I have a running theory that although AI will continue on (just as the internet did). That between the rapidly accelerating technology and methodologies as well as the thriving open source community. That no company will be able to extract meaningful value that they can return to share holders, and that the margins will remain low on the back of high energy costs.

I don’t think this situation is going away and is likely going to accelerate. As systems get more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of the changes and impacts to a large code base (especially if you are working on a monolith). Increasingly it becomes a cat and mouse game of tracking race conditions and edge cases that might be the subtile degradation of multiple components.

Automation methodologies like IaC have helped and some advances in AI support tools have helped to parse data faster. New problems have emerged as well and I would say case complexity has also increased.

Industrial market economies.

The demands of work have eaten childhood (in zero-sum education races) family life, neighborhoods and social life (people moving all the time for a better job), spiritual life (exhaustion).

Market liberalism has pushed more and more debt (e.g. student loans), risk (debts for other things like housing), and uncertainty (random layoffs, zero hours contracts, gig economy) onto individuals and households.

Edit: Japan, China, Korea, and Thailand are speed-running the process. Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and India are not far behind - all states of India except Bihar already have sub-replacement fertility for instance.

I wonder what kind of bone yard is going to come out of all the mania spending. I am picturing a sea of GPU's being liquidated from startups no one's ever heard of.

I think anything to reduce the overall power and consumption of the AI is the long term win. I do see nature as being a catalyst for developing new technologies. I don't think WallStreet has the patience for this development and research. I wonder even if there can be value extraction from this, or if this will eventually be supplanted by the next hot idea that sounds good at the next shareholder meeting.

It seems like all paths with recruiters lead to the phone call. I really wish some of them had an email only option.

Email only is not a good option for them. They need candidates that aren't at least a total embarrassment when presented to their clients, so the phone call really is a first screening interview.

If you want a conversation between humans, a phone call may be a good option. With email only, there is a good chance it will turn into a talk between bots. Bots can make phone calls too, but it is more complicated and a bit too obvious.

> I really wish some of them had an email only option.

But why? If they need to convince someone you're a good hire, they will want to talk to you.

I don't mind having a phone call, it's the multiple layers of screening interviews with ill prepared questions that feels like a giant waste of time. I'd rather answer all those questions in an email and have the phone call as a formality. I do recognize the need to confirm that the person writing is indeed the person you are speaking to but I should at least be able to get a straight answer on salary and comp before I pick up the phone.

This. I don't mind having a phone call, but I do mind wasting time on it by repeating everything that they could have learned about me before the call and running into sanity checks (e.g. salary expectations) that they could have done beforehand. At that point, it's just laziness by the recruiter and comes off as an attempt to pressure me it doing something they couldn't justify rationally.

Fair enough - knowing a rough expected comp range is a time-saver.

I'm cool with letting human beings stay in charge of operating motor vehicles.

No desire to vibe drive?

Stories like these really help highlight how bad the bubble some people surround themselves with. Imagine being so out of touch you describe another human being as "lower value human capital".

Goldman Sachs renamed HR human capital management when they were still known for being the smartest people on the street. So the convention of calling employees human capital stuck. From there I can totally see how the other, much longer-lived, convention of rating employees as high and low value bled over.

Imagine how broken society has to be for this situation to occur in the first place, and then only need to issue a public apology to not get cancelled by the potential mob backlash.

It's very clear that reality happens in private and a 'im sowwy' should not be the only downside of devaluing life..

Or build yourself a bubble and then ignore everything outside of it? *shrug

They have run out of euphemisms.

AI will produce an infinite supply of high-quality euphemisms, making our existing drone...er...associates more productive and allowing us to eliminate the now redundant Department of Pleasantries and returning 4 headcount to our shareholders.

I have been seeing so many bad commencement speeches that it's good to see someone actually deliver a nuanced and grounded approach that speaks to the issues of our time. Woz has definitely improved a lot in his public speaking over the years.

Everyone was hating on the Google CEO but I really almost had a crash out of how out of touch Scott Borchetta sounded on stage too. Glad there's one good Apple out there.