> The Valley doesn’t understand how fed up normal people are with AI. This is the first time ever a technological advance is so cordially disliked, and the Valley is not equipped to detect that. It has no experience with being disliked by normal people.
An anecdote from a recent occurrence. We show up for a team offsite. Several leaders presented decks. Of course, AI generated decks. Some of the animation was broken. Many of the read throughs felt like they were the first time folks saw the decks.
Cannot state how off-putting this was as someone participating in this team activity. The talks I appreciated the most were the ones where people didn't have slides at all and talked off the cuff.
Well it is a good indicator of what stuff people do not like to spend time on. Turns out it's making decks, reports and all that. I use AI for building games and a virtual LAN party OS and everything is super polished and looks great (to me), because I spend a ton of time on it and obsess over details, AI is a big accelerator in that venture for me and gives me superpowers.
But yeah sometimes when I just need to deliver some asset to a customer I use AI to create it and lightly edit it, the result is ok but it's not great.
I share the disdain for AI built presentations, especially Claude has a signature look that is so tiring. I remember this phase when Office 2016 (?) came out and featured this "smart" diagram editor that let you create these cringe arrows, flowcharts etc. with bullet points, some people really got hooked on that and used it everywhere, the result was as cringeworthy as the AI presentations are. Eventually people lost interest and things got back to normal. AI might be different though.
That said I also generate presentation decks for my products with Claude using an HTML based workflow with proper print CSS using Weasyprint, where I use my own corporate identity and design practices from the web, the result looks really professional and pleasing (to me), customers also like it a lot. It doesn't really look like AI either as it's just good HTML and CSS with a print stylesheet. So there are ways of using it to make things better, but it also brings out the lazy side of people that don't care so much.
Similar to that I was looking at VPS options recently and Ionos seemed to have some good word of mouth - I go to their site and its COVERED in AI this AI that, AI logos on every single product line they have. Tacky trend chasing is not what I want from a stable long term boring VPS.
Is seeing that much AI crap being thrown at their product lineup actually appealing to anyone?
I recently cancelled my service with IONOS. I was just on a basic shared plan, but I found the performance unacceptable. They don’t use cPanel, if that’s important to you. Their upsell attempts are full of dark patterns. When you cancel your account, unless you are very forceful, they want you to CALL them to confirm or they’ll attempt to keep billing you.
Just one person’s experience, but it wasn’t a positive one.
You see this constantly, but as usual this is management refusing to put in the least amount of effort. AI might enable some of this, whereas they (ab)used team members before, but otherwise, what does it have to do with AI? In fact I doubt most managers can figure out how to make a presentation with AI, and it will still take time so they won't do it even if they figure it out.
Before, at a certain FANG you definitely know, you had management making presentations they very obviously had never seen before, made by people who weren't at product meetings and so were extremely shallow about any project and had basic facts wrong ... and of course management can't answer questions about the slides.
I 100% get the complaint. But what does it have to do with AI?
AI lowers the bar significantly. Just as with kids and essays; it's not the plagiarism or cheating on an essay is new, it's that AI makes it trivially easy to engage in low-value behavior and thus higher incidence.
In this team? Pre-AI, maybe 10% of the slides would be questionable. Post-AI? 90% of the slides were just "meh", broken animations (they never previewed it), and "uh, let me read that slide".
Oh, mercy. Do not read your slide deck to me. I can read it faster than you can read it out loud. While I'm doing that, say something that isn't on the slide.
AI is great, it just needs to have its Linux moment. I mostly enjoy using it, I can never imagine going back to doing things manually. Like I can have it fix my computer and reliably automate like 80 % of mundane tasks that I sometimes spent hours on, why would I hate that? The models are already so good for must stuff, I can't remember Claude giving me a wrong answer when debugging something recently, and it is crazy good at solving the most complex issues that would have taken me hours or days to solve. So yeah, maybe the market will crash because people were too greedy and racing each other too much and the markets aren't absorbing what they put out fast enough, but regardless AI is here to stay. A healthy market crash might actually be good to get things back to normal and give people more time to think about the risks and societal issues this stuff creates before we end up wiring it up with everything.
SV will remain the number one hub because of the amount of money there and its history / culture. NYC and LA are 2nd and 3rd funding wise but it’s like ¼. I do think VC is broadening to other areas but SV remains the Mecca.
I agree the valley is in a bubble, but I wouldn't agree with the self flagellation. That would imply a level of self understanding that would require repentance.
One of the big issues with silicon valley (or how I see it) is the lack of ability to look out side and ask why something is the way it is, before trying to slap technology on it.
The smell of money which distorts people's reality to carry on doing something that looks and sounds like a disaster, is too strong.
Also the "move fast, break things" motto. These people are literally incapable of slowing down to begin with, much less use that time for self-reflection.
> That would imply a level of self understanding that would require repentance. One of the big issues with silicon valley (or how I see it) is the lack of ability to look out side and ask why something is the way it is, before trying to slap technology on it.
We're talking about adults here, let's not infantilize and remove agency from them. It's not reasonable to treat as an accident the repeated disruption of regulated industries with the "old laws don't apply because I added computers" playbook. Bad behavior absolutely demands repentance and punishment. To say otherwise is a massive moral hazard that guarantees more harm, failing to counter the "smell of money" with reasonable caution.
