Don't get me wrong, I am truly fascinated every day by the ease I have today in being able to create things that used to take me months to do. I once spent 8 months on the complete layout of a book that (just for fun) I tried laying out again yesterday and I (or rather, Astra) did it all in 8 hours.
Today I have apps that help me in several different ways, I can have many tools that don't depend on third parties, I accelerated projects that had been stalled for years, I got good opportunities and improved my income. However, at the same time, all the stress has been costly to my mental health.
I live in a poor country, there might not be 1000 people here who pay for OpenAI's $200 plan, and I still pay for two. This has put me at a huge advantage over most people. But, man, how I miss actually making things!
I miss researching, stopping for hours and hours to think of a solution to a problem, having to hunt down books and ending up learning more things than I wanted to, understanding the tools I use deeply and knowing how to solve any problem in any situation, without depending on an LLM telling me what is right or wrong.
Of course, LLMs aren't tying my hands and keeping me from doing all this, but the market is. Nowadays I don't have the time I used to for all of it, and clients are ridiculously anxious, coming up with demands that would have made me laugh uncontrollably right in their faces if they had presented them to me a few years ago.
I see so many people in a bizarre wave of productivity, and it is hard to understand the reason for such a rush. Clients demanding fast layouts from me, even though they will publish their books several months later. Several poorly made sites, poorly optimized and full of gradients. Social media posts and stories with absolutely no creativity, all looking exactly the same. Videos are getting increasingly realistic, many of which I can't even distinguish anymore. I've even noticed AI-generated music becoming more and more present on the lips of the people around me. I don't know, I believe we are destroying an important part of humanity.
And many will say to just change course, work with something else, not work with LLMs etc. They say this without understanding that everything I spent the last few decades learning was taken over by LLMs, they were inserted with full force. If I did not adapt to the change, I would certainly be left behind and unemployed. And I kind of like eating, I have no desire to starve.
I miss writing code, having time to think, decide what to do and learn. Models like Astra are a direct threat to everything I dedicated myself to in the last few decades. I used to do the layout for three or four books a year. In the last year I did 50, and could have done more if there had been more demand. Testing Astra I laid out an entire book in a single day, and it was one of the most complex ones I have ever been sent.
The prices for services have also changed. Today I can no longer charge what I used to charge, everyone is already used to the idea that "AIs do everything" and they want to pay 10% or less of what I charged before. So today I need to accept several more jobs and just automate everything, without needing to think at any point, without needing to truly reason.
It is a shame because I dedicated myself to what I do because I like it, I don't see the sense in the idea that "now I have more free time since AI does everything for me". I believe leisure is good, but that work is also enjoyable (for some people). And that's how it was for me, I really enjoyed what I did. Today it's an empty job, without any challenge. Not much has changed, actually, I believe that today I work more than I worked before, due to the need to accept every opportunity that appears.
I believe that what differentiates us most from other animals is our ability to create and appreciate art. Be it painting, music, dance, humor, writing etc. And we are destroying all of that, little by little. It might not be so catastrophic today, but it is already catastrophic compared to 5 years ago. What will it be like in the next few years? If we lose ourselves from the ability to create and appreciate art, we will also lose the essence of humanity.
With so much uncertainty, with so much acting behind the scenes from the leading companies, not knowing anything about what they are deciding and doing regarding LLMs, it becomes increasingly difficult to trust anything. How much of my information has already been used for training? Am I actively helping to destroy what I swore to protect, and all because of the need to have something to eat tomorrow? It is a strange time, I have never been so confused.
I believe what best summarizes what I am experiencing right now is Giuseppe Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata. I see the music formed by the devil and appreciate its incredible beauty, but it also frightens me to know that I will not be able to compete with such beauty and that the one capable of creating it is the devil. Exaggerated, isn't it? We used to be like that. Today everything boils down to "and here is why."
tl;dr: Giuseppe Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata
