchored to solving problems that we as a species have solved before. Seek the problems and tasks that are novel, that are groundbreaking and meaningful. Seek the boundary of knowledge and craft, what neither human nor machine has done. Seek the problems that require both humans and machines.

[AnimalMuppet]

> instead of building reliable software, managers seem to push people to use AI more, as long as they ship products.

That can work for some things. Some things don't actually need reliability. That automated tool that's going to help a dozen people in accounting? Yeah, it's got a buffer overflow, which also can be used for a DOS attack, but who cares? (Unless someone like an AI exposes it to the internet...)

For things where reliability does matter, AIs may be a fad for a couple of years, but it won't last, for exactly the reasons you mention. For a bunch of things, reliability really matters. For those places, you cannot be replaced by AI. Migrate to those places.

That leaves the problem of the next couple years. You may need to look for places that understand, today, that reliability matters more than fast slop.

> Why read a book, when you can just get AI summary of it?

I mean... for books (and movies) that I'm mildly interested in but don't want to take N hours to wade through, I've been reading the Wikipedia summaries for a while. AI is here now, but I still go to Wikipedia, because I actually trust it more than the AI summary.

[0xCE0]

The point is to go beyond LLM training set. When the knowledge of LLMs, books, expert conversations etc. ends and cannot answer to your questions, you begin to feel where that boundary begins. From that line on, you are alone, and you can invent/discover something novel. Nothing is promised though, and it is the hardest thing to do, but at least the struggle gives a feeling of purpose.

[kevinfiol]

There's a good CCK Philosophy video about AI Art that I think is pertinent here [1]. From my layman's observation, AI is forcing us to reflect on the kind of work we do, how it fulfills us, and maybe even exposing the danger of exclusively finding fulfillment from employment.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT-bIYFdq9I

[skybrian]

To put this in perspective: AI stuff is about talking to ghosts. Yes, there are a lot of things ghosts can do, but they lack something due to being immaterial. Robots are still pretty limited.

There are lot of maintenance chores that ClawdBot can't do. It's not going to cook for you, rake the leaves, shovel the snow off your sidewalk, or pressure-wash your steps. You can still find some satisfaction in doing these things.

[fnoef]

That’s my point. Technology is a dead end now. The only thing left to do is go back to doing mundane physical work in order to feed yourself.

[ml_visoft]

Imho there are still tasks that can't be done by AI good enough. Wouldn't let clawbot handle my personal relationships. Not even scheduling a football [or dota2] game. Yet alone navigate job. So, maybe level up the goal post? Try do something not-easily-done by AI? Select from your fringe interests [if core is AI powered already]. Anyway, it is a relevant question these days.

[1attice]

Existentialism might say, "there isn't one; there never was; the meaning you felt has gone somewhere else, like a kite suddenly slack on the string."

You have to find out where the winds are blowing, especially your winds.

Retrieve your kite and find another hill. <3 is what I am doing. Not leaving industry exactly, but reshuffling my sources of meaning

[drcongo]

Feels a little mean that people are flagging this, I wake up every morning thinking the same thing. I've started reading Humankind by Rutger Bregman in the hope of waking up feeling different.

[0] https://rutgerbregman.com/books/humankind

[jonwinstanley]

Agreed, after years of software development only in the last couple of months have I started to think that maybe I need to reskill.

My current role should be ok for a few years, but hard to know if we will need any developers in 5 or 10.

[tim333]

Art music books and the like are still there. You can always ignore the AI versions.

Whenever tech has replaced jobs like agriculture when machinery came in people found things to do but probably couldn't foresee working as programmers or influencers or what have you.

It's probably heading for sci-fi type stuff which should be interesting.

[paperplaneflyr]

Going to the example used thousands of times, maybe the horse drivers thought the same way, but guess what? now we have cars, race cars, super cars, flying cars. The engine kept changing, car markets kept evolving. People kept adapting. Adapting is the only way or the Penguin way :P

[kjok]

Maybe humans can focus on cybersecurity and fraud? That’s not going away with AI

[muzani]

Extrinsic motivation vs intrinsic motivation.

I don't draw to do better than the AI, I do it because I like drawing. You have more free time to do what you want.

