How time flies (a small rant about LLM misuse).
This post is a stream of consciousness. Be advised.
More than two years have passed since the last post I wrote.
I wish I had ideas to write about in those two years, but it appears that all your energy gets sucked out of you when you have a job.
A lot has changed, AI[^ai-note] has become a standard goal of all companies trying to get a slice of the market share while executing the most nonsensical ideas like:
- measuring performance by AI usage (cough COCOMO cough).
- mass firing software people because AI can do the work of many people
- letting AI take the rudder so it sends your ship into a waterfall.
- shoving AI into everything, even in places that don't make sense like wearables.
This is not a critique of AI on itself but an observation on how company C-suites behave when they find a shiny item and forces it into everything.
Good thing is that the shiny is losing it's luster quickly as people is seeing more drawbacks than benefits like:
- water pollution.
- higher energy bills.
- enshitification of already mediocre products and or services.
- overall price increases.
- wage theft.
- critical thinking erosion.
- a large et cetera that I'm too lazy to write.
Some companies are recently seeing that their investment in AI isn't returning the projected impact in their coffers and customer satisfaction. But this might take some time as most C-suites are really disconnected with the reality (like the ones saying that AI will replace most of white collar jobs).
The only positive impact AI has made into my life is to make me want to learn to draw and the only company that has seen only positive impact from this gold rush is NVIDIA (as they're the ones selling the most shovels).
Let's hope the madness (which is similar to the one related to the dotcom boom) ends soon. Unfortunately this end will be a VERY bumpy ride.
As my "last words" on this post, let me quote Linus Torvalds on his (very taken out of context) opinion about NVIDIA:
Have a nice day everyone.
You know what? I'll be writing more posts in this format. It was fun writing this post and I don't want to delete this blog.
[^ai-note] LLMs, more precisely. As the term AI has been misused for marketing purposes like the term cyber on the late '90s and early 2000s.