However, I think putting anger and curiosity on two levels can be a subtle trap. It can lead to diminishing the importance of anger. They’re all just emotions; just appearances in our minds. We don’t decide when they show up, but we do have the capacity for awareness.
In my experience I’ve found anger to be an immensely important emotion. It signals to me that something very important needs attention. And when entire populations are angry, that’s a really important signal. Granted, following the first thought that follows the anger tends to be unhelpful (it’s easy to villainize). But the initial signaling of importance should not be underplayed.
From the perspective of the article, it seems that not having a target distinction between anxiety and anger would make the two feelings indistinguishable and thus the argument would fall apart. BUT, I do think there is a difference between the rage that comes from anger and the unease that comes from anxiety, and that may be triggered by the uncanny valley feelings from AI or the loss of job security from AI or the feelings of replacement that may come from AI or the environmental concerns that come from AI or the capitalistic underpinnings of the current implementation of AI, the list goes on. Some people may take anxiety from these things, and others may take anger. I don’t see one emotion as being less valid than the other.
Also, I don’t see any use in saying someone shouldn’t be angry or anxious in a particular situation. You can’t control your emotions like that. You can control how you _react_ to your emotions, but not the emotions themselves. I do think that emotional regulation is important in work (and also in life), but that doesn’t mean that you don’t feel what you feel.
If you make a statement like that, I will have to ask you to reread the article. He's clear in saying:
1. Anger and anxiety should not be conflated.
2. Anxiety is OK.
> You can’t control your emotions like that.
The thesis (by him and other sources I've read) is that anger is an emotion that you do create (most of the time). It's a result of a narrative coupled with another emotion (anxiety in this case). You can't control the anxiety. You can control the narrative in your brain. With certain narratives, you get anger. With others, you don't.
I've known many who've made that journey. It seems the author has as well.
Now if your argument is that it's OK to be angry (you've made the narrative clear in your comment), I won't disagree.
> [...]
> My answer to the question of how you can not be angry in tech is that it’s by no way the most only possible feeling. First of all, instead of being angry, you can simply be unsure. The feeling of uncertainty is a much more productive emotional state because it can lead to curiosity.
With respect to Armin, whose work I respect a lot, I think that it is totally valid and in fact productive to reserve a degree of anger and hatred for the hyper-capitalists that are going to use AI to further make the lives of the many worse to further entrench the power of a very, very few.
It is very true that being entirely consumed by anger is bad. At the extremes, it clouds judgment, is bad for your health, and makes you little fun at parties. That said, it's a human emotion and being upset by injustice helps fuel action.
So insofar as we're called to being uncertain and curious, it should perhaps be uncertainty about our current social/class structure and curiosity about how we might change it for the better. If you have the means and the talent, maybe start a worker owned tech co-op. If that doesn't seem likely maybe start talking about organizing a union. Remember when folks said that if tech workers would you unionize, it would upset the good things folks had with wages? Well if tech workers had unionized earlier on, the precarity and anxiety workers feel today might not have come to pass. If now seems like a bad time to unionize, a future where AI usage is more pervasive and better understood might be much worse.
That’s really the thing. If you understand how badly a few people are accumulating resources and power through the build up of AI, with the very explicit goal to make most people’s life worse, you have to be angry. Its a rational reaction. It doesn’t have to be tamed through an analytical process
This is the same game. They tried to play with the mindfulness movement in tech. Ignore your anger and just keep coding. And that’s why everyone is more angry and anxious now.
>Who are you going to be angry at and why are you angry in the first place?
The author is arguing that you should hone in on the underlying reasons behind emotions. It can be easy to conflate anger and anxiety. It's up to your agency to reflect on your emotions and how you act on them.
You can be angry, but you should name at what and why. Who is propagating the mindfulness movement? How is it affecting you? What can we do differently? Calling out "they" isn't a good answer.
Tell us what we can do against the mindless slop! DDoS Anthropic?
It reminds me of (for the pedants out there, I'm not saying it's equivalent to) the consume product meme. "Don't ask questions, just complete assignment and then get excited for next industry trend."
>I don’t know what the future of this industry will look like, and I don’t know who will benefit from it and I don’t think I’m alone with that. However I can only urge anyone who feels anger and looks for a villain right to instead remain curious instead. To be curious enough to understand what is changing, excited enough to experiment with it. And then, from what we learn, earn the right to decide when resistance is warranted and where to direct it.
Sounds pleasant and vaguely inspirational. Then you read it again and notice guy thinks I don't always have the RIGHT to DECIDE to RESIST.
Author here: maybe I wasn't too clear about this, but I have seen people direct their anger about about what AI does to their jobs at people who themselves are not in a situation to do anything about it (eg: line managers or leaderships in businesses who are trying to roll out AI based coding tools).
I would even say that being angry at the wrong person is as bad as not being angry at the right person.
Being angry is a societal tool to put limits on what can or cannot be done. If there is no anger when people crosses the line, then there is no real signal for them to not cross the line. And, no, "a peaceful rational argument" is not an alternative. This is not at all the same signal, this is a signal that is sent way earlier before that specific line and it is exactly how the overton window shifts.
Like the one from the author, who has never written in this style before AI.
I haven't been this excited about tech since I set up my first home server 20+ years ago. And Claude doesn't sounds like an always-on vacuum cleaner (it was a decommissioned proliant).
Perhaps this would be far more exciting if I were younger. But right now I'm just trying to figure out if I can survive.
I find it great for experiments to throw away but I wish everyone remembered step 2 more often.
