We had it forced down our throats by CEOs and CTOs who thought that it would improve our productivity. Nobody forced it down their throats, though. Instead, they were seduced. They went willingly.

In one gig I was on, a consultant showed up and started saying that the platform was not good because it didn't have any machine learning(this is pre-AI buzz words). So the executives asked me when can I fix the platform to have machine learning in it. They didn't have an answer when I simply asked "machine learning to do what?" and my explanation of what machine learning is or can be used for went to deaf ears. So yeah, definitely agree on seduced and then went willingly and blindly.

no. openclaw wasnt forced by ceo's. it was forced by the same people who though there was money to be made in crypto then ICO then NFT. a bunch of scammers that bring negative value to the world

And they make money. A scammer is the President of the United States.

At a certain point why blame people for trying to keep up? Why are scammers so successful? It seems to me we have a systemic failure at a societal level. Until we are honest about that it will only get worse. Until then maybe some rouge LLM botching some critical system will be the wake up call we need.

I am not sure what to make of critiques that seem to rest on notions of a small population of scammers preying upon the doe-eyed public. I think the situation is a bit closer to Carlin: garbage in, garbage out. A critique that holds up quite excellently in this AI age.

western society is a shelve of its former glory. it did not last long but there was an age were man was capable of greatness. the early internet kinda was the last stretch of this short run then money corrupted it. the underlying issue stems from abandoning cultural education as a Western value. Instead, we've opted to dispense raw ideology devoid of any thinking mechanism that we now seek so dearly to integrate to LLMs so that they can be more like us. This sloppening manifested in our lives through every medium. We witnessed it when animation shifted to 3D, providing slop and poorly designed characters and stories. We witnessed it when video games all adopted the same game engines, look and feel and lack of narrative stakes, slopping ideology down players’ throats- no nuance, no wit, just mind-numbing dogma that punishes anyone who dares to criticize.Perhaps most damaging was Netflix's infiltration of our households that has accelerated our collective intellectual atrophy through relentless ideologically charged content parroting as entertainment. Meanwhile, our children's minds are being shaped not by family or tradition but by the algorithms of TikTok and Snapchat.The past decade and a half hasn't just prepared LLMs to replicate human abilities it has systematically stripped away human complexity, reshaping us into predictable patterns, not to raise LLMs to our level, but to reduce us to theirs, until the distinction no longer matters.

This wasn't really forced on us.

The whole industry is like a fashion show and has been for a long time. This is just exceptionally stupid compared to moderately stupid things before. I see it ore that everyone's wearing pink feathered chicken suits because it's in fashion. If you don't wear a pink feathered chicken suit then you're a luddite scumbag who doesn't deserve the respect of your peers.

However some of us still have enough self-respect not to be seen dead in a pink feathered chicken suit. I mean I'm still pissed off at half the other stuff we do in the industry. I haven't even really looked at the chicken suits yet.

If you work in a tech company with >5k employees it's extremely likely it's been forced down on you to wear the pink feathered chicken suit, and told to not complain about the pink feathered chicken suit because it is the inevitable future, and no one will be wearing anything that doesn't look like it ever again. Also, we are watching every straggler not in a pink feathered chicken suit, put yours on or leave the building.

If enough people say no, it'll stop.

For ref I'm usually the guy who comes in and cleans up all the chicken corpses after.

I don't know what is so mysterious about the following:

People can't just leave Wednesday and be in a new job with the same or better pay next Monday.

Rent/mortgage, bills and food are still due.

Comments like yours always baffle me. Empty idealism.

For the record, I usually get called to clean up and make things good again as well. Most of my career was like that.

> People can't just leave Wednesday and be in a new job with the same or better pay next Monday.

They don't have to leave, they can refuse to comply with unreasonable requests which are likely to cause harm by jeopardizing the security of user data.

Maybe your position is too precarious to risk getting fired, but if your job is asking you to do something unethical then you should be doing everything you can to get yourself out of that situation, either by supporting unionization or by being willing to take a manageable pay cut to find a new job as soon as possible.

If you're a software developer then you can almost certainly afford at least a moderate pay cut for upholding ethical conduct. The vast majority can even if we don't want to, but these situations are where we find out if our ethics are for sale or not.

