I was reflecting on this yesterday, as I have often hated AI for generating emails and other written text, but kinda am loving it for writing code.
One realization was what you said about me just wanting the code done so I can use the app.
The second was that, for me, I care about the output of the code, not the code itself. Whereas with the written word, I care about the word. Perhaps if I used AI to summarize what someone wanted in the email then I would care less about the written word coming from a human, but right now I still want to read what they've written. You can say that there are programmers who want to read the code from someone else, but I don't think there's the equivalent of code abstracted away into a UI that exists for the written word (open to that being challenged).
The last and maybe biggest realization is that computer language exists as multiple levels of abstraction. Machine language, assembly language, high-level language, etc. I'm not sure human languages have as many layers of abstraction, or if they do, they exist within the same language.
I'll keep reflecting, just my short two cents for now.
I was pretty against coding tools like this until I'm trying to customize an open-source library, written in a language that I don't know, mostly to show an MVP.
For that purpose? It lets me do things I never would have even tried.
I think you're hitting on something that very rarely gets discussed, at least in the US and maybe some other Western societies. I wonder if it's just simple depreciation or compound depreciation (or whatever the opposite of compound interest would be).
Me finding the money to climb Kilimanjaro at 23 is different than me having the money at 40 but worse knees.
Thank you for pointing this out and I hope someone formalizes it more.
In 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, I set a timer, wrote for 10 minutes, live-streamed it, did it three times per day, for 35 days, and put everything unedited into a book.
It seems as if it may be more relevant in our AI writing times.
I'd suggest legislation. It's like when hotels or rental car companies tack on additional fees and consumers hate it but don't have much incentive to cooperate to change it. Consumers don't unionize much, but maybe we should?
But maybe not legislation, because it might upset a ton of people. Any time a social media site goes through and seems to get rid of bots, people complain about how many "followers" they've lost. The fake user/clicker situation is quite pervasive, and a lot of parties, not just the advertising networks, benefit from the inflated numbers.
But it can be so insidious..."wow, that video got 1M YouTube views? Must be very popular!" Orrrr a lot of those views were from bots? Who knows?
So maybe a better approach than legislation is to talk about how the ad/bot fraud can both help us and hurt us and not demonize one side but see how we all may be implicated in it somehow. Maybe that will help us to be more aware of the problem and not fight against people, but try to work together to solve it.
Not sure if i should post this here, but an ex-housemate of mine started a company focused on Naltrexone called Oar Health. I feel really proud to not only see how much it has helped him quit alcohol, but how he seems to be helping so many others.
It almost allows people to create their own real estate and rent it out at growing prices as the crowds increase. And when they max out at what one would pay for one piece of that real estate, they just rent off other pieces of real estate (more ads)
Not sure how it translates outside of the physics space, but I'm pretty sure if one is trying to go up a hill, more friction would equal less effort. Because if there's less friction, then I think I would fight more against gravity?
For example, I'm thinking of trying to drive a car uphill on ice and the way to do it is to add more friction by making the tires more grippy.
Now, maybe where the friction is matters. If it's between the tire and road, perhaps it reduces effort, but if in the engine pistons, maybe it increases effort.
Actually makes me think about how too little friction or too much friction can cause problems, just like too little stability or too much stability, or too little mobility or too much mobility can cause problems in our joints.
nit: the grippy friction is actually static friction, which is different from kinetic friction, which is closer to what the article is referring to. Kinetic friction dissipates energy from objects in motion, similar to how when we're trying to get things done, we are moving and doing things, but jankiness and other sources of (kinetic) friction drag us down.
the "grippy" friction is closer in spirit to the concept of leverage: if I want to push something and get it moving, I need to brace my feet on the ground, otherwise when pushing the thing, I'm moving myself backwards and not making any progress.
While static and kinetic friction use the same word, they are actually quite different in spirit.
One realization was what you said about me just wanting the code done so I can use the app.
The second was that, for me, I care about the output of the code, not the code itself. Whereas with the written word, I care about the word. Perhaps if I used AI to summarize what someone wanted in the email then I would care less about the written word coming from a human, but right now I still want to read what they've written. You can say that there are programmers who want to read the code from someone else, but I don't think there's the equivalent of code abstracted away into a UI that exists for the written word (open to that being challenged).
The last and maybe biggest realization is that computer language exists as multiple levels of abstraction. Machine language, assembly language, high-level language, etc. I'm not sure human languages have as many layers of abstraction, or if they do, they exist within the same language.
I'll keep reflecting, just my short two cents for now.