> “The Grok integration with X has made everyone jealous,” says someone working at another big AI lab. “Especially how people create viral tweets by getting it to say something stupid.”
It's awesome to see the amazing value for society being created by big tech these days.
To think that even a year ago the idea of Instagram-style social media where all posts are openly AI-generated sounded very dystopian, now I can clearly so it is something people would pay for and HN people would gladly build. I wasn’t always a Luddite, but damn they made me one.
> I wasn’t always a Luddite, but damn they made me one.
If this industry didn't pay so well, I would've been gone years ago. I'm lucky to work in a job that I think is ethical and improving the world, but it's so goddamn embarrassing to even be in the same room as the AI and blockchain types and the ad hucksters.
> If this industry didn't pay so well, I would've been gone years ago.
That's the root of the problem. Intelligent and want to live nicely? Then have your mind exploited for profit! Have morals? Compromise on them and get paid.
I know someone who works for a large gaming company who told me upon hearing a friend of mine was entertaining a position at a Musk company told me "your friend lacks a moral compass to work for that man." I reminded them they work for a company who was fined half a billion dollars for willfully exploiting children. They did not take that well.
I've worked at both a casino company and a large mobile game studio, and the latter was way shadier in almost all aspects.
There's a list of 20-ish large companies we univerally agree are evil and openly bash all the time, but the reality is 95% of the industry is at best doing absolutely meaningless work, and at worst work that's deeply negative for the world.
Not disagreeing with you, but there are 8 billion people (at least) on this planet, we all need something to do, no? There is probably only a fraction of work that is actually meaningful (growing food, healing others...) and a big chunk is probably junk work or mostly junk ("social media manager" - how many of these do we need and do we need 40 hours a week for this?) but these jobs also keep people employed, so maybe in that sense, they are meaningful?
> but these jobs also keep people employed, so maybe in that sense, they are meaningful?
I know your comment is in good faith, but that argument can be used to excuse away pretty much any exploitative job.
There’s a reality distortion effect that builds up around companies and affects their employees.
The company always builds up a narrative where they are a force for good.
This narrative can be very different from what the public thinks. But a lot of the employees will always genuinely believe it.
They did not take that well
If only people paused for a second before judging others...
Yes, I include myself, before you ask
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Roblox?
That would be my God. In parts of the gaming industry working there can make you a pariah though. Not a huge portion but I've seen people get rejected based on working there and a couple other choice companies.
My guess* autocorrect
HN comments can be edited.
It's not gonna pay well for long, unless you find yourself a very tight and lucrative niche. My goal on the other hand is to buy a house in the woods by end of the year and become a woodworker before I have to be assimilated by the AI wave, maybe doing some coding by hand just for the fun of it on the side. Can't wait for "vibe coding" and "2 years of Copilot experience" to figure among the average list of job requirements.
To quote the young'uns, we are so cooked.
I bought my wife's grandma's house in rural central Louisiana so that her grandpa could retire and not have to worry about medical bills or anything like that. It already has a "woodshop"[1] on it, and when the contractor finishes (or at least starts) on repairing the years of neglect, I will also be a woodworker in the woods.
I'm currently a "woodworker" in suburban Houston, but usually only average $500-ish per month (heavily loaded toward a couple of times of year - Mid Spring, Back to School, Christmas).
1: https://www.icloud.com/photos/#/icloudlinks/08c7DUB5txbSRiCs...
I'm not sure posting a photo with EXIF location data under a full name is a good idea.
My home address is public record as well. My business locations are also. If someone wants me, I'm available for them to kill.
The evolution of the internet has been fun to watch:
1994-1998 – Don't give out any personal information online.
1998-2004 – Well, maybe just don't give out your real name.
2004-2010 – Never mind. Your full name is fine. Just stay away from sharing racy or compromising photos.
2010-2016 – Actually, the photos are okay as long as your "bathing suit area" remains modest.
2016-2020 – On second thought, bare all if you wish. But, please, don't spread misinformation.
2020-2025 – Ugh, fine. Whatever you do, do not share your exact GPS coordinates!
> and become a woodworker
Hey we can't ALL have the same plan, man! The tech oligarchs that own all of society's wealth will only need so much bespoke furniture!
More seriously, my plan had been to build a decent savings and go work for the USPS or the local public transit company, supplemented with savings interest and maybe some woodworking income. But then the 2024 election happened so who fucking knows anymore.
Nah, I plan on owning a chunk of acres and start my own homestead. Raise a few animals like some sheep, goats, rabbits, and of course chickens. Build a nice green house and large garden. Just need to find the right plot of land before making it a serious go. Oh, and can't forget the first step. Gotta win the lottery to pay for it. Not all of have those cushy FAANG salaries.
There are rural land loan companies. Or buy with friends or family. I know people who've done the above and don't tell anybody but it's working out fine.
>There are rural land loan companies.
The point is to not owe people money so that you are self sufficient and not need to make money.
> Or buy with friends or family.
yeah, but i don't like people. /s
> The point is to not owe people money so that you are self sufficient and not need to make money.
Trouble is, if you become self-sufficient the government will soon swoop in and try to take a piece of the pie, and now you're back to owing people money again.
The ideal is to owe so much money that you become "too big to fail". Then you get all the benefits of being self-sufficient, but with nothing on paper to share.
there's a difference between rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's vs owing a bank for a mortgage, owing a utility company for power/water, paying for 100% of your food.
sure, there's no getting around taxes, but today, there's no getting around having some sort of service provider. you can't DIY your way into a fibre network and/or cell service. at least not legitimately.
> paying for 100% of your food.
Aren't you going to pay for food no matter what? You can pay for it indirectly by trading your time with someone else who has put in time to produce it (the way most people pay for food), or you can put your time directly into the food (how self-sufficiency would pay for it), but either way the time will be spent. There is, quite literally in this case, no free lunch.