The end result for me has been that I am now a gatekeeper trying to prevent AI slop making its way into systems which I care about, and failing, and getting dragged into meetings with my boss about how my performance has gone down now that I'm chained to this stupid thing and forced to use it for even the most trivial tasks.
I haven't been this upset with PayPal mafia overlords since crypto.
Those problems are much worse in languages other than English, by the way. I'm not a native speaker but I always interact with LLMs in English because their prose in Italian is terrible, it often reads as though the text had been written in English and then translated.
Obviously there's nothing wrong with each of those stylistic elements in abstract, exactly like there's nothing wrong with em-dashes or the word "absolutely", but I would argue that writing well means choosing styles that match the content; what LLMs appear to be doing instead is forcing the message into a default pattern, which we percieve as forced and therefore tend to dislike.
To be clear: their writing is fine. The primary goal of writing is to convey meaning, and LLMs have been perfectly adequate at that pretty much from day one. I can get over their quirks.
The bar I set was "significantly higher quality than the median literate native speaker".
The bar you're setting is expert use of metaphors, restrained use of bullets and tables and parataxis, proper emphasis, and avoiding dense technical prose.
I suspect you have a higher opinion of the median literate speaker than is warranted.
It is worse because it fails to communicate information well. When I say it can barely speak English, I mean that it produces sentences which are incomprehensible on the first few reads. I have never found the median literate native speaker to be so difficult to understand, partly because they use a limited vocabulary and avoid waffle.
It can barely speak English in a new and exciting way, one unlike all the previous humans who could barely speak English.
Most people write quite badly!
I believe the median person who comprehends English to PIAAC level 3 literacy or above, and writes accordingly, would be more comprehensible than an LLM, if we controlled for correctness and for their own understanding of the subject matter.
Over time, I suspect both human and AI writing will 'converge'. Humans are good at adopting/imitating language from a variety of sources, so I won't be surprised when we start using "load-bearing" in conversation. Simultaneously, LLMs will start sounding more natural.
"Electronic drudgery" is how I earn my income which pays for my food and shelter. That's why I'm not excited.
There is nothing fun about programming anymore. The joy is completely gone. I would switch careers if I could make money elsewhere.
I can't get myself to stop finding it terrifying
When I think about my future I am scared. Not uncertain. Not merely anxious. Definitely not excited. I'm quite frightened.
In fairness, I think I'm a bit of an outlier. I already felt my place in society was fairly tenuous. I struggle to make friends. I don't feel I fit in very well. I've never managed to stick at one job for more than a few years. The one thing I'm really quite good at is building software and that's let me stay afloat and thrive somewhat
And that's going to go away. And I'm nowhere near close to retiring.
So no. I'm probably not going to find a way to let my anger give way to curiosity any time soon. I feel under threat and I am scared for my personal future safety and security.
Is this my fault for placing too many of my eggs in one basket? Yeah probably. I regret it a lot. If I could go back in time I would have chosen a different profession and branched into software instead of being all software all the time.
I'm trying to tell myself it's not too late to branch out now, but it's been very difficult
So.. I dunno. I can appreciate what the article is saying, and I think it's probably accurate and useful for other people who are more secure than I am, but... Eh.
I guess I just hope people realize that people like me are out there, not just uncertain but AI is shaping up to be the blow that knocks us off the bridge and into the water
I don’t really think that AI will destroy the field of software development, but there’s a constant sense of urgency underlying every working hour where I have to second guess whether I’m using the tools right and how much longer they’re even going to need a human in the loop (my gut says forever, but I’ve been wrong before …)
If I could go back in time, I would pick a different career. I’ve learned that I value consistency and predictability in my life, and tech is clearly not where you’re going to find that. If this was just a hobby, AI would be a godsend. But I always saw software development as my ticket to a decent life, and I’m left guessing everyday whether that ticket is still valid.
Not at all. I'm in the same boat. The first ten year of being a developer you could see things happening miles away. There was a predictable process. Someone builds a new framework. You do some tutorials, kick the tires. Then it eventually starts showing up in small corp projects, then bigger projects or its dropped in favor of a newer framework, app, platform.
Now? Its all gas no brakes. Just shove AI into everything. No vetting, no testing, just shove it into everything and see what happens. This is not software development to me - this is sprinting towards a brick wall.
I would recommend the same thing I'm doing. Branch out, network like crazy. Talk to people about your skills and see if what else is out there. Look at going into adjacent fields, etc. When I went through the first dot com bust and then the 08' crash? The only thing that saved me was networking. I had a few friends that I was talking to who were getting me interviews and telling me about openings that weren't being published.
Keep your shoulder to the wind and keep pushing, there's light at the end of this, I just don't know how long the tunnel is.
> I would recommend the same thing I'm doing. Branch out, network like crazy
I have been very bad at making friends and networking throughout my life, but it's something I'm working on. Appreciate the clarity that I am probably doing the right thing
I have pretty similar feelings to what you are going through.
I was so stressed like seven or eight months ago that for two weeks I was constantly sleep deprived. Then I just asked myself "What is the worst that can happen?" The answer helped me relax a bit. I will just move to some small village somewhere, open a shop for anything and get by. Life will go on.
I seriously think software is / was hard. That means people that thrived in it were smart and disciplined.
And which other profession has so much change? My father is a civil engineer. The tools and formulas he uses has not changed in 50 years while I have to pick up whatever hype tech is asked of me. Many people are similar to me. So we are very adaptable in my most honest opinion.
If it comes to _worst of it_, smart and adaptable people is where I would put my bet on being able to find their footing in the new world.