Abstraction is leverage. Automation is the amplification of power. Abstraction is democratization. Automation repeats a duplicative process so you can stop thinking about it and focus on something higher level. Abstraction elides so architecture can expand.
AI is anti-leverage. Where an abstraction will elide duplication with semantic compression, AI steamrolls the duplication by copying and pasting faster than a human can.
Linus is saying the quiet part out loud: AI-native projects are environments where the key ingredient is _capital_. Abstraction can be performed by a quiet appreciation. True automation can be disruptive.
AI-based architectures (again, assuming that the AI works reliably, which is a highly contingent proposition) translate all that stuff into capital flows. A "machine speed" project requires _money_ to participate in, regardless of their complexity.
Right now it looks like AI can do "disruption" because you can apparently do things that require a team, as an individual, by taking advantage of highly subsidized token rates, or (at best) taking advantage of highly subsidized training regimes and stolen training data. But those rates will go up and while you'll still be able to nominally command those resources as an individual, doing so will still require the capital flow required to hire a team.
AI does not disrupt. AI entrenches. AI turns money into more money; AI turns investment into dependency. We are living in a funhouse mirror of that right now where the combination of overly-plausible demos and first-one's-free incentives are swamping the actual balance-sheet math. But the economics require that this stabilize, that the capital flows reverse direction. The wave has come in and we are just starting to feel the undertow.
This is an attempt to address the growing number of "oh, so you don't like automation when it comes for *you*? checkmate, programmers" articles out there, but there's so much more to say. Overall I think this idea that computer programmers just destroyed jobs is largely false. One of the weird corollaries of the Productivity Paradox is that we mostly *did* expand possibilities and make things better and more fun.
(Until all the Gig Economy stuff. But that's still a minority of tech history.)
Also this is a big argument in the alternative. For technical reasons related to context limits and training data, none of this shit actually works well enough to replace software at any meaningful scale. To paraphrase @pluralistic by way of Jensen Huang: AI will not take your job. A boss using AI to fake their quarterly KPIs will take your job.
@glyph Where I think the duplication serves human interests is when it’s duplicating something inherently useful for humans - like a convenient and mature API for hand authoring software for example.
@mos_8502 I'm not talking about "duplication" like disruption. I'm talking about "duplication" like hundreds of "toUpperCase" methods scattered throughout your codebase, far enough from each other that the context window can never quite reach between them. Fifty different data structures for doing the exact same things and the eventual introduction of the cartesian product of functions to convert from one to the other.
@glyph I've assumed well over a decade ago that eventually we'd engineer around most instances of writing code by hand. This current approach just feels like a bad way to do that. We're definitely not at the end of history, just like we weren't any of the past times engineers thought that.
I doubt we ever will.
Computers do exactly what you tell them to. If you program them in inexact terms, they'll do something other than what you actually intended, as vibe coders are now rediscovering.
Any reliable method of programming a computer must be logical, thorough, and unambiguous, and is therefore by definition a programming language. You'll never reliably program a computer in plain English, because plain English does not meet those requirements.
@glyph these were my answers for why the finance guys weren't calling bullshit on the tech guys from early into this bubble. (harder - to be fair, some did, but it didn't lead to mass consciousness bc neither of those camps really think of themselves as participating in society.) ultimately capital is very very tolerant of anything that multiplies capital, no matter how many bad consequence dominoes it's setting out ahead of the current moment. this is also why we're now at +1.5°C and rising.
@jplebreton back in January: https://mastodon.social/@glyph/115827646863388901
@jplebreton in summary, "yes I agree very much"
@glyph "nothing about this requires that anyone be stupid or evil or unusually greedy" is great; the particular system-affinities + the optimization pressures + the accountability void is the real recipe.
@glyph I mean, yes and no. Reading about the final days of the typesetter trade here in Denmark is decidedly painful for a programmer with Luddite sympathies.
@datarama "mostly" is load-bearing. Industrial control systems also have some, uh, interesting labor relations implications.
@datarama But the simplistic narrative that Computers Are Just A Tool Of Capital is quantitatively incorrect overall. When you weigh the destruction of the typesetting trade against the growth of desktop publishing and the artistic possibilities of online media, the simple story of "programmers made typesetters poor so they could get rich off the difference" is a wildly reductive take on the whole thing.
@glyph @datarama Overall I think it's wrong to deem automation as anti-social when the processes being automated have rigorous objective metrics for whether they're being done right, and where a human operator is necessarily going to have a higher error rate. The entire perspective comes from a perverse "work ethic" worldview where it's Good for humans to be doing labor. Reducing the overall amount of labor we need is a good thing!
Where automation is harmful is where it's replacing complex judgements, interpretations that have a lot of hidden context, and roles where there is an imperative for someone to be able to say no on ethical grounds with sloppy heuristics.
These principles predate "AI".
