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, persona...
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?
Comments
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2713:181 reply 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.
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.
By RiverCrochet 2026-01-2714:192 reply Flooded markets get bypassed. I see a future where real creatives simply don't post stuff online, and anything online is not trusted. What AI is going to kill is the Internet, not human creativity.
> I see a future where real creatives simply don't post stuff online, and anything online is not trusted.
This shift is already well underway. I know a fair number of artists of various sorts (most are writers), and almost half have disconnected their artwork from the internet entirely.
By onetokeoverthe 2026-01-281:22 [dead]
Had the same thought but feels too overly optimistic.
I don’t think people “internet” for trust, but for dopamine.
By RiverCrochet 2026-01-2715:05 A) The modern extreme thirst for dopamine predates the Internet. We've had powerfully addictive and destructive street drugs for decades now and art and creativity still thrive.
B) People who are not (or don't believe they are) in full control of their lives, which is most of the non-rich on the planet, generally are subject to having to spend a lot of time doing things they don't want to do, and want some form of escape.
Any medium will be a trap that can catch people who would prefer to escape permanently, whether it's good for them or not. I'm sure you had children and housewives addicted to radio shows in the 1940's.
For creatives who are dedicated to their craft and are not in it for mass-market leverage, this is fine, it's going to be a filter. The people who get caught in these traps are not going to be the ones that can appreciate or support art, even if it's not their fault.
By cpt_sobel 2026-01-2714:41 I feel like I've been meeting people of different ages (strong bias for millenials) that just don't enjoy the internet anymore. And yes, most are addicted to this dopamine drip, yet it makes me optimistic that something _is_ changing.
By mejutoco 2026-01-2916:07 People bought paintings after photography was invented, and they still do.
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2713:401 reply I think you don't get it :) I've written more about how I see it being here: https://emsh.cat/good-taste/
To repeat, I'm not worried. Making music might be easier than before, but having "Good Taste" isn't easier than before, it's still hard. And good stuff isn't just produced and made, they have decisions and choices behind them, and make the wrong ones, your thing ends up sucking.
If you just care about average content then yes, you can probably live on slop. But do you want to? Because no one is forcing you, there is still high quality stuff out there, produced by people with good taste, and it'll remain like that forever.
It's a good read, thanks for sharing. But the flaw in it, is the fact that you think that the world is built on merit, i.e. Good Taste, as you call it.
And while sure, merit / good taste are important, but if you look at the mainstream it's filled with average. Now, from the consumer side you can claim "what do you care about the mainstream, just look for good taste, and you will find it", and I agree with you. But I do not speak about the consumer side, but rather the producer side. As a producer, I want to produce "good taste", but if there is very little demand for good taste things, I might struggle to sustain myself while producing based on merit.
In the end, the reason enshittification exists, is because "good taste" stuff became too popular and the authors decided to capitalize on it (can't blame them when you have a mortgage to pay, and family to feed), and turn it into "mainstream crap".
I guess the point I'm trying to make, is that creating good taste is not easy. And it will become even harder as the mainstream will expand and capture AI generated content, leaving people who believe in creation based on merit, fighting for the crumbs.
The world is built at a balance between good taste and good economics. AI slop is still slop. Reminds me when there were massive booms on outsourcing software to low cost labor markets. Most of the software born out of those markets was slop and not much different than what we see today. Good taste still matters in most work. I am pretty big proponent of AI but I don’t think AI can write a book that I enjoy. Similarly I don’t believe AI can write software end to end without a humans input of good taste. Sure you can brute force it but like those early years of outsourcing I bet it won’t be maintainable or well running.
This might be one of those “the market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent” cases, though.
And for arts and entertainment, where the long term value is less important economically than the immediate click, AI slop is good enough that the percentage of people unable to tell the difference means there’s no point in creating any more except at the highest end or for the love of it.
Sorry ai slop is no where good enough. Not sure what hype you are consuming.
I’m watching people listen to AI-generated music and not notice (or even prefer it over human-produced music). I’m watching people on FB who can’t tell the most ridiculous AI-generated imagery from reality.
It may not be good enough for you or me; but the average consumer is not all that discerning. They’ll choose whatever gives them a dopamine hit.
By infecto 2026-01-2814:02 I think we are thinking about different things. Slop content has existed long before AI. I agree on the music front there is a possibility but I don’t see it much different than all the low effort lowfi music that flooded the study stations. I don’t see a future yet where engineers or other folks making tasteful content have to worry about their job security. When that time comes there are going to be real concerns from more than just the creative types.
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2714:23 > But the flaw in it, is the fact that you think that the world is built on merit, i.e. Good Taste, as you call it.
That's not a fact, because I never said this, nor is it in the article. What from the article made you believe that I think that?
> but if there is very little demand for good taste things
There isn't, there is huge demand for good things, and it'll only get higher as more people attempt to just produce shit things.
By tim333 2026-01-2915:22 As an average Joe I have easy access to Taylor Swift on youtube etc. AI junk is also there but I don't choose it and only force fed a very small amount by my friend who likes making it.
By eudamoniac 2026-01-284:36 Why do I want authors to keep writing commercially? Books get worse every year, and there is more than a lifetime of great literature even from 500 years ago. Lack of books is just about the last thing I'd consider a problem. This hasn't anything to do with your original point of summarizing books with AI, which is silly.
>I'm an average Joe, who wants to live an average Joe's life, but it's being taken away from me
Literally nothing has been taken from you. Go read the book.
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.
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.
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2713:421 reply > AI is a change in perspective of our entire society, how it works, and what we define to be human or human-made creation.
There are two things you're mixing here.
One is how others use AI, the other is how you use AI. No one forcing you to consume content made by AI that you think suck, just turn it off if you don't like it.
Seems really doomsday-like to proclaim "The end goal of AI is to abolish all work possible" when that's not realistically feasible, regardless of what the AI-hypers say. Don't listen so much, and think more.
> just turn it off if you don't like it.
How? Or do you mean, like, stop using the Internet entirely?
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2714:332 reply Notice that it's bad/slop/shit, turn it off, do something else.
If you don't notice it, then is it really an issue? And if you notice, you're one click/keypress away from making it disappear.
By mysterydip 2026-01-2714:53 I agree, with the caveat that the chance of a link in a search result being AI generated is increasing, as well as the sophistication of the generated text, which means a growing percentage of my time is wasted on AI generated content before I realize it.
Sorry, I thought your contention was that nobody is forcing me to consume AI BS content.
By embedding-shape 2026-01-2717:14 Well, that's true isn't it? No one is forcing you to consume AI BS content, either close it when you come across it, at least works well on the computer.
As for TV ads or other shit you can't just skip, I guess looking away or do something else than accept it, is the way to go forward there.
By senko 2026-01-2810:49 > The end goal of AI is
AI is a technology. It has no goal. You use a tool, the tool doesn't use you or have goals or plans for you.
> In a world where there is no work for the common man.
"Work expands to fill the time available" (Parkinson's Law). Work hours haven't been reduced even though technology has advanced tremendously over the centuries (they have been reduced due to push for worker's rights).
> I'm afraid to imagine what is left there.
Do not define yourself, or your worth, through work. You work to live, not live to work.
By WillAdams 2026-01-2714:31 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?
