Nolan Lawson, on his feelings about AI and software development.
I don’t have a conclusion. Really, that’s my current state: ambivalence. I acknowledge that these tools are incredibly powerful, I’ve even started incorporating them into my work in certain limited ways (low-stakes code like POCs and unit tests seem like an ideal use case), but I absolutely hate them. I hate the way they’ve taken over the software industry, I hate how they make me feel while I’m using them, and I hate the human-intelligence-insulting postulation that a glorified Excel spreadsheet can do what I can but better.
In one of his podcasts, Ezra Klein said that he thinks the “message” of generative AI (in the McLuhan sense) is this: “You are derivative.” In other words: all your creativity, all your “craft,” all of that intense emotional spark inside of you that drives you to dance, to sing, to paint, to write, or to code, can be replicated by the robot equivalent of 1,000 monkeys typing at 1,000 typewriters. Even if it’s true, it’s a pretty dim view of humanity and a miserable message to keep pounding into your brain during 8 hours of daily software development.
You should read the whole post. Also you might as well have put a sheet of carbon copy between two empty sheets of paper and written his post to get a copy of how I feel too.