Does AI benefit the world? – Chelsea Troy

Our ethical struggle with generative models derives in part from the fact that we…sort of can’t have them ethically, right now, to be honest. We have known how to build models like this for a long time, but we did not have the necessary volume of parseable data available until recently—and even then, to get it, companies have to plunder the internet. Sitting around and waiting for consent from all the parties that wrote on the internet over the past thirty years probably didn’t even cross Sam Altman’s mind.

On the environmental front, fans of generative model technology insist that eventually we’ll possess sufficiently efficient compute power to train and run these models without the massive carbon footprint. That is not the case at the moment, and we don’t have a concrete timeline for it. Again, wait around for a thing we don’t have yet doesn’t appeal to investors or executives.

Does AI benefit the world? – Chelsea Troy

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Vibe code is legacy code | Val Town Blog

When you vibe code, you are incurring tech debt as fast as the LLM can spit it out. Which is why vibe coding is perfect for prototypes and throwaway projects: It’s only legacy code if you have to maintain it!

The worst possible situation is to have a non-programmer vibe code a large project that they intend to maintain. This would be the equivalent of giving a credit card to a child without first explaining the concept of debt.

If you don’t understand the code, your only recourse is to ask AI to fix it for you, which is like paying off credit card debt with another credit card.

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Vibe coding and Robocop

The short version of what I want to say is: vibe coding seems to live very squarely in the land of prototypes and toys. Promoting software that’s been built entirely using this method would be akin to sending a hacked weekend prototype to production and expecting it to be stable.

Remy is taking a very sensible approach here:

I’ve used it myself to solve really bespoke problems where the user count is one.

Would I put this out to production: absolutely not.

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Keeping up appearances | deadSimpleTech

Looking at LLM usage and promotion as a cultural phenomenon, it has all of the markings of a status game. The material gains from the LLM (which are usually quite marginal) really aren’t why people are doing it: they’re doing it because in many spaces, using ChatGPT and being very optimistic about AI being the “future” raises their social status. It’s important not only to be using it, but to be seen using it and be seen supporting it and telling people who don’t use it that they’re stupid luddites who’ll inevitably be left behind by technology.

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In 2025, venture capital can’t pretend everything is fine any more – Pivot to AI

Here is the state of venture capital in early 2025:

  • Venture capital is moribund except AI.
  • AI is moribund except OpenAI.
  • OpenAI is a weird scam that wants to burn money so fast it summons AI God.
  • Nobody can cash out.

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What we talk about when we talk about AI — Careful Industries

Technically, AI is a field of computer science that uses advanced methods of computing.

Socially, AI is a set of extractive tools used to concentrate power and wealth.

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