A fairly filter-bubble take.

> Maybe your position is too precarious to risk getting fired

You mean yours isn't? Or even that of at least 95% of all devs worldwide? I can definitely say "no" to my CEO if he wants something too big that would take too much time and energy for questionable business results -- I am even expected to ground him. But if my colleagues hand me a ticket, I cannot just refuse without repercussions. I'll not get fired on the spot, that much is certain. But if it happens 2-3 times they'll start looking for a replacement. Same will happen if I outright tell my CEO I can't do something due to ethical concerns. That's how it is almost everywhere I looked and asked (and have very rarely worked with US companies).

> If you're a software developer then you can almost certainly afford at least a moderate pay cut

I can't even afford a 10% pay cut. I want to live in your world.

The thing you two are missing is "solidarity" and our industry sucks at it. In fact, it's been relied upon and conditioned into most IT/tech types we're "special" somehow in a way blue collar workers aren't. We aren't and the same dynamics apply. If everyone stops asking the boss how high to jump, and refuses to jump, only then will you see a meaningful reining in of behavior in executives. That action potential has to start somewhere, and as the current generation of alleged adults in the room, we're it. Our juniors need an example set or the cycle repeats. It isn't empty idealism. It's hard effing pragmatism at it's most brutal. If we don't change, nothing can change. Therefore, we must change.

Yes I am missing it, as in, I know it's theoretically possible but I've never once seen it. It seems to be a fantasy.

> It isn't empty idealism.

It is if it's never happening. Pragmatism it would be if it was already an established practice.

I like my dragons purple btw.

> If we don't change, nothing can change. Therefore, we must change.

Obviously. But that "if" is trying to lift an impossible amount of weight is what I am saying. It's one of those powerless "oh, if only!" cries that we the people are prone to.

You think execs don't know that? You think politicians don't know that? You know, there's a reason why in primary education we covered the Gilded Age, the Robber Barons, The Labor Movement, all that jazz. "We the People" aren't passive. When we get poked hard enough, often enough to be roused, it scares the bajeezus out of anyone trying to "drive" or "manage" the system.

You ever been hushed by a higher up in a company for talking about compensation? Did you point to the sign required by law as a reminder you have Rights? When times get like this, you have to dredge up the things you've put away because everything was going so good.

Now, it isn't, and your neck is on the block. You will die. You will be offered up for slaughter at the first inconvenience. This is unavoidable. The calculus of business is not something that the ones executing business are going to change voluntarily. They have to be forced to change by the environment. You are the agent that makes up the environment. So your choice is, walk into the inevitable like livestock to the slaughter, or work with your fellow man and take a few chunks of the machine with you. The first step to collective action is accepting you might not ever get to see the shade of the tree you're planting. Once you accept that; the course is clear. It's not empty ideals anymore. It's action. Your action, because you matter, everyone else matters, and it's the right thing to do, and if what's going on is someone else's idea of right, you ain't selling everyone else into it, because that, (what's going on) is wrong.

Ever heard of a Judas goat? Same thing. Herd follows it calmly. Manager's and execs are 100% aware of the dynamic and on guard. The only counterbalance against the dismissal reflex is making it too costly to dismiss all the individual actors at once. We're in the machine. The machine is us. If we don't like how it works... Time for change. I got a lot of days left, and I don't intend to leave the world working like it is, because it is not working for the vast majority of us.

So in conclusion, do what you want. I'm not here to convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But I see a fairer, more equitable world where we aren't subjugated by wannabe despots at the top of corporate hierarchies, but partners in making, delivering, and consuming goods and services, to the mutual benefit of all. Not just a lucky few. We were there once, and we can be there again; but we have to accept the way isn't making it possible for a privileged few to set the terms of exchange unilaterally. There has to be good faith. In the abcense there of, there will be conflict. They want things to just work and make them money. We want to eat, and be able to live reasonably well on a living wage without having to lock horns with and wrestle for every damn crumb against a capital wielding class more interested in extraction than being benefactors and stewards of a meta-stable system that serves everybody.

You seem to think I disagree with you on the theory about how should things be.

