[pixelsort]

> There is every reason to believe that those who invest in deep understanding will continue to be valuable, regardless of what tools emerge.

I don't take issue with this, except that it's a false comfort when when you consider the demand will naturally ebb and individual workload will naturally escalate. In that light, I find it downright dishonest because the rewards for attaining deep knowledge will continue to evaporate; necessitating AI-assistance.

The reason is it different this time around is because the capabilities of LLMs have incentivized the professional class to betray the institutions that enabled their specializations. I am talking about the amazing minds at Adobe, Figma, and the FAANGS who are bridging agentic reasoners and diffusion models with domain-specific needs of their respective professional users.

Humans are class of beings, and the humans accelerating the advance of AI in creative tools are the reason that things are different this time. We have class traitors among us this time, and they're "just doing their jobs". For most, willful disbelief isn't even a factor. They think they're helping while each PR just brings them closer to unemployment.

[nz]

Most of these "class traitors" live in high cost of living areas, and for them, the choice is "become unemployed within two weeks for not complying", or "become unemployed within a few years for complying". They are being betrayed by the shareholder class, and they in turn are betraying their customers and their species.

The only thing that we can do is to not make it worth their time in the long run. Don't let greed and fear slide. Don't hate someone for choosing their family and comfort over your own, hate the system that forces them to make that choice. Hold them accountable, but attack the system, instead of its hostages and victims.

[pixelsort]

The level of compliance and enthusiasm varies. Some believe they are making the world a better place. Some feel they're adding value but suspect they are trapped within a cycle they refuse to examine. Some are more connected to the truth, and comply willingly but resentfully.

Where you fall depends on where you work and what you work on.

You make a great points about the chain of accountability. But, in my opinion, working professionals are the only agents in the system with the potential to realize their own culpability and divert their actions.

Perhaps, it isn't fair to point to them and call them traitors. Still, they are the only ones with enough agency to potentially organize and collectively push for the kind of ethics that could save us all.

[zozbot234]

Bridging software with domain-specific needs of its professional users is nothing new: that is how domain-specific professional software gets built. What is new is that the people doing this are being referred to hysterically as "class traitors", when the improvements they're working on will bring massive and widely available benefits to professionals the world over.

[pixelsort]

While the desire is not new, advancements in LLMs and diffusion models have made this sort of bridging effective and attractive to an unprecedented degree.

Those massively and widely available benefits will continue to deflate the value of human intelligence until even most of innovators currently working on them lose their seats at the table too.