@dalias @datarama there's a thing buried in here too where our society refuses to properly invest in retraining and employment disruption insurance programs. if you invent a miserable-shit-shoveling machine that perfectly and immaculately does the work of a miserable-shit-shoveler, immediately freeing them to do something other than miserably shoveling shit for a job, and in the course of doing this you make them homeless and despised, you can't really fix the *machine* to address that
@dalias @datarama everybody who does a properly obsoleted job SHOULD be given a substantial bonus, emotional hazard pay for having to reformulate their sense of self, and maybe a parade to thank them for their service for getting society to that point, instead of quiet desperate irrelevance and a probable ignominious death. but I don't know if it's quite fair to heap all that at *programmers'* feet
@wronglang
@glyph @dalias @datarama
hi, it's this world. it makes sense for capitalists because the visible fate of the obsolete workers is an important part of the system that disciplines the as-yet-unobsoletr e workers. we can talk about the ethics and meaning of labor and all, but most discourse on these subjects in this society does not address this central reality, that if you fail to somehow make yourself useful to capital or its handmaiden the state, you will likely be social-murdered
@acetone_kitten @glyph @dalias @datarama so a world run by sociopaths
@wronglang @glyph @dalias @datarama that wasn't the intent, but it does seem to be what the incentive structure selects for. still, i know sociopaths who are good people, who scorn to ascend within that structure. the structure's the problem, and the class that it serves.
Oct 16, 2026, 1:01 PM@davebauerart @glyph @dalias @datarama
Will not be fixed unless you arrest the capitalists and the Nazis, but thanks for playing.
@glyph @dalias When I was in my late teens, if I went to a public park there'd sometimes be a bunch of people mowing the grounds, doing simple weeding work and the like. Most of them had mild-to-moderate cognitive disabilities, and this sort of "menial" work was the only thing left for them to do.
Now they've been replaced with robot mowers - but many of them, now in their senior years, still hang around the parks, picking up bottles to collect the bottle return fee, and sometimes just cleaning up trash if they find it. They're not economically desperate or homeless (and you don't make *that* much from a day's worth of bottle returns) - virtually all of them are on disability pensions, which is a livable income here. I've talked to many of them (as I also did when they were employed and I was some young delinquent smoking weed in the park, so some of them instantly recognize the older and at least outwardly more respectable me). They do it because they like to feel useful. That at least they're contributing *something* to the community. They don't like to feel "useless".
And honestly, this is *the same thing* I feel when I'm staring down the barrel of unemployment.
Now, I should mention that I live in a culture with a social-democratic work ethic, which is perhaps the only thing that's even harsher than a protestant one. But it generally seems to me that many people genuinely like feeling that they're contributing something to the fellowship, and often feel bad if they're deprived of a way to do so.
I'm not saying we should take Enoch's hammer to the robot mowers! But I'm saying that something that *to me* looks like miserable shit-shoveling might well be the thing that makes someone else feel like there's at least a small thing they can do to keep the community running. And if the last 30 years have taught me anything, it's that programmers are not necessarily the right people to make these judgment calls.
And certainly, programmers organized in privately-owned corporations aren't.
@glyph @dalias Now, humans are not tools and are not made for any particular purpose, so "useless" and "useful" are not really terms that make sense to apply to people. And much as I struggle with the now-near-constant intrusive thought of viewing myself as "soon useless" because LLMs are being deployed to do things that used to be meaningful parts of my work, it is not a term I would ever apply to anyone else. So obviously there's some cognitive and emotional distortion going on here, for reasons that are probably as much personal as anything else.
But I do think the wish to be "useful" - in the sense of providing some kind of contribution to the well-being of the community, however small - is something that sticks deeper than culture - and therefore, also deeper than the constructs of wage labour and productivity.
Personally, aside from *seriously* not liking the thought of no longer being able to meaningfully contribute - regardless of whether I was economically comfortable on an adequate UBI - I find a very strong motivation in doing a job well. I enjoy writing good code, I take a craftsman's pride in it. This is another reason why LLMs feel like a straight-up insult - and why I was already extremely frustrated with my trade before they showed up, because the entire incentive structure has long been arrayed against the struggle for quality.
Interesting topic, thanks. Yeah, I too have the feeling it's "deeper than culture".
My intuition, and I could be wrong, is that the wish to make a difference in the world is intrinsic to humans. I feel like quite a lot of vandalism (when not done for reasons of politics or resentment) is actually this impulse combined with "having nothing better to do".
I'm not saying humans can't _ever_ enjoy feeling they can't have any effect on the world, because I think that can feel good as a temporary holiday, especially if you're over-functioning the rest of the time. Like if your only "time off" is when you physically can't do anything! But most people would find it highly unsatisfactory as a long-term state.
I think for most people it's also a preference for the results to be helpful to other humans (or other entities), and the big variable is the scope of which humans. Most people doing killing and hurting have it put together in their heads that they're helping _their_ lot.
I think there _can_ be people whose group is only themself. I'm not sure whether that's always from childhood abuse/neglect or whether some is genetic.
Of course there is also a lot of culture involved around this territory: things like _what_ is considered useful at different times and places, how children are raised in relation to their own autonomy, whether it's considered important for everyone to have a role where they _can_ contribute, etc.
@glyph They certainly do.