I don't disagree. I really want that reality to materialize. It does not. We have people in very high positions who very carefully make sure it never happens. They have connections, money, resources, obedient and scary enforcers -- they have everything.

While I have you here, I want to make a comparison. There are/were dozens of thousands of devs who commanded $400K for at least 5 years, some for 10+ in FAANG companies, just resting and vesting. They are the ones who should try and sacrifice something to try to better the world. Not me in Eastern Europe who get passed over on the final phases of interviews whose phases I _all_ aced (and got told so in very clear terms) because I said that no, 6200 EUR is not enough for a senior and that I'll start from 7500 at least. Not me who is still renting in this 40s because he was a young overconfident doofus who never learned any money and financial advice (and nobody told him he should; on the contrary, everyone was very happy to exploit me and keep me blind of my own interest) and is now finally working hard to his own ends only -- in a period he should be resting and thinking about the later parts of his life! -- and because he's mostly operating in the EU market, notorious for barely any investment climate and conservative compensations, and definitely not me who has seen first-hand what happens to people rocking the boat.

My disagreement with you is that you invoke some mythical "we the humanity" entity which to me is a cheap way to avoid your own personal responsibility. I don't belong in that "we" group. The FAANG or any privileged engineers are there -- not me. Have you ever commanded FAANG salaries for at least 3 years? If so, and you have not changed anything, then you are directly responsible that the system is not better. Not me. The three total times in my life when I actually managed to gather money to rest for 6-10 months, I used them to just rest from all the crap that happened to me and just recovered physically and mentally. What for? Just to get back into the meat grinder.

What you say is generally valid but you get lost in the bigger picture whereas the everyday fight to change the system is on the ground -- this must not and should not be handwaved away with ideals but with CONCRETE measures, step by step: "allocate 1000 EUR from your next salary and invest them in exactly this and that place" or "use law 1234 and regulation 5678 to get some of your taxes back" or "insist for this contract clause so you are eligible for at least 6 months of severance if you get fired early" etc.

Tell me what power do I have as a contractor. No employment rights. No medical / dental. No severance. I can get fired tomorrow and I have no time to catch my breath. I have to start interviewing tomorrow. Better hope I get the best sleep in the last 5 years tonight! Or else it's not happening.

Executives / people in power just use the "boil the frog" tactic i.e. they tighten the grip 1cm per year until one day, as you said, it's you who is on the chopping block and you are just left confused about WTF went wrong. We are seeing it everywhere, you and I, otherwise we wouldn't discuss this at length here.

> The machine is us. If we don't like how it works... Time for change.

OK, shall I send you my account number so you can support me for 12 months full until I find a job where I feel I can in fact change the world for the better? Disclaimer: it might take 60 months as well. Make your difference in the world! Do concrete measures! Or hell, do it for somebody else -- help them achieve their full potential and recruit them to help the world with you.

Virtue signalling, man. An empty one, too. This is what you're doing. Wishing a theoretical reality into existence so far has not worked for any living human as far as I am aware.

> I got a lot of days left, and I don't intend to leave the world working like it is, because it is not working for the vast majority of us.

Again, that is very obviously true. But it's only theoretical. Everyone is too afraid to not lose their stable income -- and I feel for them. Do you?

Well congratulations my friend, do you thing me some FAANG-er? No. I've undersold myself my entire damn life out of some misguided notion that supporting someone else's mission required sacrifice on my part because it was at least a step in a direction, if even not mine. Furthermore, I've only taken jobs that at least at first glance made it passed a non-trivial list of ethical filters, leading to a boring, but functional infra behind, but also a bunch of leaving places because I inevitably found that what once passed the ethical filter no longer does, and it has cost me just about everything I hold dear. I'm at best, right now, less than a few months from starvation my man. Not even actual food. Medical treatment. Know what that gives me? Clarity. When you're a dead man walking, in a system you're dependent on, and you see it flying off the rails; you start really questioning the "I believes" and getting down to "the how does". This system, if left alone, and as is, is Fucked. Capital F. No golden handcuffs here. Just a dude standing on two feet, watching the flywheel spinning and starting to fly apart.

