I'm not sure how this will resonate here, but this past year my interests in side projects sharply declined. For reference I am early 30s, married no kids. Up until now I used to work on 2-3 large side projects a year, diving deep into them obsessed with sleepless nights working.
Now with LLMs it just feels kind of like whats the point? Either my work will be consumed by an LLM to train and get tossed aside or i should just wait 5 years and whatever i will have worked on will probably just be a prompt away. Even if that doesn't become true, nobody really cares about traditional software building anyways. Everything is just LLMs. All interesting things about AI that I really liked building with ML or RL now just seem completely obsolete. Any mention of AI is just overwhelmed by "oh so your just connecting to ChatGPT and boom no problem, right?" with the majority of the population completely blind to the fact that there are many types of ML and other things besides an LLM.
Its just hard to get motivated by anything. Unless you are working on a LLM right now nobody really cares what you are doing in software. Just seems futile.
I think also my own personal expectations get in the way of doing side projects. Its hard to work hundreds of hours on something knowing the end monetary value is going to be $0. So I end up in this state of wanting to work on something but then getting cynical, realizing there's little to no money to be made and just demotivate myself.
Anyways that is a long rant and this past year instead of building software i started to learn an instrument. it has been great. with software there is this notion of something being "optimal" but with music there is no optimal. Even the highest level artists are not satisfied with their work. The music is always above you.
I feel the same way. I follow the LLM/AI advancements very closely, and I find that motivating. However, the whole discussion seems to turn around long term replacement of all labor and absorption of business value into some big tech providing the AI infrastructure.
I usually had two types of motivation, technical motivation to learn skills that would eventually be useful in my career and hacker motivation to build something with the implicit expectation of eventually making it a sustainable business. But now I am not certain there is a point in learning a new skill or building a side hustle if eventually an LLM will be better than me or my business for pennies.
Maybe this whole feeling is part of the AI replacement hype, and totally false. And maybe it is just common to feel this way when technological revolutions happen, and it's just temporary and we should push through. Regardless, we probably should keep monitoring the space.
Maybe it's time to genuinely focus on doing anything that intrinsically makes you feel good without any external expectations. An LLM might be better than you at everything, but you would still enjoy your mediocre implementation, just because you did it. Maybe this is what it really means to be an artisan.
> An LLM might be better than you at everything, but you would still enjoy your mediocre implementation, just because you did it. Maybe this is what it really means to be an artisan.
So true. One way to defeat determinism is to enjoy the process.
> with software there is this notion of something being "optimal" but with music there is no optimal. Even the highest level artists are not satisfied with their work. The music is always above you.
The same holds for software developers, or at least (IMO) the good ones: they always want to refine their code, or at least know where it could be further refined. The best of those just know when to stop refining and move on.
Musicians also strive for the optimal performance: they continually practice to get better. Most are smart enough to know they will never be perfect, just as a good engineer knows there is no perfect code (Knuth notwithstanding). But that doesn't stop them from trying.
Why you so concerned with how the public perceives "AI"? They've always been bad at it and we both know that LLMs are not the only part of "AI" that matters. They aren't really concerned with really understanding what's going on, so why entertain their fleeting thoughts?
>Unless you are working on a LLM right now nobody really cares what you are doing in software. Just seems futile.
Well it was the same for web dev 20 years ago. Then data science/big data 10 years ago. Then Crypto/NFTs 5 years ago (ugh). If that clout is a big motivator then you gotta keep following trends. Nothing is stylish forever.
Why is it sad to pursue something that will never reach perfection? Why is it sad to go on a path literally thousands of people have gone on and have done better than you? Release yourself from these things and you will be much happier.
Music taught me you don't need to be perfect or the best. Music is about connecting with other people. Its much better than computers for that. Its a very "meatspace" realm and while the virtual space has made music more accessible, it will always be firmly fully experienced in the in-person physical world that requires another human being.
> What else are you gonna do with your life, this is it
Well i mean there are tons of things out in life that you can do besides sit in front of the computer producing code that very few people will see.
Now with LLMs it just feels kind of like whats the point? Either my work will be consumed by an LLM to train and get tossed aside or i should just wait 5 years and whatever i will have worked on will probably just be a prompt away. Even if that doesn't become true, nobody really cares about traditional software building anyways. Everything is just LLMs. All interesting things about AI that I really liked building with ML or RL now just seem completely obsolete. Any mention of AI is just overwhelmed by "oh so your just connecting to ChatGPT and boom no problem, right?" with the majority of the population completely blind to the fact that there are many types of ML and other things besides an LLM.
Its just hard to get motivated by anything. Unless you are working on a LLM right now nobody really cares what you are doing in software. Just seems futile.
I think also my own personal expectations get in the way of doing side projects. Its hard to work hundreds of hours on something knowing the end monetary value is going to be $0. So I end up in this state of wanting to work on something but then getting cynical, realizing there's little to no money to be made and just demotivate myself.
Anyways that is a long rant and this past year instead of building software i started to learn an instrument. it has been great. with software there is this notion of something being "optimal" but with music there is no optimal. Even the highest level artists are not satisfied with their work. The music is always above you.