despite the fact that AI can output tokens at such a high rate, i've found that it doesn't mean there is actual signal in the words themselves. i have the feeling that people are starting to become desensitized to the actual content contained within the words because of the symbol onslaught. something like snail acclimatization to being poked too many times with thousands of tokens so it stops noticing which ones are actually interesting. personally i'm starting to just trim accounts from my attention that don't ruthlessly enforce quality of their ideas / posts. if you're going to bombard me, you're getting muted. this is the defense we all need.
all tokens are created equal, but some are more equal than others.
“[T]he asymmetric ability of the laggards to make the leaders’ life a little bit worse…The burnt offerings that cost nothing and the burnt offerings that cost everything smell the same, because we make our offerings not to an omniscient God, but to fallible, overwhelmed humans.”
Gold, per usual. I wrote something similar that dovetails nicely with the idea of costless sacrifice: “AI turns mediocre into mass-produced and excellence into an arms race. Good-enough becomes automatic, while exceptional is pushed to superhuman heights. In the greatest Red Queen’s race of all time, standing still means sliding backward…
Call the coming shock the Gini Spike. But this inequality jolt is measured not only in dollars, but also cognitive autonomy…
In this brave new world, the disenfranchised lose not only their jobs, but also their ability to think independently, making them structurally dependent on AI systems and, by extension, those who control them.”
I feel this. I notice I place higher value and attention to the certified human writers I follow and am getting desensitized to, or ignoring, more and more of the the content that is faceless.
Just my two cents! Thank you for the great (human) contributions you keep making 🙌
Not meant to be contrarian, more just immediate reactions to the piece, which is a great read! As a frequent Claude-coder, there is certainly a difference in the quality of my / Claude’s output when we spend hours pouring over a plan vs just zero-shotting some code. In the end, Claude is the one committing the code, but the sacrifice behind the output being committed is not well measured by simply noting Claude wrote the code. I am curious if more measures will come out over time to show “Claude wrote AND thought of all this” vs “Claude wrote this but the human largely shaped this”
Great essay - reminded me of the "neo-Victorians" in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age - a group that reacts to the ability of 3D printers able to produce anything for anyone via "The Feed" of raw material by deliberately going back to hand made stuff. (Also has one of his greatest opening scenes.)
High on my list, but Cryptonomicon is my #1. His explanations of how a partnership works and how a corporate board meeting is an exercise in transmission of information are sheer genius.
May I suggest you check out the book "Stagtine" by Daniel Firth Griffith. It takes many of these topics and expands on the relation to and embodiment of "place" through the lens of "Kincentric Rewilding," and though it may seem unrelated, I believe you'll find insight and congruency with your writing.
I'm not sure how this ends (well) with anything less than biometric verification and hard rate limiting/penalties e.g. you prove to [job board] that you're a human, and you're limited to 5 job applications per week. A company could exclusively post to [job board] if they want applicants willing to bear some costs for applying. Unfortunately I think revealed preferences are for the opposite.
Great article! Makes me think that human touch will continue to become more valuable when it comes to media (writing, TV, movies, etc.). Patrons were willing to pay that much for Picasso's work, not only because his years of sacrifice produced great art, but because of the human story behind the painting and the painter.
(Fun story - I started skimming this and got to "What I do know is that if I’d written it, I would have put in a lot more effort, agonized over it, sweat the details, tried to present the ideas in unexpected ways" and thought "Oh no, I must have made a big mistake in the analysis!").
Preach it, Packy. Great stuff as always. I think part of the problem is that young people like myself are encouraged to 'produce' stuff, not just consume incessantly. This leads to people writing compelling prose or clever code via the path of least resistance, where we feel like we are producing but, in reality, the work – blood, sweat, tears and, most importantly, the failures – are minimised.
Another great read - I've been questioning this a lot lately as AI lowers the barrier for a great deal of things to near zero. The amount of competition for basically everything has increased exponentially, overloading systems that cannot adapt quick enough to keep up with the new status quo. Even if they were to adapt, it would largely be through implementing AI, which just means further removal of the human layer and another redefining of the rules as the models decide what passes and what fails. If standard job application advice was vague before, this will inevitably further muddy the waters. I'm unconvinced by the notion that "Taste" will be the meaningful signifier that many seem to insist upon.