And the fun bit is this. We're the ones who have kept it going. If we keep doing that without forcing a confrontation with the dynamics... Already dead, remember? So. There's one meaningful choice left. Start fighting for change, or go down like a lamb to slaughter maybe a little bit later, but get slaughtered just the same. I get you're in the EU. I get shit is largely happening over here in the States. Why do you think I'm a nuisance here in a Silicon Valley incubator's little club house of conniving ne'er-do-wells where everyone comes to swap ideas and get-rich-quick schemes? If I'm going to go down, it will not be comfortable for anyone, because I'm done seeing the world as anything but what it is, and if the only reason I am on this planet is to have conversations like these we're having today, that is exactly what I will do until my fingers, my mouth, my brain, my eyes, and my feet stop working. I can't even give myself the cold comfort of being a starving artist. They at least occasionally bring joy. I can bring only discomfort, and galvanization to change, even though I have a non-zero of ever seeing it.

>OK, shall I send you my account number so you can support me for 12 months full until I find a job where I feel I can in fact change the world for the better? Disclaimer: it might take 60 months as well. Make your difference in the world! Do concrete measures! Or hell, do it for somebody else -- help them achieve their full potential and recruit them to help the world with you.

My friend, I've already done that. Multiple times. I've helped raise children that were not my own. I've stepped in where no one else would. I've moved families back together across continents. I've taken on burdens that others may then run. Now, in a situation I need help, I have pauce hope for another like me to come around and do the same thing for me, but you know what? That's fine. I at least know I'm where I'm at because of my own hand. No one asked me to make those sacrifices. I just did. It's who I am. I give a shit about the welfare of other people, well in excess of my own. Maybe too late in life, have I come to truly internalize, that I should have been much more ruthless with the System than I have been. If it's willing to do harmful things to me, it'll damn well do it to people who can't stand for themselves. The important thing though, is if I can do these things, so can everyone else. We can break this goddamn cycle, but you have to want to, and be unafraid of the consequences. Our ancestors did it before, we can do it again. And in the end, it at least means something, even if I don't get to see it.

Even if that means I have to sound like an old fart for the rest of the time I have on Earth; I have to make sure at no point I slack off in reminding people your personal choices matter. The systems around you emergently form out of not only what you do, but what you choose not to do, and your life really only starts, once you accept that death is coming regardless, and stop running from it, pick up the billy club, turn around, and start saying "No more. This shit ends with me."

You hear not a comfortable man sitting in an office chair. You hear a man, being harried by a System toward the waiting abyss, who is refusing to go down quietly, or with a whimper. I have nothing left than word of the Void which we all are being inexorably pushed, and exhortations that if we're going to end up there anyway, it might as well be from fighting to give those we leave behind a better chance. Something many of us lacked the courtesy of.

I don't blame you. My intent is not to shame you. I only speak that which is the Truth, and the Truth, is often hard to hear. Fight well, friend, in whatever way you can. I know I will be.

Enough people could say no and take a stance if there was collective solidarity in the tech industry. Unfortunately we don't have that, tech workers are in the vast majority skeptical of or anti anything resembling unionised work. The bosses won on that front, and now they can dictate freely that you must wear the pink feathered chicken suit.

People, in general, want to keep their jobs, saying no is an option when you don't care what happens with it or have the backing of the collective to walk out together.

my assessment of the situation: "we've spent so much money on AI's promise to give us 5x, 10x returns, that now we have to earn it back by foisting the burden on developers to make up the gains by working harder, at least enough to recoup the exec's decision to pour money into the boondoggle".

"Hey developers, we spent $x million on Claude, who promised 7x returns, so YOU better make it 7x more efficient so we don't look bad".

yea the real frightening thing about this is, if there is a clear failure to get roi on this stuff, the top-level people will be very reticent to walk it all back and admit it was a royal fuckup

Force is seeping in. Managements are expecting that LLM-driven prouctivity-enhancers will be deployed and give broad-based boosts. More are each week. Supposedly cheaper than people. Those that aren't yet might be soon. When your performance review includes facility with and productivity with LLM tools, you are being forced.

The "whole industry." What, like 5 companies?

This is a "monopolized sector." They absolutely forced it on you. In most cases, sure, not directly, but their influence is the only driving force. Absent this no one would have jumped on this flimsy bandwagon.