Literally everyone I know is sick of AI. Sick of it being crowbar'd into tools we already use and find value in. Sick of it being hyped at us as though it's a tech moment it simply isn't. Sick of companies playing at being forward thinking and new despite selling the same old shit but they've bolted a chatbot to it, so now it's "AI." Sick of integrations and products that just plain do not fucking work.

I wouldn't shit talk you to your face if you're making an AI thing. However I also understand the frustration and the exhaustion with it, and to be blunt, if a product advertises AI in it, I immediately do treat it more skeptically. If the features are opt-in, fine. If however it seems like the sort of thing that's going to start spamming me with Clippy-style "let our AI do your work for you!" popups whilst I'm trying to learn your fucking software, I will get aggravated extremely fast.

My esteem of Seattle area engineers compared to Silicon Valley engineers has just gone up.

AI is such a blessing. I use it almost every day at work, and I've spent this evening getting a Bluetooth to USB mapper for a ps4 controller working by having ChatGPT write it for me, for a bigger project I'm working on. Yes, it's going to take some time to fully understand the code and adjust it to my own standards, but i've been playing a game a few hours now and I feel zero latency and plenty of controller rumble that I'm having fun giving some extra power. It pretty much worked with the first 250 lines of C it spew out.

What's gonna be super interesting is that I'm going to have an rpi zero 2 power up my machine when I press the controller's ps-button. That means I might need to solder and do some electrical voodoo that I've never tried. Crossing my fingers that the plan ChatGPT has come up with won't electrocute me.

I'm stuck between feeling bad because this is my field–I spend most days worrying about not being able to pay my bills or get another job–and wanting to shake every last tech worker by the shoulders and yell "WAKE UP!" at them. If you are unhappy with what your employer is doing, because they have more power over you, you don't have to just sit there and take it. You can organize.

Of course, you could also go online and sulk, I suppose. There are more options between "ZIRP boomtimes lol jobs for everyone!" and "I got fired and replaced with ELIZA". But are tech workers willing to expore them? That's the question.

It just feels like it's in bad taste that we have the most money and privilege and employment left (despite all of the doom and gloom), and we're sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. If not now, when? And if not us, who?

“I didn't fully grok how tone deaf I was being though.

[…]

Seattle has talent as good as anywhere. But in San Francisco, people still believe they can change the world—so sometimes they actually do.”

Nope, still completely fucking tone deaf.

To the extent that Microsoft pushes their employees to use all their other shitty products, Copilot seeks like just another one (it can't be more miserable/broken than Sharepoint).

I stopped reading after the third em dash. I'm sorry if you use them, but they are my AI copy/paste blog red flag these days

I wonder if I'm the guy in the bubble or if all these people are in the bubble. Everyone I know is really enjoying using these tools. I wrote a comment yesterday about how much my life has improved https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46131280

But also, it's not just my own. My wife's a graphic designer. She uses AI all the time.

Honestly, this has been revolutionary for me for getting things done.

I mean how can you blame her for not being excited at yet-another-AI-powered planner.

It's almost like the hype of AI is massively ahead of the reality, and the people being directly squeezed by that dynamic don't like how it feels.