The cycle you describe of job applications hits close to home and feels almost like an arms race. As someone currently searching for a summer internship, and after many conversations with folks in various industries, the standard answer I've been getting is that the value of actually meeting people continues to grow. In every sector, the current state of applying/hiring is a total lottery and the idea of building rapport over a quick linkedin message or email feels like a pipe-dream. There is always more opportunity for those willing to put themselves out there, but whether that effort will even be noticed amongst a wave of perfectly written and researched messages remains to be seen. Having a foot in the door has always helped, but especially now there is a trust component that must be taken into consideration.
The notion that everyone is just throwing thousands of resumes into the void and hoping one of them lands reinforces the message not to get your hopes up or get too attached to any one possibility in the future. This can be useful but I'd wager does not do much benefit to finding the best fit for the individual and company. I'm not sure it was any better before, but it certainly all feels less personal. Admittedly, after reading your series on Base Power, I felt inspired to read more and eventually apply to the company for their summer openings. While I'm not the most qualified on paper I know it would be a great fit but struggled to express that through a formulated job application process. If it is a lottery I'm playing, I'd like to do whatever I can to increase my odds, though besides reaching out to employees at the company to express my enthusiasm I feel like the situation is largely out of my control. One must also walk the line between caring too much or not enough. Where you work is a hugely important decision and reducing that decision to shotgun spread of trial and error feels like a step backwards.
despite the fact that AI can output tokens at such a high rate, i've found that it doesn't mean there is actual signal in the words themselves. i have the feeling that people are starting to become desensitized to the actual content contained within the words because of the symbol onslaught. something like snail acclimatization to being poked too many times with thousands of tokens so it stops noticing which ones are actually interesting. personally i'm starting to just trim accounts from my attention that don't ruthlessly enforce quality of their ideas / posts. if you're going to bombard me, you're getting muted. this is the defense we all need.
all tokens are created equal, but some are more equal than others.
“[T]he asymmetric ability of the laggards to make the leaders’ life a little bit worse…The burnt offerings that cost nothing and the burnt offerings that cost everything smell the same, because we make our offerings not to an omniscient God, but to fallible, overwhelmed humans.”
Gold, per usual. I wrote something similar that dovetails nicely with the idea of costless sacrifice: “AI turns mediocre into mass-produced and excellence into an arms race. Good-enough becomes automatic, while exceptional is pushed to superhuman heights. In the greatest Red Queen’s race of all time, standing still means sliding backward…
Call the coming shock the Gini Spike. But this inequality jolt is measured not only in dollars, but also cognitive autonomy…
In this brave new world, the disenfranchised lose not only their jobs, but also their ability to think independently, making them structurally dependent on AI systems and, by extension, those who control them.”
More: https://www.whitenoise.email/p/ais-raised-bar-paradox
I feel this. I notice I place higher value and attention to the certified human writers I follow and am getting desensitized to, or ignoring, more and more of the the content that is faceless.
Just my two cents! Thank you for the great (human) contributions you keep making 🙌
Not meant to be contrarian, more just immediate reactions to the piece, which is a great read! As a frequent Claude-coder, there is certainly a difference in the quality of my / Claude’s output when we spend hours pouring over a plan vs just zero-shotting some code. In the end, Claude is the one committing the code, but the sacrifice behind the output being committed is not well measured by simply noting Claude wrote the code. I am curious if more measures will come out over time to show “Claude wrote AND thought of all this” vs “Claude wrote this but the human largely shaped this”
I have been reading your work for a long time… and I had fell off the bandwagon for a bit but this connected with me once more!
“A sacrifice needs to cost something” and “Pretty good is the enemy of potentially great” were standouts…
it felt like you didn’t want to use the exact words but this to me is just a symptom of AI slop that pervades us. It overwhelms and consumes us.