Cannot state how off-putting this was as someone participating in this team activity. The talks I appreciated the most were the ones where people didn't have slides at all and talked off the cuff.
> This is the first time ever a technological advance is so cordially disliked
I think the early automobile had a huge share of haters as well?
I can understand both the automobile and electricity because those were legit dangerous and worthy of some caution.
Electricity too
Well it is a good indicator of what stuff people do not like to spend time on. Turns out it's making decks, reports and all that. I use AI for building games and a virtual LAN party OS and everything is super polished and looks great (to me), because I spend a ton of time on it and obsess over details, AI is a big accelerator in that venture for me and gives me superpowers.
But yeah sometimes when I just need to deliver some asset to a customer I use AI to create it and lightly edit it, the result is ok but it's not great.
I share the disdain for AI built presentations, especially Claude has a signature look that is so tiring. I remember this phase when Office 2016 (?) came out and featured this "smart" diagram editor that let you create these cringe arrows, flowcharts etc. with bullet points, some people really got hooked on that and used it everywhere, the result was as cringeworthy as the AI presentations are. Eventually people lost interest and things got back to normal. AI might be different though.
That said I also generate presentation decks for my products with Claude using an HTML based workflow with proper print CSS using Weasyprint, where I use my own corporate identity and design practices from the web, the result looks really professional and pleasing (to me), customers also like it a lot. It doesn't really look like AI either as it's just good HTML and CSS with a print stylesheet. So there are ways of using it to make things better, but it also brings out the lazy side of people that don't care so much.
Similar to that I was looking at VPS options recently and Ionos seemed to have some good word of mouth - I go to their site and its COVERED in AI this AI that, AI logos on every single product line they have. Tacky trend chasing is not what I want from a stable long term boring VPS.
Is seeing that much AI crap being thrown at their product lineup actually appealing to anyone?
I recently cancelled my service with IONOS. I was just on a basic shared plan, but I found the performance unacceptable. They don’t use cPanel, if that’s important to you. Their upsell attempts are full of dark patterns. When you cancel your account, unless you are very forceful, they want you to CALL them to confirm or they’ll attempt to keep billing you.
Just one person’s experience, but it wasn’t a positive one.
You see this constantly, but as usual this is management refusing to put in the least amount of effort. AI might enable some of this, whereas they (ab)used team members before, but otherwise, what does it have to do with AI? In fact I doubt most managers can figure out how to make a presentation with AI, and it will still take time so they won't do it even if they figure it out.
Before, at a certain FANG you definitely know, you had management making presentations they very obviously had never seen before, made by people who weren't at product meetings and so were extremely shallow about any project and had basic facts wrong ... and of course management can't answer questions about the slides.
I 100% get the complaint. But what does it have to do with AI?
AI lowers the bar significantly. Just as with kids and essays; it's not the plagiarism or cheating on an essay is new, it's that AI makes it trivially easy to engage in low-value behavior and thus higher incidence.
In this team? Pre-AI, maybe 10% of the slides would be questionable. Post-AI? 90% of the slides were just "meh", broken animations (they never previewed it), and "uh, let me read that slide".
"Read throughs".
Oh, mercy. Do not read your slide deck to me. I can read it faster than you can read it out loud. While I'm doing that, say something that isn't on the slide.
AI is great, it just needs to have its Linux moment. I mostly enjoy using it, I can never imagine going back to doing things manually. Like I can have it fix my computer and reliably automate like 80 % of mundane tasks that I sometimes spent hours on, why would I hate that? The models are already so good for must stuff, I can't remember Claude giving me a wrong answer when debugging something recently, and it is crazy good at solving the most complex issues that would have taken me hours or days to solve. So yeah, maybe the market will crash because people were too greedy and racing each other too much and the markets aren't absorbing what they put out fast enough, but regardless AI is here to stay. A healthy market crash might actually be good to get things back to normal and give people more time to think about the risks and societal issues this stuff creates before we end up wiring it up with everything.
>...but did any AI-related stock ever tumble before now?
Yes. For many days after the DeepSeek R1/V3 release in Jan/Feb 2025.
SV will remain the number one hub because of the amount of money there and its history / culture. NYC and LA are 2nd and 3rd funding wise but it’s like ¼. I do think VC is broadening to other areas but SV remains the Mecca.
> All the while I acknowledge that there is something there that will change programming
WILL change it? This guy is under a self-inflicted rock.
I agree the valley is in a bubble, but I wouldn't agree with the self flagellation. That would imply a level of self understanding that would require repentance.
One of the big issues with silicon valley (or how I see it) is the lack of ability to look out side and ask why something is the way it is, before trying to slap technology on it.
The smell of money which distorts people's reality to carry on doing something that looks and sounds like a disaster, is too strong.
Also the "move fast, break things" motto. These people are literally incapable of slowing down to begin with, much less use that time for self-reflection.
> That would imply a level of self understanding that would require repentance. One of the big issues with silicon valley (or how I see it) is the lack of ability to look out side and ask why something is the way it is, before trying to slap technology on it.
We're talking about adults here, let's not infantilize and remove agency from them. It's not reasonable to treat as an accident the repeated disruption of regulated industries with the "old laws don't apply because I added computers" playbook. Bad behavior absolutely demands repentance and punishment. To say otherwise is a massive moral hazard that guarantees more harm, failing to counter the "smell of money" with reasonable caution.