It’s not a post to deny that the field is moving and is very interesting to follow but it’s just become too much.
Every week there’s several new things, most examples are cherry picked, benchmarks are blown out etc.
I run a software company that has not added any AI features, mostly because the ...
Every week there’s several new things, most examples are cherry picked, benchmarks are blown out etc.
I run a software company that has not added any AI features, mostly because the usefulness seems to fall below the bar for value that most of our features try to maintain.
I use ChatGPT personally for random searches and Cursor + whatever model is deemed best at the time but even with that it takes a lot of work to get something valuable out of it in day to day.
I feel like I’m losing my mind when I see startups posting 10m ARR numbers in just 6 months or whatever.
I’m hearing from VC’s churn is 15-30% in many of these companies and they’re far from profitable but the growth is just wild.
Do I succumb and just add yet another text generation that maps to an object like fill-in-the-blank app of the week?
It feels disingenuous but even companies I know and respect are adding questionable “agent” features that rarely work.
Anyway, how are you feeling?
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I hate hearing about it because it triggers some anxiety about my role (SE) changing to the point where it's not something I have any interest in. Producing software in the corporate world is absolutely soul draining; endless meetings, direction from fools, overheads like mandatory compliance/learning, all of the rituals that come and go because someone with authority read some garbage on LinkedIn. Besides pay, the only redeeming quality of the job is that for some part of the day, I get to just be inside my head, working on problems and coming up with solutions. Sometimes a few of us team up and we figure things out together. The software is the fun and rewarding bit.
If AI lives up to its hype, which is a whole other subject, then I expect to see the two things I like about my job vanishing quickly - the pay, and the problem solving.
As not to take up another top-level post: I am also quite bored of people sharing anything created with AI. I remember when I first saw the AI Jerry Seinfeld video; I was genuinely surprised/amused at what AI was capable of. It's all completely uninteresting now, though. I have friends (some in IT..) sending me scores that ChatGPT awarded them based on what ChatGPT 'thinks' their moral value is. It seems some are completely taken by the appearance of intelligence.
It has at least been interesting to me to reflect on how I can still appreciate media that humans make when I find AI media so repulsive. I did not think I cared so much about what was behind the picture or video I was watching, or that someone spent real effort to make something. To be honest I still don't understand it - maybe it's none of those things.
By potholereseller 2025-05-242:43 > It has at least been interesting to me to reflect on how I can still appreciate media that humans make when I find AI media so repulsive.
A relevant analog is the arguments about whether independent bands were more real than those who had signed with labels -- about whether money/popularity corrupts art. I never took a side on that, but I do think that most music isn't worth listening too, simply because it's so saccharine and cliched.
So to generalize, Sturgeon's Law is evenly distributed: 90% of everything -- including sci-fi, music, and AI-generated stuff -- is worthless. 90% of AI content is slop, because it is prompted by people who have no taste whatsoever; not bad taste, just zero taste; not everyone is gifted. In the hands of people with refined taste (whether good or bad), they can use AI to produce that 10% of worthwhile AI stuff; but those with refined taste know how to keep AI content from distracting from the larger work, so you never know they are using AI at all.
I don't think society-wide refinement of taste is possible; Sturgeon's Law is here to stay. Instead, we need a corrolary to Sturgeon's Law, which provides a solution to the problem: you can't overturn Sturgeon's Law; you can only build filters to avoid the crap. I can't say how to build such filters, but we can start thinking about them.
By array4277 2025-05-240:46 As someone with a history of pathological demand avoidance: fuck your AI, I don't care if it's good or not, I'm never going to use it as long as it's being artificially hyped by increasingly unhinged idiots who are desperate for a return on their trillion dollar random word generator.
By AaronAPU 2025-05-241:37 I’m enjoying the ride so far.
I’m not working on AI, but working with AI.
The leverage feels dramatic for a solo founder in my shoes. I think it’s all the cross-domain context switching. Gemini 2.5 Pro for academic type research, ChatGPT 4o for rapid fire creative exploration, o1-pro for one-shot snippets. Copilot for auto-complete.
It’s exciting honestly. I don’t know where we’re going but I do feel free and in a solid strategic position having my own company and not still being a cog in the machine.
