From a game-theory perspective, if players rush the field with AI-generated content because it's where all the advantages are this year, then there's going to be room on the margins for trust-signaling players to advance themselves with more obviously handspun stuff. Basically, a firm handshake and an office right down the street. Lunches and golf.
The real question to ask in this gold rush might be what kind of shovels we can sell to this corner of hand shakers and lunchers. A human-verifiable reputation market? Like Yelp but for "these are real people and I was able to talk to an actual human." Or diners and golf carts, if you're not into abstractions.
That gets my brain moving, thanks. What do you think those who are poor/rich in a trust economy look like? How much of a transformation to trust economy do you think we make?
Who will take the coal from the mine?
Who will take the salt from the earth?
Who'll take a leaf and grow it to a tree?
Don't look now, it ain't you or me
These lyrics are from the song "Don't Look Now" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. The lines are a poetic way of saying that the work of taking coal from the mine, harvesting salt, and nurturing a tree is the task of other people, often those in the "working class", not the "you" and "me" of the song, who are implied to be in a privileged position
This reminds me of the American Science & Surplus catalogs we used to get in the mail. Hand-drawn pictures of each product along with cheeky copy for almost all the little motors and breakers and push buttons and on and on. Sad that they stopped their mail order business.
Starts so strong with "governance structures, accountability, how their data is used, jobs being lost, etc," refutes that what we mean is some sci-fi scenario when we ask about ethics, and then ends with a sci-fi scenario: "...how do we know it will do what we want it to, and not try to subvert us and… take over the world? How do we know it will stay on humanity’s side?"
Wait, go back to the jobs! What was that about accountability?
Sectoral unions are a key to this kind of strength in labor. But the political landscape in the US, both in the form of laws already on the books and the "us vs them" mindset that polarizes workers along political lines, would make getting those kinds of unions together tough.
Not every day you click a link on HN and see Minutemen in the header image on the article. Chalking that up as a win and a sign to go do something splendidly useless with the rest of my day.
I built automated tests and frameworks. You can get pretty far in a career in test automation while still learning and getting better because people perceive the code as important but the whole company doesn't (usually) fall apart if you mess something up in your code.
More important, in my experience, is to find someone tough but super knowledgeable to review your code. Try to anticipate what kind of notes you'll get if open you a PR with your code as it is, and then fix that stuff before you open the PR. Write a checklist of stuff that keeps getting picked on by better coders than yourself, print out the list, and tape it to your office wall.
The real question to ask in this gold rush might be what kind of shovels we can sell to this corner of hand shakers and lunchers. A human-verifiable reputation market? Like Yelp but for "these are real people and I was able to talk to an actual human." Or diners and golf carts, if you're not into abstractions.