This feels a bit hyperbolic to me. AI seems to me to be similar in "revolutionary" terms as the web, which made information widely available for free if you had an internet connection.
There's a big difference from just having access to information, and also having access to the kind of intelligence that would previously have cost hundreds of dollars per hour to hire.
Like the author says, AI does help you get there via experimentation.
I wanted to mod a Casio watch with a custom crystal and screen that had not been done before. I needed a 3D model of the crystal for prototyping.
Claude was able to get the specs mostly correct, implement it in my Claude created custom 3D modeling program, and then I was able to understand the modification process with Gemini.
All of which would have taken me months to do before AI (or LLMs for the HN intelligentsia) existed. I was able to get the project done in a few days.
Creativity is also never purely original ideas, creativity is the continuation and connection of many different ideas already existing in the world. We don't think about how we might innovate on the printing press because these aren't things we think about or interact with much in our modern society.
AI + creativity is the new moat. Creative prompting is important, too. Everything is creativity, LLMs are tools just like Flash was.
Really months? Or do you just assume it would've been a certain factor slower without the AI? I've been amazed by what I can do in a day if I don't overthink.
Margaret Mitchell got me to read a thousand pages of Gone With The Wind because she placed a juicy hook in the first chapter (Ashley) which gave me the motivation to read the entire book to see what happens.
Why more novels do not have central hooks I do not know. Hooks are usually what keep me reading, unless the book has some kind of reason for being interesting otherwise.
There's a law against that. There's currently no law against making a website so fun that kids will waste all their time playing with it if their parents let them.
I'm not saying I'm against passing laws on this subject. My point is that no such laws currently exist, but a bunch of lawyers and judges just decided Facebook owes $17B for breaking these non-existent laws anyway.
It makes me question if we are starting to approach maximum entropy with software startups, and so deception and morally questionable "startups" are what's left. Software now costs nothing to build, and most of the obvious ideas have been created, and the network effects of big companies have been firmly dug into the ground.
The second law of thermodynamics applies to software, and this is what's left.
I don't particularly disagree with what the author has written about, but the jargon and complex wording is really annoying to read.
If this were written on a single subject, like engineering philosophy, then fine. But writing a multi-subject article requires simpler language so those who may be familiar with one thing but not the other can understand everything.
I find it hard to trust the intelligence of someone who uses words like "dichotomy", "meta-cognition", and "monocausal determinism" - language like this is purely performative. Let's not be performative, who are you trying to impress with your big words?
We use specific words in writing to mean specific things; there is no exact synonym for 'dichotomy' in the English language. The word is very common in academic and non-academic literature.
Meta-cognition is a compound word, where both parts are widely known, and the combination should be pretty obvious.
'Monocausal determinism' is different, very specific, and probably only known to a minority of readers. Determinism, the idea that everything within a system happens exactly according to cause and effect, comes from ontology, which is the study of existence and our place in the world. Mono derives from old greek single. Monocausal determinism is the idea that everything within a system derives from a single cause.
It is not a writers duty to be understood by everyone. Sure is nice, but more difficult to pull of, and often futile.
I know what all of these words mean. My point is that these are esoteric words that don't fit into the article's purpose or for the article's audience. The author would have gotten his point across far easier if he were to have first contextualized these words, or defined them himself.
Pedagogy is very important in writing. Without care for the reader, these words come off as performative.
You can very easily replace "dichotomy" with "difference" or "contrast", and if you have to, expand the sentence further given the context of that difference/contrast.
I will wager most people do not know what dichotomy means, and since it has strong synonyms, I don't see the purpose of using it. And I've only ever heard people trying very hard to come off as smart use the word dichotomy, e.g. they're being performative.
It's my opinion that you get your point across better with simpler language, even if it requires lengthening the sentence a bit.
The thing is, these words are both incredibly precise and compact. So I’m very happy that the author uses them, as it means I can get the meaning without lowest common denominator fluff or volume.
Have I always known what these words meant? No, but it’s the reward for a habit of right-clicking every word and looking up the definition - which also stretches your cognitive capacity over time so it’s worth doing for purely selfish reasons.
Your particular interpretation of the author's choice in words tells us more about your psychological makeup than the author.
Take the "meta-cognition" advice to heart and perform some self-debugging in order to determine what exactly in your psyche made you react in this way.
Ah right, so it would be far better if the Ocean Cleanup did not exist, technology were to not have been tested for cleaning up ocean plastic, and people would not have known about plastic in the ocean via the Ocean Cleanup's social media?
Right, trust the experts, who appear to be more interested in their own expertise than people at least trying to do something, trying to create better technology, and trying to educate the public on plastic ocean waste.
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