> you can't DIY your way into a fibre network and/or cell service.
Do you need these anyway? They are arguably necessary services for participating in a modern society, but if you are self-sufficient that implies a disconnect from society.
You are trying to theorize it too much. There’s a big difference between growing part of your own food and buying it. Also there’s a big difference between wanting to rely less on anonymous service providers and not wanting to communicate with anyone.
> There’s a big difference between growing part of your own food and buying it.
Because if you grow your own food you have to worry about storage? You are right that, while not impossible to overcome – our ancestors managed, is not the easiest problem to deal with. Especially if you like variety in your diet.
That's why I, a farmer, don't (knowingly) eat the food I grow. It is a lot easier to exchange the food for an IOU. Then, later, when I'm hungry, I can return the IOU for food. Someone who specializes in food storage can do a much better job than I can. Let them deal with it. My expertise is in growing the food.
What is even the point of growing part of your own food? I'd at least have some understanding of being fully reliant on your own food if you fear a zombie apocalypse or something, but if you remain dependent on others anyway, what have you gained? If it is that you enjoy the process of growing food like I do, you may as well become a farmer and sell the product.
> not wanting to communicate with anyone.
Want and need a very different concepts.
I actually want to do everything you're outlining as well, but here in the northeast they're trying to sell ~1 acre for > $100,000 in a lot of desirable "rural" towns. Definitely makes it harder to get into unless you want to commit to far far north.
I've been watching a lot of TV shows that have revealed a lot of pros/cons about different areas of the country. The further north means a much shorter growing season which makes a greenhouse even more important. It also means a lot more infrastructure is required to keep any livestock alive during the longer winters. Places like Texas goes the other direction where the heat during the long summers is brutal, but it means early spring and late fall crops. I really wouldn't want to be any further north than 40°.
Got to find that perfect plot of land that has water, some trees for wood, some land that can be farmed and hopefully a clear sky to the south for solar. Oh, and it's gonna need to be far enough from a city so my telescope can finally be used the way it was meant.
Maybe the Shenandoah would work.
> go work for the USPS or the local public transit company
Those are very honest and useful jobs for society. More than being paid $250,000 a year to design the next startup frontend by copy-pasting some template
Agreed. The trouble is, will those agencies & jobs still exist 6 months from now?
i just bought ten acres and have already started the projects. we all crave building things i think
"Social" media isn't really social anymore, it just means any idiot with a computer can generate the media you're consuming.
Write-only media.
wouldn't it be WORM media though as the point is to have as many others read it as possible?
There was /r/SubSimulatorGPT2, but you're telling me people would PAY for that? Maybe if you tricked them - which is arguably what Reddit is doing.
Social media's always been about giving people whatever makes them come back to the site, no matter how unethical. If an army of fake fans makes me think I have an army of real fans and keep posting for attention from my fans, they will totally do that. Unless it's illegal.
Although that is true for Instagram style media it was always a risk for text based media.
As PoC I’d say look at the subreddit SubSimulatorGPT2
www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2
The AI has better shitposts than actual humans. For Reddit, this has been true since GPT-2.
What you gotta understand is this world is going straight to hell, humanity might not be around much longer. Might as well embrace the chaos and enjoy the ride down. No point in being a Luddite now, the time for that was decades ago.
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> humanity might not be around much longer.
Good riddance. Humanity is hell.
[dead]
In George Orwell's 1984, there is a machine called the versificator that generates music and literature without any human intervention, presumably for the "entertainment" of the proletarians.
But “have AI help people share better content” is so indispensable! How could humanity ever survive without that?
Even better, soon none of us will have to use social media at all, our AI bots will do it for us. Then we will finally find peace.
Each time I think I've seen dystopia and the pinnacle of stupidity someone finds a new way to top it. Either that's an amazing superpower, or I'm infected with incurable optimism.
It's also very dangerous, I think. Grok is used on X to arbitrating ground-truth for topics I think it has no chance assessing.
I guess YTMND.com would've blown their mind if they had been alive and conscious 20 years ago.
I don't use X/Twitter - does anyone have an example of a viral tweet like this?
When your definition of “everyone” is like two, three guys tops
Are you not entertained?
And at the expense of consuming massive amounts of energy and depleting our resources—-water, energy—-at an alarming rate.
Not to say AI doesn't require a lot of power, but I don't know if we need to be alarmist about it:
https://engineeringprompts.substack.com/p/does-chatgpt-use-1...
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/12/generative-ai-the-powe...
pardon my ignorance, in what was does it "consume water"? water cooling is closed loop
Fabs use water in a way that's not closed loop see e.g. [0]
[0] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/07/the-water-challenge-...
I see, thanks. Seems just a matter of cost to reclaim it. Maybe regulation is needed
the planet is a water closed loop. the vapor condenses as rain somewhere
Data centers do use a lot of water on average. Warmer climate data centers often use evaporative cooling and can run through millions of gallons of water to offload heat. Google's data centers combined chewed through some 6 billion gallons of water last year.
Closed systems are much more water-efficient, and are more common in cooler climates.
Came here to post the same.
Also, if the value in grok is reposting stupid things, I don't see how it adds any value to have it embedded in the social network. You could just as easily ridicule Gemini this way?
Also Twitter generates viral tweets because people use Twitter. A new social network with a similarly embedded AI will just be ridiculed on Twitter and go viral there
Do you think there is any value by sending rockets to space?
I would say sending rockets to space is currently orthogonal with current issues we are facing as a species. A decade ago, I would have said the big issue was finding a way to live without destroying ecosystems, but apparently finding a way to live without a major war is also a hot topic now.