But maybe the goal was never to build the thing, it was to impose your individuality and uniqueness upon others.

[boxed]

> Why read a blog post, when Google AI Summary can just give you the summary?

Because the summary is often wrong, and the summary might not even be the point?

> Why read a book, when you can just get AI summary of it?

You've been able to read a good summary by a human for most books on Wikipedia for decades now.

[gethly]

Stop consuming mainstream media and you'll feel more sane.

[jaredcwhite]

The only way to win is not to play. Opt out of everything. Total ban on usage of anything genAI. Trust me, you'll still be mad at the world sometimes, but in your own life you'll be far happier.

[jjgreen]

No point, buy tinned food and head for the darkest part of the forest.

[FrankWilhoit]

The point is to cultivate the ability to distinguish between real and fake. Soon enough, that ability will be extremely rare, and for the people who really need it, nothing else will do.

[item007]

Per my understanding.

AI makes things cheaper and simpler, but real human-made/produced goods will become a luxury in the future.

[runjake]

Because it's interesting and fun.

[wlswo]

Efficiency is not the same as meaning. If you only valued the output, you’ve already lost

[flowerthoughts]

I remember back in the day, the days of chisel and hammer. I could feel the stone, and the impact of the hammer vibrating into my hand. It was pleasant, and I could feel that every hit really meant something to shape the future of the stone, and thereby the building. Customers and contractors alike told me how great it was to see me work that stone. So I kept swinging that hammer.

Then I was told about some electrical chisel that was supposed to make my life better. Sure, I made more money, but the work was gone. It just shakes; it doesn't vibrate. I get numb, not proud. I have to take breaks, because my hands can't handle it. It's awful. What's the point, I asked?

But then I started talking to my colleagues during those breaks. I even discovered I had a relative in common with one. While chipping away at stone, no one ever wanted to stand close to me, and I had spent all this time proudly creating stone chips all day long! I still chip away at stone sometimes, but only when there's no one else around to talk to at breaktime.

---

You are not going to be able to stop change. The world never stood still, it's just that changes happen step-wise, and it's unlikely any one step affects _you_ profoundly. This time, the step affects you (and me.) You are standing in front of a steamroller and shouting "stop!"

We'll find a new way to be humans. It won't look like the Instagram times. It won't look like the Myspace times. It won't look like the Rolodex times. It'll be new. What can you do with it that makes you happy?

[adrianwaj]

"The golden rule of clean architecture is to strive for high cohesion and low coupling."

Perhaps communities will sprout up following that rule?

Regarding money, one needs to ask themselves what will be the impact of tokenized assets?

Perhaps being able to take ownership of kibbutz-like places will give them a sense of belonging and purpose. Doesn't matter how much technology there is, people need to live somewhere and will adapt by finding a place they can optimize for happiness. It'll be like starting a game of Civilization from scratch but with all the advanced technologies intact.

People may also go back to the early-human modes of survival of the first-nations groups. Digital and electric technologies aren't healthy things to be around. Do you want to live in the range of a 10G antenna or near a massive solar array? The naturalists may end up happier and healthier than the tech-heads. It's about taking/using what works for you and leaving the rest.

Worth noting that if someone really had an answer to your questions, would they state the truth here?

How do you know the robots won't come and just kill us all when they can because we have no power/influence/value? Where will people migrate to in order to avoid that? Antarctica? The moon? Underground to avoid weaponized satellites?

Conscience and consciousness really needs to grow with technology, really that's the challenge of today. Always has been.

How will people support the sick, old, disabled and retarded? Start there and work backwards, or how does one avoid those things altogether somehow and go beyond Homo Sapiens?

[downboots]

Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?

A gramme is better than a damn

[markus_zhang]

I firmly believe that the future is going to be dystopian -- thus I think that techs, especially low-level programming and hardware RE skills are essential.

[the_jizzler]

only thing left is... to take a sht

Oh what I wouldn't give to push one out, you entitled pos -- AI.

[4b11b4]

Hopefully your perspective will change over time, because it's short sighted.

My main critique is that we don't do everything merely for the "end" of it, we do it for the "why" or the journey.

No IA system will ever provide the "why".

Also, the humanity will develop an immune system for slop.

