Good Stuff 59 - Is the AI Hate Justified?

Pete and Andy unpack the recent surge in anti-AI sentiment and argue that the anger is often aimed at the wrong target. They trace the backlash through graduate job anxiety, elite AI messaging, economic stagnation, and broader distrust in institutions, then pivot into a more grounded discussion about what AI can and cannot realistically replace. Along the way they talk about cost curves, productivity myths, design, taste, originality, and why the enduring value in human work may sit less in task execution and more in judgment, experience, and problem selection.## Chapters and Themes- Opening on the visible rise in AI hostility, from graduation-ceremony boos to a broader sense that AI has become a cultural punching bag.- Why the backlash feels understandable: people hear wealthy AI leaders talking about job losses while younger workers and graduates already feel economically cornered.- The difference between hating AI itself and hating the incentives, theft, corruption, and concentrated power associated with the companies leading the current wave.- Why "human-made" branding may grow, but why avoiding AI entirely will be hard when customers still buy on price, speed, and output.- AI job-loss narratives versus practical constraints: compute, energy, token costs, and whether replacing real workers is actually economical at scale.- The gap between claims of 10x or 100x productivity and the lack of obvious real-world evidence in company performance and output.- Why some work may become cheaper and more automated, while the scarce layer shifts toward framing problems, exercising judgment, and understanding real user needs.- A closing reflection on design, taste, originality, and how creative work changes once the old technical bottlenecks become commoditized.## Key Takeaways- Much of the current anger around AI is really anger about economic insecurity and untrustworthy institutions.- Anti-AI sentiment may be emotionally understandable without being strategically useful.- The economics of AI replacement are still far less obvious than the rhetoric suggests.- Cheap task execution does not remove the need for judgment, taste, and lived experience.- The enduring moat in creative and technical work may be knowing what matters, not just producing outputs faster.- Local, controllable, human-directed AI remains a healthier direction than total dependence on centralized providers.## Notable Lines- "Go support your local homegrown organic AI project."- "Everybody else's job is really easy to automate, right? Except mine."- "Good developers were never about the code."