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Ask HN: Does anyone else feel like nothing matters anymore?

3 points by ramesh31 ↗ HN
New software releases? Who cares. Learning new CS concepts? Whatever. Studying for the next interview? Job probably won't even exist in a year. Working on that side project? No one will care because it's just another addition to the mountain of slop, and the guy bagging your groceries can do it. Everything is done and cooked with AI now.

It's exactly like that feeling once you enable cheats in a game; sure you can do anything, but everything is meaningless now. Our entire purpose and joy in life has been taken from us.

165 comments

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toomuchtodo
Find something that has meaning to you.
schmeichel
Ditto. I've started reading recently. The last time I seriously read a book was High School. It's rather enjoyable, and I have a newfound appreciation for public libraries.
Barbing
If anyone hasn't read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams is absolutely hilarious.

  The coffins stood about waist high and were constructed of what appeared to be white marble, which is almost certainly what it was - something that only appeared to be white marble.
rogerkirkness
I feel this way, so I shut my startup down. Not sure what I'm going to do next but I'm hoping it isn't so computer dependent. The reason I got into computers was unregulated opportunity and freedom and it's just the opposite today.
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Chinjut
Yes. And math too. I think there's lots of beauty remaining in understanding these things, and using that understanding to craft things cleanly rather than as slop, but no one will pay us to do it, so we will never have the opportunity to do it.
chongli
You don’t have to get paid to make contributions to math. There are still loads of hobbyists making contributions around the world. The guy that found the aperiodic monotile was a hobbyist who collaborated with a researcher. There was a significant proof in combinatorics (lower bound on superpermutations) contributed by an anonymous 4chan poster!

Hobbyist mathematics may long outlive a lot of research mathematics, and I think that’s okay. There’s nothing in the human spirit of inquiry that necessitates academia as an all-powerful institution. Heck, there have been a lot of problems with the institution in recent years, and those have everything to do with perverse incentives and nothing to do with AI.

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Taikhoom10
Well, I think there will be a new market of developers, creating niche "Hand Made" products in a way, where you may not have the scale that AI allows, but you have a lot of pricing power.

Plus, AI is really overblown; Silicon Valley seems to want to make everything a new paradigm. I feel like AI is something of a feature and company enhancer; 95% of AI enterprise startups will die because of Switching Costs + Bundling features.

https://s-1.vercel.app/

bm3719
Corollary to your complaints: Another downside that I haven't seen on anyone's AI hatelist yet is that it crowds out all other discussion. What happened to everyone talking about languages, protocols, algorithms, architecture, etc.? We can't have those conversations anymore because we're not even sure they matter now. In fact, we probably suspect they don't, hence the not bothering.

Also, anything we do write will just get immediately slurped into AI embeddings, anonymizing it and detaching it from its human source, at most nudging some corner of its vectorized slurry. Maybe someone will ask a question that our content influences, but if that user bothers to thank anyone, he'll thank Claude. Perhaps this is what it feels like to be fully commoditized, fully alienated from one's labor.

add-sub-mul-div
To go along with that, it's also crowding out a whole generation's worth of labor and innovation. We're not curing cancer, we're churning out TPS reports faster and drowning in Show HN shovelware.
AznHisoka
To be fair, i dont think there is a huge overlap in the people who can cure cancer and the people vomiting out Show HN projects
Eddy_Viscosity2
The overlap comes from the cancer-curing-capable people also drowning in AI slop and people using AI to flood the space with ideas on how to solve cancer and funders wanting to see people using AI because they think it will solve cancer, etc.

It affects everybody.

williamsss
I’d wager if you filter out Show HN projects that have been maintained <2wks it would sift more gold to the top
mmcnl
Why are we not curing cancer? We should.
Nathanba
Yes I've noticed that too. It seems accomplishments in general have been devalued, it's not specific to languages, protocols, algorithms or architecture. If I have some idea at work, I feel like even that receives less recognition now because of AI. AI has ideas too, what does it matter? Sure, your idea could be good. But we are already drowning in ideas from AIs, everytime you prompt an AI it will tell you dozens of ideas on what you could improve. Who can say which one matters, does any of it really matter anymore? Why care about things that are effortless? That's the impression I get in regards to how people think now.
xtracto
We need to start talking about real Software Engineering concepts. The stuff we will write to guide agents to build our software.

We will be building architectural blueprints for software "buildings" same as Civic Engineers and Architects do for bridges and towers.

rbtms
I don't think it speaks well of Software Engineers the will to delegate the construction of blueprints to unreliable workers. Architects and Civil Engineers know that licensed, professional people that have experience and know-how will execute it in a nearly flawless way. Compared to that, agents might hallucinate, build something completely different to the intended project or leave subtle bugs behind that, in the case of complex systems, the humans in charge will probably not even notice.
Tanoc
A parallel to what you're describing would be the Hyatt Regency collapse. Meticulously designed, yet one small change under the surface lead to one of the worst engineering disasters of that century.

