A couple days ago, I came across this lovely piece called Accidental anonymity from Tom MacWright (via Simon Willison.) The post is primarily about AI’s effect on the way people represent themselves when only sharing AI generated content. The specific example was people sending AI generated resumes linking to AI generated work.
I love the larger point MacWright makes, which is this idea that the people who do this:
They haven't put themselves out there. They haven't said anything true.
My personal prejudice here is pretty long-standing. I've written and sung songs, and published my artwork and writing on the internet for fifteen years, and a lot of the reaction I get is about how other people couldn't because they don't know how or don't think theirs is good enough or whatever, but let me be blunt for a brief moment: putting your art, writing, expression out to be judged by others is an act of bravery as much as talent, and a lot of people lack bravery. Sorry to say it but if you need your work to be polished and beyond reproach, that's a determination and character problem, not a skill problem.
“A lot of people lack bravery.” That could be said about so many of us working in corporate environments. Maybe it says more about corporate environments than people, but still, it’s a truth that’s hard to look square in the face. It’s profound to think about AI providing cover for that lack of bravery. But also—putting yourself out there, being brave—I’m confronted by that idea myself.
I do both technical and creative work. It’s easy to see the parallel with creative work. I’ve shared some of my short stories here on this site. In fiction, in feels like I’m laid bare in a way that I’m not in my technical work, but having thought more about this recently because of the above post, I think it’s a mistake to not think of technical work the same way. Sharing technical work online is also an act of bravery. Algorithms are an expression of thinking, and also, no one wants to be caught doing something silly in their code. It would be a shame if we lost that as coding agents become more the norm. Let's all work harder to be brave whether it's creative or technical work.