I keep seeing over and over how Europe should be self sufficient. I’d be happy for Europe to be self sufficient.
But the truth is that Europe does not have the infrastructure and offering to be self sufficient. Even looking at basic things like AWS SES, there is no European offering. Apart from scaleway, there are no competitions for big cloud providers. There are no alternative to office suites.
And I’m not even talking about hardware. What’s the point to build data centers if they run US made hardware.
So, as the saying goes: talk is cheap, show me the software.
Perhaps there should be an EU committee to draft a mandate for a working group tasked with identifying the necessary stakeholders for a preliminary report on digital infrastructure.
I don't get it. Apple is the top 3 most valuable companies in the WORLD. THE WORLD. They act like a greedy friend that would ask you to pay back $1.54 for a meal of $1500, because you ordered a side of fries which they did not eat.
Aren't they making the majority of their money from selling hardware and iCloud subscriptions? Why they go on and milk developers, who make apps FOR THEIR ECOSYSTEM?!
$1500 represents the money you've already given them to purchase the hardware. You already overpay for that - fine - then they demand a 30% cut from $5 you're giving to a struggling independent creator. It's pure greed coming from one of the richest companies in the world.
There is a difference between paying 30% and 0.1% that goes beyond "precise maths".
It's an egregious share, and Apple is making an estimated $30 billion a year with this, at a margin perhaps more than twice as high as on iPhone sales.
They are greedy because Apple fans would by a turd in a box if it had an Apple logo.
If I was in charge of Apple I would do the same thing. In fact, I would likely increase the Apple cut to 40%. People would pay, they like their slick toys.
The developers will continue to make apps for their ecosystem regardless.
I'd be happy to switch to Linux, but my Macbook with M processor is a real work horse. First of all, everything works (bluetooth, headphones, camera, etc). Second of all, ARM based processor is a beast. Until someone release an ARM based laptop, I don't see myself switching to Linux.
With all my respect, I wasn't trying to piss on your post, only to communicate how it reads.
On the subject — this wave of tech is intensely overwhelming, I feel you too.
And often it is hard to see exact value that you can create.
Having said this, it would probably lead to even more interesting music, art and all the things you mentioned, because the bar was raised.
I'm co-writing a design doc with Claude Opus 4.5 and it seems to me that it isn't over yet. Ghosts are pretty useful to collaborate with, but I have ideas too. We have power tools now, but that doesn't mean you have to give up. You can learn to use them.
Claude is sort of like a ghost dog in that it makes sure you know that it's up for doing whatever you want to do, but you're still in charge.
I feel exactly like OP, I was visiting Ask before actually making my own "Whats the point?" post. I think the real issue is this huge community of people who have gone completely gone awry with using LLMs in their own loops and constantly posting and talking about it.
I see dozens of people on HN just posting about how amazing it is to write/compose software now. They're making more software than ever and having the time of their lives. When I read those and I actually go and explore that software they're just OSS tools, I wonder why would anyone want to use this? If everyone was doing as they were they're just asking their LLM to do it instead of looking out for a tool. Even better they'll just ask their LLM to make a tool to accomplish whatever those authors are building.
Then it's this whole new religion of human out of the loop. You feel like you've either gone stale or insane because every one now says adding human into the loop worsens the productivity gains from a model. I highly disagree, I haven't used a single model that handles a substantially complex task flawlessly. If you mention anything about that people don't shutup about harnesses.
Don't get me wrong, I use LLMs, I use them quiet frequently. However it's this obsessive attitude towards them that makes it impossible to get funding or research for anything that's not at least tangentially related them. It's completely burned me out professionally, academically and psychologically.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
While I agree with the sentiment of the post, I’ve also came to a conclusion that it’s not worth to fight against the system. If you can’t quit your job, then just do what everyone else is doing: use AI to write and review code, and make sure everyone is happy (especially the management).
But the truth is that Europe does not have the infrastructure and offering to be self sufficient. Even looking at basic things like AWS SES, there is no European offering. Apart from scaleway, there are no competitions for big cloud providers. There are no alternative to office suites.
And I’m not even talking about hardware. What’s the point to build data centers if they run US made hardware.
So, as the saying goes: talk is cheap, show me the software.