I don't want to think of what the digital equivalent of the Hyatt Regency collapse would be, considering that the software could be deployed all around the globe rather than in one place in one building.

benhurmarcel
You underestimate the amount of detailed tedious work that is done in those fields. It’s far from being all about architectural blueprints.
paul7986
This Ask HN received 116 points and was on the front page. How come it vanished from the front page, the 2nd page and so forth here on HN?

This is important topic to all those who made to currently make a living off of tech.

ramesh31
Yeah it seems dang has some kind of nether region to vanish these types of discussions to. Shame, seemed to have really hit a deep nerve.
AznHisoka
I think it might be because of the comment to like ratio or something. Hope I am wront, but its like someone doesnt want something generating lots of discussion… in a discussion forum
preg_match
Languages is the biggest bummer to me. It's great the LLMs make languages less relevant, rewrite cheaper, etc. But I love languages and language design. It's sad to think that we're converging on the most common languages in training data, without considering the developer ergonomics and semantics. But, it's been happening for decades, LLMs just put it into maximum overdrive.
kranner
I think one aspect of this relates to extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation.

I'm intrinsically motivated to work on my software projects because I want them to exist, and I enjoy exploring the problem space and working my way to a good solution. AI is great because it accelerates my abilities in this regard.

If I'd had only extrinsic motivations of credit and money, I can see that AI would affect them negatively. But I'd also have to believe that anyone else could shortcut their way to whatever I make using AI. I don't really believe that TBH. A real solution is extremely nuanced: it addresses many, many edge cases; it is performant in CPU and memory use; its UX steers the user away from incidental complications straight to the solution they're seeking.

Finally, even if someone just copied whatever I had made, I would still have the satisfaction of knowing I was the original and they the copycat. That's good enough for me.

xpct
I envy your enthusiasm. I sincerely enjoyed being proficient at something that was hard to replace, and still feel pride for it. There's still avenues like that, but they've grown thinner and it's not as one-sided. I'm still very happy to be in this field and keep toiling away, but with less joy.
maplethorpe
> I'm intrinsically motivated to work on my software projects because I want them to exist

Isn't that extrinsic motivation? You're motivated by the desire to bring something outside of yourself into existence. The software project doesn't exist within you.

kranner
I think you're right. The "because" should have applied to the clause that followed.
brynnbee
I think you may be applying extrinsic too broadly. I believe it's still intrinsic because it's about an internal feeling and desire rather than the threat of bad grades, punishment, or coercion from someone else. It's about the motivation, not the output.
happytoexplain
I am intrinsically motivated, but AI doesn't just accelerate, it changes the end product when used in the way we are forced by economics to use it: Broadly, and supported by tests rather than by looking at each line. Something I made is explicitly different from something somebody (or something) else made over which I merely acted as a manager. For my personal experience, that's a different end product - I know the architecture of the thing, but the thing itself can not be internalized. It's less interesting, and, despite requiring less thinking, it's more stressful. And even regardless, reviewing code is simply less enjoyable/motivating than writing code.

I am also extrinsically motivated, as everybody is. The "if you don't like AI, then you only cared about the money" implication is nonsensical. I'm not going to starve or become homeless, but I absolutely could lose my current home. That would drive me to depression. I also don't want to have a job I don't enjoy at all. That would turn me into a different person. A miserable person. Switching to something I can learn to do within a couple years (so I can live with low/zero salary at first), that I enjoy at least a little, and ultimately ends up paying at least 75% of what my previous job pays, is essentially not realistic.

kranner
I agree with your second paragraph. I'm not blindly pro-AI, merely trying to make the best of a bad situation. I didn't mean to imply "if you don't like AI, then you only cared about the money" at all.

I'm trying to say if you don't want to do the work because you think anyone at all can do the same job with AI, then 1) you're probably underestimating yourself, and 2) maybe you care less about the work than about being on the other side of a moat of knowledge and experience. That moat is still there, and a large part of it is caring about the work.

(Also I agree that AI changes the end product if one doesn't read the code, but I don't agree that we are all necessarily forced by the economics to operate it that way. I still plan how to implement features myself first, without AI; I still read every line of code; and I still sometimes step in and rewrite the AI patch myself. I'm lucky not to have a boss breathing down my neck, I realise; at least that's true for the moment while my savings haven't run out.)

globalnode
make software for yourself, learn maths for enjoyment. times have changed. i guess there will always be software jobs but they wont be the same as in the past. if youre thinking of a way to make money and earn prestige at the same time in the computer industry i dont know what the answer to that is.
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allthetime
Anyone can do it? Is everyone you know making a million dollars a year with their software startup? Are you?
RoadieRoller
Anyone with internet connection, a phone/laptop, and a few dollars to spare can create anything. Earlier it was not like this.

All of a sudden, your competition is anyone from anywhere in the world. Yes, to really make a million dollars, you need more than making the software. Even if you end up making a million dollars, you have 1000s of copy-cats from all parts of the world stealing your pie in no time. An average Joe will have tough time knowing which one is good and which ones to avoid.

allthetime
Every single one of my clients, early in their business, tried to underpay for foreign labour. Every single one of my clients came to me, willing to pay full price, to remake what cheap foreign contractors failed to do - or partially succeeded, but then failed to maintain. Good software business is so much more than code. It's communication and reliability and relationship building and maintenance. Clients pay me full price because we are in similar time zones and can clearly communicate to get things done properly so that they don't need to be remade next year and they have the guarantee that I will still be here.
paul7986
Indeed it feels so uninspiring, no talent/skill needed and my skills/knowledge of 17 years feels a bit pointless. In the past few months I have used Codex to build apps, so it's not like Im not using AI it just makes my career seem dumb.

