The implication behind all of this is that slop is the fault of the LLMs or their creators.
But for a moment, I want to ask you to considerā¦ is this true?
I donāt dispute that weāre seeing a lot more AI generated slop than we were 2 years agoā¦ but I do wonder what itās displacing. When I see this AI video of a woman jumping through a glass bridge, I wonder what human content it is replacing in those users feeds. What is the quality of that content? Would it qualify as slop too?
Here is what I believe to be true.
Making something excellent takes care and focus. Sometimes that care and focus is the years you spent prior to the morning you make something excellent and the final thing hops out of you almost fully formed. Sometimes that care and focus is the years you spend refining something until it is excellent.
Most creative work, including mine, isnāt particularly high quality. If you want to be uncharitable, you could call this slop.1 Internet platforms have made it easier for people to create and display their work. LLMs have made it easier to create. This means that we see a lot more slop.
There will be some Sora posts that will be funny, wonderful, even beautiful. There will be many that are slop.
Mike Judge has a great piece poking at the AI hype where he asks essentially, āIf these tools are so great, where is the explosion of AI created stuff in the world?ā
The whole piece is worth a read, but one of the most interesting things to me about it is the data he brings to bear on the question.
He looks at:
iOS app releases
Android releases
Domain registrations
Steam releases
Public GitHub repos created
And then concludes from these that AI coding tools are ābullshitā ending with the call for people who claim that they are now 10x software engineers because of AI, to show the receipts.
First, I want to concentrate on what I love about this. āIf this is so great, where is it in the data?ā is absolutely the right question to be asking.
And there is definitely a dog that isnāt barking here. The data that he cites arenāt perfect (more on this in a second) and yet really impactful things tend to move really obvious metrics. The gains in life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 are really easy to see.
So on one hand, I love this challenge. On the other, I think he goes too far in calling it all bullshit and saying that it doesnāt work.
Iāll hold myself out as the example that Mike asks for. While I wonāt claim to be a 10x engineer, I had never completed a meaningful software project in production before GPT-4 launched. Since then, Iāve coded this blog / portfolio site myself, launched an AI based local news site that has hundreds of weekly readers, and I have a third unreleased prototype that I think could be a real product.
Analyzing myself against Mikeās charts:
I havenāt launched an iOS app
I havenāt launched an Android app
I have bought 3 domains
I havenāt launched a steam app
Iāve created 1 public repo, unrelated to my AI coding work
Now Iām open to the idea that Iām the exception rather than the ruleā¦ but I also too humble to think that Iām a unicorn on this dimension.
Thereās plenty of room for middle ground here. Itās totally possible that:
1. AI tools are net negative for most software engineers
2. AI tools are transformative for people like me
3. People like me are a minority
Intuitively, I doubt that this is true and yet I donāt have hard data beyond my personal experience to bring to bear on this question. Itās certainly something Iāll be thinking about over the coming months. A more likely explanation in my view is that we havenāt unlocked the right combination of values, tactics, organizational design, and training to unlock AI software productivity at scaleā¦ but I canāt prove that at this point.
Reading this book from the perspective of 2025, I think Robert Caro got Robert Moses wrong.1 Yes, he was obsessed with power. Yes, he ruined neighborhoods and destroyed communities with highways and slum clearance programs. Yes, he failed to treat the black citizens of New York City as having equal significance with its white citizens. He had all of these failings and it is important not to shy away from them.
Yes, Moses hoarded power. He had sharp elbows. He pushed the limits. He was also prepared, on time, organized, and ready to work tirelessly. He didnāt enrich himself or his family, but instead funneled money into getting power, so he could do more building. He built with all the limitations and blindspots of the generation he grew up in but he did build. He could be petty and attention seeking and yet he was also fantastically productive, not for just himself and his ego, but also for the people of New York.
Itās important while reading the book to pay attention to the other characters coming of age alongside Moses, people like Jimmy Walker, who are comically corrupt by todayās standards. When you do, you get the feeling that Caro is comparing Moses not to the other men and women who couldāve been chosen to lead at the time but to a hypothetical perfect public servant that never did exist and never could exist.
I first heard of Robert Moses in a City Planning Survey course that I took as a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill. The TA who taught the class had an infectious enthusiasm for city planning and so that summer I found myself reading the Jane Jacobs classic Death and Life of Great American Cities.2
So I came into the book with a sense that the problems with American Cities are downstream of the choices that Robert Moses and his disciples made to orient them towards cars and away from walking and public transportation and neighborhoods with a sense of place.
But after reading the book, I think the problem for American cities isnāt that Robert Moses ruined them, but that there have been no Robert Moseses since: civic leaders with the intellect and power to reshape cities with a new, imperfect vision of what the good life is. We know from Amsterdam and Paris that this sort of transformation is possible and yet weāve chosen to stay stuck in time, living with the same problems year after year.
The Robert Moses of 2025 would probably not favor cars over other forms of public transportation or redline minority neighborhoods. He would be imperfect in new ways that we cannot yet see or understand. But he would build.
Itās a credit to Caroās immense ability that I can read his work and come to very different conclusions about what it means. ↩
Best enjoyed this week in a sunny corner of a park
Worth your time
If youāve ever wanted to buy a life sized dinosaur, now is your chance. Someday my son is going to find out I had this opportunity and didnāt take it and will never look at me the same way again.
The Quiet Ones by Nikunj Kothari. An ode to the people that do the little things to make a company or a team effective.
I now realize that everything I lorded over other peopleāall the things I gatekept without consciously understanding that this was what I was doingāI didnāt need to do that. It really didnāt help anything. For some number of people who interacted with me, Iwas the problem. I couldāve been more tolerant or forgiving, I couldāve said āletās find out together,ā I couldāve let other people have the fun once in a while.
Iāve become obsessed with the tops of trees, in particular in the morning or the evening when the sun is hitting them. For some insect or bird or leaf that spot is the center of the world.
Letās see if I can land the plane on this one. Iām surprised that there isnāt more nostalgic fiction about growing up in evangelical Christian circles. Thereās satirical stuff like Saved but nothing that Iām aware of like The Big Sick that both pokes fun at being a child of immigrants while also on some level clearly feeling affection for it. Is this out there and I just donāt know about it?
Are we at the point where āyes, andā¦ā is overrated? If not, how long until we get there?
Something I struggled with this week: for someone like you and me, in 2025, what does it mean to live a good life? At 19, it was easier for me to articulate an answer to this question I actually believed than it is now in many ways. If you feel like you have a good answer to this, consider this me humbly requesting that you write it and share it.
Things I learned
Apparently Marie Antoinette never said āLet them eat cakeā, according to a recent Rest Is History Bonus episode. Iām a sucker forthings we think that arenāt actually so. Also from a RIH bonus episode: apparently the US now requires people to share their social media handles to get a travel visa. What are we doing here people?
China installed more industrial robots last year than the rest of the world combined. This is one of those stats that a 17 year old is going to be citing in an AP History Exam in 2084 about why China won the war for Taiwan.
This weekās episode is best paired with a hot cup of coffee and Wild Ways by Josh Ritter playing in the background. Last episode was too LLM heavy, for which I apologize. Iāve done my best to group all of that into LLM corner so as not to let it overshadow everything.
Worth your time
Uri says we should not allow 18 year olds to sign long term contracts. So, so many thoughts here.
1. I remember a conversation I had with my best friend when he was a brand new army officer out of college ROTC about all the 18 year old privates he worked with that had 19% car loans.
2. Jonathan Haidt opened my eyes to the way social media companies get teenagers to agree terms of service that they very obviously should not be able to agree to without their parents consent. I cannot believe we allow this!
3. Matt Levineās Certificate of Dumb Investment continues to seem underrated to me.
PSA: How to fold fitted sheets, via the Browser. I sent this to my wife and she very nicely said to me something to the effect of āisnāt this the same way I taught you to do it?ā š¤£
āWhen outsiders succeed, itās usually through reframing problems in āparadigm shiftsā. They benefit from not being too attached to existing theories.āFrom a thread on outsiders solving problems.
Our parenting hack of the year so far is having cut vegetables ready at the table when our kids get home from school. The percentage of vegetables consumed is up like 10x and compliance to the routine of coming in, washing hands, and sitting down at the table has risen as well. Recommended and thanks to Emily Oster for the suggestion.
Things I learned
German chocolate cake was invented in United States, via the Kroger App. Someone needs to figure out why the Kroger app has so many delightful facts in it. This is someoneās passion project! I'll buy you a nice bottle of wine if you find this person and introduce them to me.
80% of Swiss are satisfied with their lives. I am not sponsored by the Swiss government, but I am open to it if they are reading.
The Pangolin is the only mammal with scales. Peacock is the name of the males only; the female are peahens. The species is called peafowl. Via The Animal Book.
āShe does that to her family. She does that to her friends. She does that to me,ā he lamented. āShe doesnāt seem to be capable of creating her own social interactions anymore.ā
I worry a lot that the sycophancy of the agents have made me less flexible with people who (of course) are less likely to defer to me. I am not sure how to measure this, but I wish I could.
Sort of a musing, but I think we owe Blake Lemoine and apology.