> why cant people here just read this for face value?
Because that would be foolish.
What part of public good is stealing giant corpuses from their owners and selling them back to them? People who show contempt for laws do so pretty consistently usually.
It's really sad that people fall for this stuff over and over again.
Just cause something has already happened many times to other people doesn't mean it's not special or interesting when it happens to you. It's been extraordinary seeing this unfold before me.
And I think it's worth noting that the novel thing about what's happening now is that, unlike before, when physical labor was devalued and commodified, we are now seeing intellectual labor, even at its highest levels, suffering the same fate.
My first thought after reading this was, good for this person to have only been broken, or nearly broken, I guess, by society finally now.
I was broken long before AI. I learned that no one was interested in my doodads even before generative AI. People were interested in all this other stuff, like ROI, how much money things make, how practical something is, etc. "No one cares about the code" was beat into me 10-20 years ago. Big ups to Joel for making it this far.
Hah, I think I agree with this, but from a cynical, dark perspective.
I'm an old systems programmer (embedded, c/c++, linux, etc) with an EE background (but not one of them if you know what I mean. I enjoyed software and appreciate the art). But early on I came to believe software engineering at a workplace is not your personal art project. If you want that, great, go write code on your own time(as many of us do!). But on the job I often get annoyed by folks who don't want to do the obviously correct thing, or want to fight against good refactoring or design feedback (usually not from me.. I'm like a 'B' tier programmer and in awe of the 'A' level I work with). People treat software as an art and while you want to be artful in execution, if you are a paid artist, it is a commission work. Honor the requirements of the company (business needs) and not just your personal feelings and desire to only make art.
> I came to believe software engineering at a workplace is not your personal art project.
The minute I also realized this, I moved out of software development into a different function. Pooping out lines of ugly code full of compromises was just not my thing. If I was still coding for work when AI came around, that would have definitely pushed me out of the career.
I dabbled in product management and then went over to project management. I figure at least here, making compromises and negotiating with people is a specific requirement of the job, and not a shortcut to being able to produce Moar Output Faster.
This is partially why my pride in my work is not around my code, but the product or output it creates. People care that the interfaces are good, the code style matches, and that it's maintainable. But they don't really care if it's clever or smart or creative. To me, the creativity is in the product, the tool, in what the code does. AI lets me be more creative in the tools I build because I can justify taking the time to build them. I can create more interesting products because I can get past the mundane.
This is interesting but as always these days the slop effect just makes it feel like I'm reading Claude which sucks too much and makes me not want to read this.
Add to that that this is content marketing, and the whole thing really collapses. I'll consume interesting content marketing, I may even consume interesting slop, but I can't consume slop content marketing.
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, timcobb—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless^W not also subscribed to ChatGPT. If you want a picture of the future [of math], imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.
> There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life.
How does the ability or inability of AI to do something blocks your curiosity or enjoyment of the process of life?
Not being able to pay bills because you're out of job does ruin the enjoyment of life, sure. But the AI is not the problem there; the economic system is. Torches and pitchforks should be properly applied to the economic and the political elites, not to data centers.
Actually, it’s because, as per Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., facts cannot be copyrighted.
This legal trick only works for rewriting an article reporting on a factual event—since the events are uncopyrightable facts, the only part of the article which can be copyrighted is the stylistic writing.
Let me quote from a recent legal opinion on AI summaries (The New York Times Company v. Microsoft Corporation et al 2025):
>>>
Exhibit 11 to the CIR complaint provides website links to articles that
CIR alleges were unlawfully abridged by defendants in their ChatGPT and
Copilot outputs. (CIR, FAC Ex. 11.) Examining the similarities between
those outputs and the corresponding CIR articles, including the “total
concept and feel, theme . . . sequence, pace, and setting,” Williams
v. Crichton, 84 F.3d 581, 588 (2d Cir. 1996), the Court concludes that
the “abridgments” contained in Exhibit 11 are not substantially
similar to CIR’s copyrighted works as a matter of law.
The alleged abridgments are detailed summaries, usually in bullet point
form, of the facts contained in CIR’s articles. Those summaries—which
differ in style, tone, length, and sentence structure from CIR’s
articles—are not “substantially similar” to CIR’s copyrighted
works. They present the “facts in a different arrangement”—bullet
point lists or short summary paragraphs—“with a different sentence
structure and different phrasing.” Nihon, 166 F.3d at 71. In short, the
abridgments in Exhibit 11 are not substantially similar, qualitatively
or quantitatively, to the original CIR articles as a matter of law. The
Court therefore grants OpenAI’s motion to dismiss CIR’s claim of
direct infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 501 insofar as it relates to the
“abridgments” contained in Exhibit 11.<<<
Copyright only covers distribution, but I distribute the AI summaries on my blog. With paywalled articles and the usual archives having serious reliability issues, it allows readers of my blog to get context about articles I comment on.
The links are AI summaries, which, in turn, link to the original articles, but, in some cases, the original articles are paywalled. For the ones which aren’t paywalled, having a local summary prevents link rot.
Fair use covers quoting someone to comment on them. For example, in New Era Publications International, ApS v. Henry Holt and Co., it was ruled that quoting Hubbard saying “The trouble with China is, there are too many Chinks here.” was fair use, since the book in question was commenting on Hubbard’s personality, and could only reasonably do so by directly quoting him.
From that decision:
>>>
these brief quotations from unpublished copyrighted work display a compelling fair use purpose. [...] These quotations are in mockery, to show Hubbard's bigotry, bias and coarse lack of taste. This is not an instance of the biographer/critic free riding on the creative talent of the subject.
<<<
Because that would be foolish.
What part of public good is stealing giant corpuses from their owners and selling them back to them? People who show contempt for laws do so pretty consistently usually.
It's really sad that people fall for this stuff over and over again.
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