nicbou
Now I'm down three quarters of my traffic and my inbox is filled with LLM-generated outreach. I'm competing with AI trained on my work, and with slop websites generated with that AI.
The original research is still necessary, but it has to happen with a dwindling audience and a shrinking revenue. I have to worry a lot more about paying rent, so I have less time to contribute to society.
Worst of all, LLM noise has filled every crevice of my life. It's billboards, blogs, music, videos, social media. It has filled the world with spam and nobody is happy, but everyone's Christmas bonus depends on adding oil onto that fire.
I mourn the loss of our internet, our culture, my career and my business all at once. And for what? We're all worse off!
That future is already happening. Many websites have shut down or gone private. More and more content requires an account to see.
So far LLMs have killed 75% of my traffic, but my income is still acceptable, so I'll keep going. If it gets worse, I don't know.
The information I share is as hard as ever to acquire. I still need to poll experts and my audience, but my audience is shrinking and I can't incentivize experts with as much business as I used to. All the spoils go to parasitic AI companies and slop sites.
Still, the work matters, and the job is fun. I'll keep doing it for as long as I can. In any case, my backup profession (coding) is also threatened by AI.
One thing I'm trying is building a community for immigrants. You still need humans, and I want to build their watering hole.
My apartment has a great view on nature. I see the sunrises and the sunsets, swallows racing across the evening sky, a chestnut's whole cycle, and all that lives in my balcony garden.
I cannot overstate how much it does for my happiness. I love the morning routine of caring for my garden. I love to watch things grow and seasons change.
I think our caveman brains need this sort of thing.
I went from maybe 2-3 outreach enails a month to one a day. They're all LLM-generated.
I can imagine that the effect would be far more pronounced if I offered something more valuable than a mention on my website.
I'm excited for the OLED display because it would make bedtime reading easier on the eyes. I'm also happy about the weight reduction.
Still, it's €749 vs €549 in 2021. I will use mine until it stops fulfilling its role, which might take a few more years.
I was a software engineer but AI made the job miserable according to friends.
I would like to work for Digital Service or CityLab Berlin. The job is cool, the people are cool and I think I'd be helpful there.
It would be significantly worse than my current occupation, but it would still be fun.
Plan C is to coast for a few years where life is cheap, and keep tackling whatever small problems I find interesting.
It's already illegal in Germany and I love it.
Now the city got its act together and appointments are easy to find, but for a while it was very useful. I'm glad to say that this service is ready to be shut down.
Look words up often, even when you think you know what they mean. Nowadays LLMs are really helpful dictionaries and reverse dictionaries too.
Poor kids.
Sure, it will make the bullshit part of our jobs more convenient, but for the most part it will just make the bullshitters a lot more prolific. I'm already feeling it.
Economic migrants didn't have their lives saved. They were not welcomed to their host country as an act of charity. The conditional and transactional nature of their presence is made very clear to them.
I first write the thing myself, then feed it through Deepl Write to see how the AI would write it. It's been very helpful.
I write everything else myself. However I don't know how I feel about spending my time on Earth typing personal responses to AI-generated messages. Do those people deserve my time and energy?
I think that the issue is less cultural and more socioeconomic. Being "other"ed your entire life sucks. Making it in another country with far more limited resources sucks. It's hard to ignore the toll it takes on the people I interact with.
Facts are much lesd helpful here because half of the perceived problem is emotional.
The worst part is that they're not replacing me! I'm still the one going out there, networking, asking questions and writing about what I find. Just so that their bots can hammer my website and use my work to metastasize faster.
Fucking parasites, the whole lot of 'em.
I will probably survive, but so many websites won't. Even if they do, they might drown in the noise of the torment nexus.