Keep the faith

This is mainly a message to myself. I have spent the last few weeks feeling more and more depressed about "the tech industry". I am sad that social media companies are manipulating us, making us angry and ignorant. I am sad that AI is becoming more pervasive when I feel it is fundamentally unethical. I am worried that I may lose my job if I don't use AI, or feel pressured to use it. I am worried that the craft to which I have dedicated my life, and which I love, (programming) is going to die. Post-truth and the social contract Much of what is happening is so-called "post-truth". It seems that it doesn't matter what you do any more, so long as you appear to be confident and aggressive about it. I see this in the political discourse in the UK and the US, but I also see it elsewhere - for example in the "quiet quitting" phenomenon: people giving up on the social contract and choosing to take what they can get from an economy they consider fundamentally opposed to their interests. AI is…