[dspillett]

> [chucking out slop instead of quality software]

I'll still program. I'm barely touching current "AI" other than certain bits of code completion that are on by default in VS and are the right mix of occasionally useful (saving a few tens of keystrokes) and easy to ignore when not. When it gets to the point where I can't compete without using LLMs heavily, I'll have to do something else. Perhaps wait tables somewhere with Spanish customers as I'm trying to learn the language, it won't be much or a pay cut because by the point where someone of my years can't compete at all, almost anyone will be able to do a shite job with LLMs so programming will be heading towards being a minimum-wage job anyway.

> Everything else is being destroyed by AI: art, music, books, personal websites.

Yours doesn't have to be. I started writing bits to go online again after many years not bothering. It isn't intended for public consumption, I'm deliberately doing nothing that would be called SEO in fact I'm going anti-SE in some ways, though it isn't hidden should I chose to pass a link to someone or if they decide to pass it on further. It is intended for me and a select few, if someone else finds it somehow and likes it then good the them, and much of the point of making it is the joy of making something. Everyone else using LLMs isn't going to take that from me.

> Why read a blog post, when Google AI Summary can just give you the summary?

Because the summary may be wrong, or technically correct but with entirely the wrong tone or missing key details a summary should have. Or because you want to read the post - you don't have to use the summary.

I don't read the summary generated as part of most searches these days, reading them is optional. I don't make effort to stop them being made though (using porn mode, adding “fuck”/“fucking” to search terms, etc.) - hopefully making them waste resources on generating things that are never used will et noticed and they'll ramp that down a bit at least for accounts like mine.

> Why read a book, when you can just get AI summary of it?

Before AI, did you just skip to the last few pages to see what happened? If not, then just keep reading like you did before.

Avoiding the slop books that are flooding the market ATM might be more of a concern, but there was plenty written before the LLM bubble started to keep you in things to read for a lifetime.

> The only thing you are left to do is to eat and take a sht throughout the day.*

Other hobbies. I like trail running (or if in a slower mood, country walking), AI isn't going to stop me doing that. HEMA and other activities with friends too.

> How should people make money? No idea, as in the "prosperous future", everything is replaced by AI.

That is a completely different question to the rest where you are asking about things that you would do for enjoyment, and is a bigger societal and philosophical concern than I have time to chew on right now…

> What's the point anymore?

Same as it was before: do what you need to do to survive, then do what you need to do to enjoy any remaining time after that. Perhaps I'm helped here by being back on the up after a couple of years recovering from proper burnout: I know the way things are going won't make me feel worse than that, and I survived that. Current politics and other social issues away from tech on the other hand…

> Why keep going?

When all hope feels truly lost, at least keep going out of spite.

> Why keep going and where to?

To paraphrase The Wild One: Where have ya got?!

[worldsavior]

People still appreciate human art. People don't appreciate AI art because it's fake. If you enjoy AI art, you're probably fake and have no appreciation. That's my take.

Just remember that AI can not create art, it can only remember art. AI is not a human, AI is a probabilistic function.

[kouteiheika]

> If you enjoy AI art, you're probably fake and have no appreciation. That's my take.

I enjoy AI art. I don't enjoy AI slop. There's a fundamental difference between the two. It's true that the Internet is flooded with low-effort AI slop, but AI is just a tool like any other, and you can create real art with it. It just takes skill.

Here's an experiment: try visiting CivitAI's featured images page[1] and then tell me with a straight face that you'd classify none of those images as art.

[1] - https://civitai.com/images

[schmookeeg]

I don't know how you can claim to love technology but hate AI so much -- it's a technological achievement. Yeah it's disruptive and that makes it dangerous if not managed, and I'm not exactly optimistic we'll manage it, but why aren't you curious about how it works? How to make it integrate with society better? How to deal with the myriad issues surrounding IP, rights, likeness stuff... there is a lot of fascinating work being done around AI to figure this all out.

Were you only interested in technology so you could be one of the chosen elders holding a rare and valuable skill? Bummer if so, I think that ship has sailed. If not sunk altogether.

Otherwise? I guess learn plumbing? I think we're still a few years away from Claude telling me "You're absolutely right! Let me unclog that toilet for you" :D