I don't relate to everything you said, but I will absolutely agree that one of the really annoying things about the AI industry is how they've convinced so many people the tools can do anything.

I'm a graphic designer, and I've been asked by clients to use AI gen in some projects. By far the most irritating part of this is the client requests. They believed the hype and now want the most insanely specific and complicated images out of it, despite specific details being the thing AI is the fucking worst at. I have to do so much post production work to get them something close to what they want out of these slop machines.

It takes so much time that it's not even bad money, but the process is so unfun that I dread it every time.

You're wrapped around the axle on how things should be and you should stop that for your own mental health. There's no such thing as should have been, there may be a what you'd prefer, or a what would have been better for more people, but there are no predetermined outcomes, no should haves.

I saw the internet being born, and I have watched it grow, but I didn't make it, just like you didn't. Money made it, but early on hadn't figured out how to make money back out of it, but they were going to and now they have. That's it.

LLMs are only different because they sucked from the beginning while the internet was kinda cool and genuinely new, but it was never ours. LLMs are now being shoved down our throats, fed on all we freely put into the internet, regurgitating back our own thoughts and works, creating absolutely nothing. Could they be a super useful tool doing highly specialized shit? Well yeah, and they probably will some day, but for now they churn out modern capital's favorite product, cheap trash and capital is bound and determined to make that profitable.

We were really never part of the equation as anything other than rocks to squeeze blood from and what we want doesn't matter to the ones squeezing.

It's not really any surprise or anything new people have been saying "fake it 'til you make it" for as long as I can remember, there will always be charlatans and frauds. I think the problem is the acceptance of it as a means to make money, competence seems to have fallen by the wayside as long as you can make a profit doing it. People used to chase snake oil salesmen out of town now they are inviting them into their homes every day.

As a musician, I do agree with you though, it has created the illusion that you should be able to do anything. When in fact anything takes a lot of time and patience and practice to be any good, you don't see that online, there is an illusion online that everyone is talented and competent on social media when we're all just dummies trying to get by and impress each other. Hard work doesn't seem to be appreciated or admired, just the end product.

I mean the internet and even less ai has nothing to do with this, you’re told in school and by most supporting parents, that you can be anything you want if you put your mind to it.

It’s obviously bullshit, but this supercedes Ai, let alone the Internet by a long time.

On the contrary, everything is better than ever!

Internet connections are cheaper and more ubiquitous than ever. Second-hand junk is available for free or very cheap. It is common to keep a computer in your pocket, one which is faster and has more memory than seriously power-hungry and expensive equipment of yesteryear.

Yes, there are more bastards around, but you needn't listen to them. Use the economy of scale that the thundering herds bring, then ignore them. Self-host private spaces for friends. Contribute to open source.

Use AI to learn. Instead of wasting energy to generate silly junk, use them to debug and fix bugs in open-source software.

Life is good.