Random (AI) acts of kindness

[ergophobe]

AI is just a new level of enshitification.

How Rob Pike got spammed with an AI slop "act of kindness"
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/26/slop-acts-of-kindness/

[rcjordan]

>new level of enshitification

For 'Bachelor Of Arts' stuff --writing, photography, painting, advertising, etc-- it can certainly be abused. Similarly to how we abused 'white' seo, come to think of it.

For 'Bachelor Of Science' stuff --programming, spreadsheets, circuitry, architecture, etc-- I think it is a fantastic tool.

[ergophobe]

I think it will be abused in every domain, but in most domains it will also be incredibly useful.

To me the big divide is not BA/BS, but acquisition and execution.

For acquiring the skills needed to think like a writer or programmer and see like a artist and hear like a musician, it is incredibly detrimental.

Having acquired the skills, it's incredibly useful for executing the vision.

What I worry about is what happens to the young people who are skipping the hard part.

I have similar feelings about work from home. For a junior person trying to learn the ropes, I think it's horrible. For a late-career person with heaps of experience and the kids out of the house who is mostly in execution mode, productivity generally should go up.

The doom combo is a young person with a WFH job and shaky skill acquisition because they got through college just depending on LLMs

The power combo is the brilliant late-career software engineer who is supercharged with AI and freed from the shackles of commuting and constant meetings

[littleman]

My perspective is a little different.  I see AI removing the need for expertise in a lot of different areas.  I have used ChatGPT to solve problems I didn't quite have my head fully wrapped around.  Working with it, I fed it data and it walked me through the analysis and we came up with a fix.  This type of scenario has played out for me a dozen times.

AI is removing the need for skill, which, in turn is going to lower the need for higher paid jobs.  This is great for someone trying to carve out some niche with a small business, but devastating for skilled white collar employment.  I agree with you that those established employees are going to fair better than the new hires, they will have better job security.  A lot of young people just aren't going to get to work as part of the white collar skilled labor class.

I would tell a young person to think about a career in an area that can't easily be replaced with AI, being something like an electrician or nurse. Or, figure out a way to exploit AI to start a business.

[ergophobe]

Actually, I don't think those perspectives are all that different.

I just meant that even if they have a decent job, the new world of AI helpers and WFH works great for established workers and sucks for young workers.

But in general, I agree that most jobs that involve either a repetitive physical task (so most manufacturing) or tapping away at a keyboard (so most white collar work) will come under massive downward pressure.

[rcjordan]

>A lot of young people just aren't going to get to work as part of the white collar skilled labor class.

That is exactly what is happening according to my employment feeds.

[rcjordan]

AI is turning expertise into a commodity.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-agents-expertise-box-ceo-context-gives-companies-competitive-advantage-2026-1