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Is this platform still massively against AI or has it moved more towards acceptance?

This platform is full of authors and artists who don't like having their work stolen.

I think that may be the core division here: if you are an author or an artist the cons of generative AI very likely outweigh the pros for you If you are a software developer the opposite is true

"If you are a homeowner, the cons of burglary very likely outweigh the pros for you. If you are a burglar the opposite is true"

Simon's talking about the use of AI to write code If you think AI training data is stolen labor -- which I consider a strong argument! -- it's stolen, in this case, from software developers, who posted their code on sites like StackOverflow not expecting it to be sold to OpenAI & company

AI does a terrible job with code. Yes, really. It's almost always inexperienced programmers touting it, and for small things. It hallucinates and makes errors at the same rate there too. This is just the latest boss's attempt to abuse that kind labor.

Well, not "terrible", but certainly nowhere near the claims that are being made. I would argue that we are still very much in the phase where: Good developers can get benefit out of genAI, but without the appropriate experience & talent it is still too hard to do so.

Adrian C produced this recently - github.com/adrianco/ret... - I think it shows that while genAI is moving software development along a trajectory towards a manufacturing engineering discipline (i.e. that code is a mass-produced product made by machines) we are very much not there yet.

Have you tried something slightly harder than “generate a 20 lines of code python script” or “generate a shadcn ui”? If you did you’ll see the hundreds of mistakes it makes. Clearly LLMs are going to hit their performance ceiling soon

Yes, I have: simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/6/a...

If you've done some real coding with those models, you know, as I know, as everyone who's used them knows, that you keep chasing their tail to fix bugs or unintended designs etc. It's basically a "better templating language" for now. But once you start doing something that involves security, ...

It holds up when you realize that most of the work and time in software development is maintenance. AI helps with the tiny amount of the software lifecycle that involves actually writing code

I'm finding it increasingly useful for maintenance tasks now, like this one: gistpreview.github.io?83c7a7ea96d6... I agree that it only helps with a small part of the software lifecycle though - I spend way more time on design and research and requirements gathering than I do on writing code

the spine of this website is creatives whose work is being stolen, not developers who find AI useful. That's why this site is so negative towards AI. We don't like crime.

That's pretty much the point I was trying to make in the post that sparked this whole firestorm bsky.app/profile/simo...

Except that's not true. I'm a software developer and it's a hindrance, not a help. Fuck off with this magic bean bullshit.

Except your last point isn’t “true”.