There's AI slop and anti-AI slop [LWN.net]

There's AI slop and anti-AI slop

Posted May 30, 2026 20:55 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: There's AI slop and anti-AI slop by rbranco
Parent article: Nesbitt: Protestware for coding agents

> This is an example of AI doomerism.

Belittlement doesn't change the validity of the statement.

> An increase in productivity and robots doing tedious jobs is actually a good thing.

...Not if the value of those productivity gains are captured by someone else!

Meanwhile, the tediousness of a given job or activity is poorly correlated with it being a good candidate for automation -- Up-front equipment costs are *much* higher, and the operating costs of that equipment may still be greater than the wages of doing it manually for the same nominal output (ie by having to replace relatively unskilled labor with higher skilled) The wildly varying costs of something unexpected going wrong is another factor.

(This is why "self-driving" vehicles have per-trip/mile costs that are 2-3x *higher* than traditional taxis -- the vehicles and supporting infrastructure is a _lot_ more expensive, and you've replaced a relatively cheap human driver with higher-paid specialists)

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There's AI slop and anti-AI slop

Posted May 30, 2026 21:10 UTC (Sat) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (7 responses)

> > An increase in productivity and robots doing tedious jobs is actually a good thing.
>
> ...Not if the value of those productivity gains are captured by someone else!

That's just capitalism. You are angry at capitalism. You should be, as capitalism has been stealing wealth from workers since the industrial revolution began. Didn't start with LLMs, won't end with LLMs.

There's AI slop and anti-AI slop

Posted May 31, 2026 9:28 UTC (Sun) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813) [Link] (6 responses)

> That's just capitalism. You are angry at capitalism. You should be, as capitalism has been stealing wealth from workers since the industrial revolution began. Didn't start with LLMs, won't end with LLMs.

Capitalism is the only system that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.

There's AI slop and anti-AI slop

Posted May 31, 2026 11:51 UTC (Sun) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]

I don't know if you meant this, but it's true: hundreds of millions have achieved great wealth... from the labor of the other 8 billion people.

There's AI slop and anti-AI slop

Posted May 31, 2026 13:07 UTC (Sun) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (4 responses)

And I'm sure that will be of great comfort when civilization ends due to runaway climate change, because this system makes it practically impossible to prioritize the long-term goal of preserving the environment we need to live over short-term profiteering by literally a handful of billionaires due to the severe imbalance of power structures that are intrinsic to capitalism

There's AI slop and anti-AI slop

Posted May 31, 2026 17:02 UTC (Sun) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813) [Link] (3 responses)

> And I'm sure that will be of great comfort when civilization ends due to runaway climate change, because this system makes it practically impossible to prioritize the long-term goal of preserving the environment we need to live over short-term profiteering by literally a handful of billionaires due to the severe imbalance of power structures that are intrinsic to capitalism

Not going to happen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/climate/emissions-wors...

And you can't blame "capitalism" for Germany ditching nuclear to burn more coal.

Please

Posted May 31, 2026 17:31 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Let's all try to stay on-topic for LWN; this thread does not qualify.

There's AI slop and anti-AI slop

Posted Jun 1, 2026 14:57 UTC (Mon) by hholzgra (subscriber, #11737) [Link] (1 responses)

> And you can't blame "capitalism" for Germany ditching nuclear to burn more coal.

The German me is wondering where you got that nonsense from; our use of coal for electricity has gradually been going down for the last two decades at least, from ca. 46% in 2007 to about 23% in 2025; and we are currently aiming to totally phase out coal in the electricity sector by 2038.

Would it have been better from a climate perspective to phase out coal first, and only then nuclear? Probably yes. But there were many other factors at play, too.

BTW; you can't blame capitalism for Germany starting to go nuclear either, overall it was probably one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity we had, with lots of the costs hidden. It was only in the final years, with the plants fully written off already, with maintenance minimized knowing that the plants would be shut down soon and so would never need to pass another re-certification cycle, etc. that nuclear electricity looked cheap when only taking the current costs per kWh into account.

Let's stop here, please

Posted Jun 1, 2026 14:59 UTC (Mon) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

We've wandered far off topic here. Far, far off topic. Let's stop here.