In the first "The Matrix" movie we have the famous scene of Neo just
connected to the computer and opening his eyes and saying "I know kung
fu". Something that was really cool in early 2000 sounds like a
dystopia to me nowadays.
I don't want to "know kung fu", I want to practice Kung Fu! So I
prefer "The Karate Kid" way:
First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature rule, Daniel-san, not mine.
And talking about movies, there are a lot of movies that shows the
Hero's journey structure. And it's not relevant if Daniel-san win
the last fight or if Rocky defeats Apollo, because the important part
of the story is the journey, is the hero starting the adventure and
how the path changes him.
And this exact principle applies to everything in live, everyone knows
that shortcuts doesn't have value. You can win, you can be faster,
stronger, bigger, but you are missing the point, you are missing that
"journey before destination" is always true for any Radiant Knight.
In The Matrix the hero's journey is not related to the Kung Fu, and
that was just some cool way of introducing the action, the learning is
in a different path because in other case we won't have any movie.
Neo doesn't care about Kung Fu, it's just something nice to fight the
Agent Smith (What an irony). Daniel-san want's to learn to fight to
defend himself, but at the end, fighting is not important, at the end
he actually learns karate, and that changes him, and Miyagi and Daniel
care about karate.
Gen AI "externalizes" the journey, and it's very tempting to take the
shortcut and go directly to get the trophy. But doing that we are
removing all the value from the output, we are not learning, we are
not doing the journey and we don't change at the end, so actually,
using Gen AI is like a waste of time.
No one cares... About something
I've been thinking lately about why people uses AI, because even with
all the advertisement and pressure I sincerely do not see any value in
using gen AI, I don't need this technology and the only outcome that
I'm seeing today is that's destroying everything that I loved or cared
about.
But going to the point, if there are so many people using and
promoting this, maybe they see some value and thinking about it and
just talking with different kind of people I'm starting to see a
trend. Most of the people are okay with the usage of AI for anything
that they don't care, and of course, they are against the usage in
anything that they consider important, everything where they see
value.
Designers will say that the AI is generating aberrant images, and
stealing the work of others, ignoring copyright and attribution and
depreciating the quality, but they will be okay to use it to generate
text, translate, write code, etc.
Writers will say that any text generated with AI is poorly written,
but they won't see any problem in using a gen AI image for their blog
post.
Musicians will be disgusted by the AI generated music, but maybe they
don't see any problem playing a vibe-coded video game.
Programmers...
Okay, maybe not everyone follows this pattern, or maybe that's exactly
what's happening. Maybe some devs don't care about coding but care
about reviewing, others don't care about testing but care about
coding, and others don't care at all and vibe-code everything.
I don't see any value in any gen AI usage because I usually care
about the output, but also about the process, and the how and why is,
most of the times, more relevant than the final outcome.
That's why I try to use only free software, and I'm not using Windows
or Mac, that's why sometimes I choose to use a tool just because it's
written in python and not in java.
So to me, the quality of code is not more important than the license,
it's not more important than technology used, and of course it's not
more important than who and why.
Because I care... And you should care too!
I've a "Software Engineer" university degree. But the final paper has
no value. What's important to me at the end is that I started that
career because my brother introduces me to debian and free software in
the 90's. What's important is my relation with peers, professors, my
activity in the local Linux User Group, days studying, the failure and
the success after understanding interesting math... I don't need an AI
generated title, and I don't want people with the "Software Engineer"
title, I just want more people to have the opportunity to experience
the same growth path, the journey.
What's the value of music? It's just something to listen when you are
working, to hide the sound of life that surround you? Anyone that
had listen any musician in live sees the value, the difference. It
doesn't matter that you can make "better" music and record and play
without any mistake, but we value the live performance, because the
music is not the important part, the important part is the musician
and the listener, the communication. And it's not the same if you
listen the exact same song from someone that just lost his father.
What's my job? It's just the code that I write? To me it's clear
that's not, and shouldn't be. My job is to create software, I don't
care if a gen AI can do that, other people can do that before I
started to be able to do it, and I'm not asking others to do it for
me.
Of course, not caring about something is natural, no one is interested
in all the human activity and just delegate some parts to continue
working on what's important to them. But after thinking about it, I
can't just ignore it.
Now, when I need an image, that I don't care enough to create myself,
I will care just a little to find someone who actually care and
delegate to him instead to a big corp AI. When I need some text to
read, I will look for someone who actually cares about the text. And,
of course, when I need any software or application , that I don't care
enough to create myself, I will look for some developer that actually
care about the code and for sure I won't ask any gen AI.