Welcome back! Yes didn’t want to use the words because my point is that even if it gets “good” it’s still off, but yes
Great essay - reminded me of the "neo-Victorians" in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age - a group that reacts to the ability of 3D printers able to produce anything for anyone via "The Feed" of raw material by deliberately going back to hand made stuff. (Also has one of his greatest opening scenes.)
Great call! That’s my favorite Stephenson book
High on my list, but Cryptonomicon is my #1. His explanations of how a partnership works and how a corporate board meeting is an exercise in transmission of information are sheer genius.
Loved this article.
Will def have to check out the book, too.
May I suggest you check out the book "Stagtine" by Daniel Firth Griffith. It takes many of these topics and expands on the relation to and embodiment of "place" through the lens of "Kincentric Rewilding," and though it may seem unrelated, I believe you'll find insight and congruency with your writing.
Bless the sacrifice. 🙏
- jp
Thanks for the rec!
I'm not sure how this ends (well) with anything less than biometric verification and hard rate limiting/penalties e.g. you prove to [job board] that you're a human, and you're limited to 5 job applications per week. A company could exclusively post to [job board] if they want applicants willing to bear some costs for applying. Unfortunately I think revealed preferences are for the opposite.
Great article! Makes me think that human touch will continue to become more valuable when it comes to media (writing, TV, movies, etc.). Patrons were willing to pay that much for Picasso's work, not only because his years of sacrifice produced great art, but because of the human story behind the painting and the painter.
Thanks for the link!
(Fun story - I started skimming this and got to "What I do know is that if I’d written it, I would have put in a lot more effort, agonized over it, sweat the details, tried to present the ideas in unexpected ways" and thought "Oh no, I must have made a big mistake in the analysis!").
😂 ha no notes on yours!
Hey, I appreciate this one Packy. Well done. Thank you.
Preach it, Packy. Great stuff as always. I think part of the problem is that young people like myself are encouraged to 'produce' stuff, not just consume incessantly. This leads to people writing compelling prose or clever code via the path of least resistance, where we feel like we are producing but, in reality, the work – blood, sweat, tears and, most importantly, the failures – are minimised.
That sounds right to me. Hard to resist that pressure but important.
Feels like a Manadis piece! Beautiful
See Dostoevsky's "Crystal Palace" (Notes from Underground)
I’ve been having this mental itch for a while, and your essay TOTALLY scratched it. Thank you!
Another great read - I've been questioning this a lot lately as AI lowers the barrier for a great deal of things to near zero. The amount of competition for basically everything has increased exponentially, overloading systems that cannot adapt quick enough to keep up with the new status quo. Even if they were to adapt, it would largely be through implementing AI, which just means further removal of the human layer and another redefining of the rules as the models decide what passes and what fails. If standard job application advice was vague before, this will inevitably further muddy the waters. I'm unconvinced by the notion that "Taste" will be the meaningful signifier that many seem to insist upon.
The cycle you describe of job applications hits close to home and feels almost like an arms race. As someone currently searching for a summer internship, and after many conversations with folks in various industries, the standard answer I've been getting is that the value of actually meeting people continues to grow. In every sector, the current state of applying/hiring is a total lottery and the idea of building rapport over a quick linkedin message or email feels like a pipe-dream. There is always more opportunity for those willing to put themselves out there, but whether that effort will even be noticed amongst a wave of perfectly written and researched messages remains to be seen. Having a foot in the door has always helped, but especially now there is a trust component that must be taken into consideration.
The notion that everyone is just throwing thousands of resumes into the void and hoping one of them lands reinforces the message not to get your hopes up or get too attached to any one possibility in the future. This can be useful but I'd wager does not do much benefit to finding the best fit for the individual and company. I'm not sure it was any better before, but it certainly all feels less personal. Admittedly, after reading your series on Base Power, I felt inspired to read more and eventually apply to the company for their summer openings. While I'm not the most qualified on paper I know it would be a great fit but struggled to express that through a formulated job application process. If it is a lottery I'm playing, I'd like to do whatever I can to increase my odds, though besides reaching out to employees at the company to express my enthusiasm I feel like the situation is largely out of my control. One must also walk the line between caring too much or not enough. Where you work is a hugely important decision and reducing that decision to shotgun spread of trial and error feels like a step backwards.