My social network has been split pretty much 50-50 recently, most glaringly on LinkedIn but it is starting to creep into others such as the retro games community.
The split is pro or anti AI in creative pursuits. You can see which side of the fence you are on by your reaction to this image that has been going around lately
Looking at all the issues with the image, I feel like it might be mocking the AI maximalist folks. Hope so, anyway.
Surely they could have at least fixed the sleeve? And to finish on "everyone clapped"? Embarassing.
As you might have already gathered, I have a nuanced interest in the subject. Like most technology things, as soon as a topic comes on my radar as potentially important, like it or not I feel like I have to learn about it.
It was the same with crypto, which didn't pay off very well, but I was an early adopter of the WWW as far as the UK goes and that did pay off.
While I don't trust it to code for me, I've found Cursor a great help in coding for the "auto completion", debugging, and things like CI/automations. Last night I helped two different friends with transcriptions of their videos using MacWhisper (uses local LLM so no datacenters involved).
With AI there are also a lot of bad things about it that can get solved given the will, things like the massive amount of power and water, the noisy data centers, the pollution they pump into the water table, all of that.
They could also make some reparations to the IP they stole for training.
My grumble today though is about all the people who are claiming to have made/created/built things when all they did was talk to a chatbot.
If you get a drink from a vending machine, even if you were very specific about exactly the beverage you want, that doesn't make you a barrista, it doesn't even mean you made the drink. You asked for a drink to be made for you.
That said, I do think there is a threshold where vibe coding crosses into programming. After all, programming is asking a computer to do something for you in exacting detail.
Not sure where that line is drawn yet ...
I think it is over-hyped and everyone is getting carried away. Okay so we can easily create images and other content, but is it actually adding any value. I would rather see what a human created even if it's not as polished. I've not got into AI for coding yet, but it should be treated as another tool. It does seem to make some people more productive.
I think something like 98% of the "I made this with a few prompts" folks bragging on LinkedIn never disclose their vibe coded apps either don't ship or don't have any users. There are only so many to-do apps needed ;)
The slop graphics are an epidemic though, cafes/takeaways/pizza places are really jumping on board and it's not good!
Just say no to clanker slop
No no no apparently typing "pretty mountain scene" into a text box requires real skill and knowledge of composition! ;)