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I think this recent post by AI industry CEO Matt Shumer is worth a read. In it, he basically explains how quickly LLMs (large language models) are evolving to supplant many developers and programmers, and how that disruption is coming to other industries quickly. He also warns critics of AI to adjust their priors and realize the AI tools you mocked just six months ago, aren’t the ones in use today:

“I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just… appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed. A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave.”

While the post is interesting (with the understanding this is somebody making and selling automation software), you might notice something: absolutely nowhere in the blog post does he meaningfully acknowledge the widespread problems with existing AI use. Either because his financial self-interest doesn’t allow for honest acknowledgment of them, or because he simply doesn’t find those aspects all that interesting.

Maybe both.

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[-] Quexotic@beehaw.org 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

For my part, I have tried to be very clear-eyed about this and have been driven to learn and understand how it works. I want to know what its strengths are and what its weaknesses are. And mostly, I want to know how it's going to be used to further subjugate us. I have already seen how it has been used to deny people insurance coverage and for various and sundry other nefarious uses. Most recently, it has been suspected as being one of the prime causes of the deaths of many little Iranian girls. The future is now.

I feel that if I understand it well enough, then I will be better equipped in the coming struggle against it. I see how already people are losing their jobs at the mere possibility that AI might actually replace them and be able to do their jobs for them. And I relish the coming articles that go into detail about how badly it's been overestimated and how completely it has caused ruin in the companies that have chosen it over humans.

I use AI. I don't trust it, but I know what it's good at. I also know what it's terribly bad at Most importantly, I have seen it improving and it is becoming more concerning.Articles like this seem to indicate the possibility that AI will become much more affordable and much more powerful very soon. and yet it seems clear that it is being intentionally kept out of our reach.

I am not so concerned about AI causing an extinction-level event, but more so in its acceleration of our own self-destruction through many other means, not the least of which is climate change.

I am reminded of an old adage.

To err is human. To really louse things up takes a computer.

The thinking behind this being of course that if you make one mistake and you automate it then you have the opportunity of exponentially failing, where otherwise it would just be a simple typo that you could fix with correction fluid.

To the point mentioned earlier though, I don't think it matters as much whether the technology has advanced to the point where it can replace workers (it hasn't, but it's closer than I'd like), but that they believe that it already has and are replacing workers with it anyway.

/rant

Sorry for the bad writing PH, I'm tired.

[-] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 2 points 9 hours ago

I'll forgive it this once.

this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
58 points (100.0% liked)

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