TechTakes

It's so beautiful.

How about you remain competitive by fixing your shit? I've met a lead data scientist with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive customer records who is allowed to keep their password in a text file on their desktop, and you're worried that customers are best served by using AI to improve security through some mechanism that you haven't even come up with yet? You sound like an asshole and I'm going to kick you in the jaw until, to the relief of everyone, a doctor will have to wire it shut, giving us ten seconds of blessed silence where we can solve actual problems.

The only thing I'm holding against this guy is him buying into the AI doom, and I'm attributing that to him getting lost in the sauce regarding data science.

Everything else was this guy channeling his inner Kendrick and giving the AI bubble the beatdown it so richly deserves.

Lol look at the reception on HN.

First off it was too cool and real to be allowed by their rules*, so there are like six [flagged][dead] copies, then Dang allowed it through with the title Please Don't Mention AI Again, as a weird attempt at humor, and then half the comments were all just about how aggressive the article's tone is.

Basically: what a bunch of squares.

* Actually I just read through the rules and it doesn't actually violate any of them, but I guess there are unwritten rules too.

This is brilliant and I’m saving it and will post a link to it the next time someone at work asks why we can’t “just use AI to do it” when a ticket gets rejected for being stupid and/or unreasonable.

However:

The first is that we have some sort of intelligence explosion, where AI recursively self-improves itself, and we're all harvested for our constituent atoms […]. It may surprise some readers that I am open to the possibility of this happening, but I have always found the arguments reasonably sound.

Yeah, I gotta admit, I am surprised. Because I have not found a single reasonable argument for this horseshit and the rest of the article (as well as the others I read from their blog) does not read like it’s been written by someone who’d buy into AI foom.

A masterpiece, no notes.

Also, I read this in SecUnit's voice.

thanks to this article specifically, Ludic’s going on a podcast with Robert Evans:

I just agreed to go on a podcast on a whim, then a friend told me it is with the host of Behind the Bastards, and I spat tea everywhere.

My to-do list today said "go for piano class" and "prepare for rental inspection".

I am unprepared for this level of prime time.

Bookmarked. When the question comes up again, this article will be a good reply because it really brings many of my own thoughts to the point.

I left the field, as did most of my smarter friends, and my salary continued to rise a reasonable rate and sustainably as I learned the wisdom of our ancient forebearers. You can hear it too, on freezing nights under the pale moon, when the fire burns low and the trees loom like hands of sinister ghosts all around you - when the wind cuts through the howling of what you hope is a wolf and hair stands on end, you can strain your ears and barely make out: "Just Use Postgres, You Nerd. You Dweeb."

How do I hire this person, this is something I'd like embroiled in gold letters over my desk. And on the tombstone.

I just got back from a trip to a substantially less developed country, and really living in a country, even for a little bit, where I could see how many lives that money could improve, all being poured down the Microsoft Fabric drain, it just grinds my gears like you wouldn't believe. I swear to God, I am going to study, write, network, and otherwise apply force to the problem until those resources are going to a place where they'll accomplish something for society instead of some grinning clown's wallet.

Amen. We always need more insiders who are ready to take up the cause of not doing stupid shit with the ungodly accumulation of resources our society has permitted, especially when we are currently leaving so much of the world to play catch-up while we continue to leech them dry.

multiple people have pinged me with this one on social media too

Bravo!