Also, the LinkedIn recruiter semi flood of messages offering potential jobs has dried up completely(anyone else experience this too?). Linkedin is now just a sad and depressing place as you read others sharing similar sentiment.

I'm now in medical school pursing mid-level medical type job. This after 17 years of doing UX Research, Web/graphic design and front-end development. 10 of those years I was working in govt indirectly making very good money and little stress. Now my future in the next few months is hospital work with lots of stress and less pay. A bit depressing but i dont dwell on it too much just keep pushing ahead!

throw-the-towel
I'm in a shitty place for working as a dev, and I still get recruiters knocking. What they're offering is not great, but that's because the market here is shit. At least there's something!
throw-the-towel
Yes, but also no.

On one hand, the possibility to make something genuinely new feels gone. There was always a huge crowd of better developers than myself, but still, they couldn't take all the ideas for themselves. Now they can.

On the other hand, I love the process of programming, and the feeling of accomplishment it brings to me. I don't know if I'm still going to have it at work, and this is genuinely important, but at least nobody is going to take my personal projects from me.

Tonight I was up until 3.30 am, writing a CLI to wrangle a shapefile into a set of vector tiles that would then be rendered into PNGs. Opus could probably have done this in five minutes. I'm writing this (mostly) myself, it's been two evenings of work, and I'm not done. If Opus could know how utterly I don't care about this fact, it would have cried. I'm not gonna stop eating cheese just because a robot can eat it better.

tclancy
Hey, congrats on coming up on a birthday that ends in 0. Mine was just 5-0. I can give you two pieces of possible advice:

- nothing does matter. You will die. We may meet in the Bardo if you are spectacularly unlucky.

- the trick is now being kind and enjoying your time after discovering this.

t0bia_s
Sounds like only materialism matter. But life is more than that fortunately. You can care, you can explore, you can love, be thankful, look around, go out, behind our ego...
joshdavham
I’m actually incredibly excited for the future!

Individuals are now a lot more empowered to work effectively with computers (including us in the tech industry). Would you honestly wanna go back to pre-LLM?

I now have more fun learning CS concepts and the side projects I can work on now were previously impossible.

On the other hand, if you only got into CS for the money… then I take your point.

bckr
This is how I feel too!

If you want to get excited… think about all the things that ever got you excited about the future. Then think about how you basically had to defer the possibility of them happening in your lifetime.

Readjust your timelines! Determine what is the most amazing thing that could happen, that you could contribute to, by orchestrating computation effectively.

I mean we don’t even have a cure for cancer yet!

kadhirvelm
I still think there's some junction between software and the physical world that's the next exciting frontier. There's a whole new world opening up that we've never been able to tackle before. Imagine a world where we can shift all these bright folks from working on ads and SaaS to working on new materials discovery, fundamental sciences, healthcare access, climate change, etc. Working to make the world around us a better place.

We can now build apps with a TAM of 1 or 2 viable at scale - I still have hope there's a lot of good we can do for the world with that new reality. Purpose-built tools for super niche, high-impact problems, where software isn't the end goal, it's just a means to an end.

What do you think? Still meaningless?

ab_goat
Doing what matters has become essential; discerning what that is, less clear.
chr15m
> enable cheats in a game

Great analogy. Life does not have cheats though. Things are changing fast but the limits of physics still apply and reality has a surprising amount of detail[1].

I find myself feeling the way you are feeling when I stop making things. When I'm making things it is very clear where the limits and frontiers have moved to, and that's where the fun is. I would say just start exploring making things and you'll soon see that "you can do anything" is not true. There is still enormously fun work to be done and puzzles to be solved, with the help of AI or without it.

[1] http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...

someguydave
Well said. It’s easy to generalize doom and hard to make something real.
kiddico
I was fired a while ago and hit my "why am I waking up today?" point.

Took me a while but turns out the best reason I found to exist was taking cool pictures of bugs. Fuck me are spiders cool. Dragonflies are incredible. Look at that springtail!

Do something ai can't take from you.

I set myself a goal to find all 3 species of a particular spider genus in my state. Got it! Moving on to finding a bolas spider.

idk. There really is a lot to enjoy outside the collapse of the things I used to enjoy and define my existence by.

xpct
Thank you for sharing. I hope your bug-hunting goes well.
hattmall
IDK, this seems short sighted. In my experience AI doesn't just create great things out of the gate. It CAN assist, but the AI flyers, writing, web interfaces etc, they have gotten played out really quickly. AI flyers just get ignored, writing is detectable after about 3 lines and AI interfaces get less usage. I definitely feel like there have been similar waves that equally faded out.
xyzelement
Family, community, religion are pretty timeless and universal.