Even things like modern shipboard instrumentation does - they don't *precisely* replicate any one particular job someone might have had in the past (a sensor readout doesn't do the same thing as a lookout did), but they do collapse enough tasks down to a point where all the residue of them can be handled by a single stressed-out person rather than a small crew.
@glyph @pluralistic Great summary, clarifies a lot of thoughts I've been mulling over.
The bill that is going to come due in a year or two is going to be a real wake-up call. I suspect many codebases will be bit rotted beyond repair. It's going to make Y2K look like a walk in the park.
@zenkat @glyph @pluralistic i would like to think the bill would register, but also knowing these people they will absolutely half-arse it, and be highly receptive to pitches on how to quarter-arse it.
Oct 15, 2026, 8:07 PM@glyph thank you for the text!
It puts substance in my feelings that AI "automation" is wrong for lack of a better word even though I think everyone's highest goal in a job should be to automate oneself away. But that is massively at odds with how jobs work, sadly, so you try that for a year, then realize you are rewarded more for creating tech debt and hiding knowledge from colleagues until some rando CEO says "no no no we're not replacing you, AI will _support_ you". It's all so fatiguing
@glyph @pluralistic This one is the observed reality on the ground
@glyph i have to point out that even the gig economy stuff isn't exactly of the form "automation destroying jobs", but "tech companies trying to use technology to circumvent labor laws", much like genAI effectively circumvents copyright law, but it's in this weird form that the laws were never written for, and by the time courts and laws catch up it is difficult to enforce (aka the entire shape of this "disruption" business scheme, move fast and break things, use the chaos to install yourself in essential positions so no one can easily go after you by the time the dust settles).
programming *as a discipline* is much closer to the "it will change some jobs, and create new ones for the ones it takes" that gets often claimed for genAI (when talking to regular people, that is, to investors it's "you will soon be able to stop paying pesky humans"). engineering and science also contributed (and frankly, a lot more) to automation, but calling either engineers or scientists some sort of enemy of working people isn't a usual battle cry of the labor movement. automation is a resource *distribution* issue, where capitalists would like to pretty please like to take the lions share of the benefits (and since genAI, apparently also giant bills for hardware and energy+water usage, since how else do we get everyone to use this thing if not by selling it for a fraction of the producton price).
@glyph okay but ignoring all that useful shit, "oh, so you don't like automation when it comes for *you*? checkmate, programmers" is legitimately true and funny.
@cancername It is … not *entirely* wrong, sure. But most of the people saying it right now are only partially correct about this particular point in a broken-clock sort of way
Oct 15, 2026, 7:46 PMSo many programmers regularly joked about automating themselves out of a job, really it was "automate myself out of the job of 'do the thing' and into the job of 'maintain the automation that does the thing' and then 'maintain the automation that maintains the automation that does the thing'" until genAI boosters started thinking that they solved abstraction by throwing plausible words at it and started the layoffs.
@glyph Remember when compilers and other such foundational developer tools cost money and a lot of it? And then gcc and llvm came around and the bottom dropped out and anyone could have a high quality compiler for free. And that was seen as a good thing.
@glyph lucklily, I never heard that reasoning yet. When I think about automating stuff, my first instinct is to look for repeatable, "boring" stuff. So that the people doing that can do the fun, exciting stuff.
automation is enhancement, never replacement in my opinion
Oct 17, 2026, 5:49 PM@glyph Also what if i think the gig economy stuff was evil. What if i thought (X) was evil and refused to work on it when opportunities came up and refused to use it until the alternatives went extinct and to some extent after. And then (X) came for me and people were like "haha, now (X) has come for you!" yeah, I forsaw that? I read "Player Piano"?!?
Oct 18, 2026, 1:10 AM@davebauerart @glyph I… *does some math*
I think I read it in… 200*2*?
Oct 15, 2026, 7:08 PM@glyph I had a great morning reading Cedric Durand, he had no idea THIS particular flavour of it was around the corner, I bet, when he was writing. Picking up where Shoshana Zuboff leaves off.
Oct 15, 2026, 5:40 PM@glyph Linus along with his top deputies are probably being given free access to any AI models they want.
@adx when a technology empowers, entrenches, and elevates the powerful at the expense of everyone else, if you're "the powerful" it starts to look like a great idea and you're not sure why everyone wouldn't be on board
Sure you are, if you bother to ask yourself whether everyone else has the same access.
There was no call for Butlerian Jihad against microcomputers in the 1980s. Why? Because anyone could buy one!
And Linus clearly did ask himself, because he outright said that he doesn't want people to contribute unless they have the resources to function in today's world, or something like that. It was a painfully elitist take, given that the resource in question is, first and foremost, money.
@glyph Maybe it's time for a Slow Code Movement
@glyph heh, funny: I've often gone for "automation is a force amplifier" but your turn of phrase there allows addressing a subtly different lens on it
@glyph LLMs also break the standard 'interchangable parts' of programming... they often end up writing whole new bespoke subroutines, systems, libraries, rather than reuse existing ones...
Like - imagine you are automating building a car, but, every component of every car is being procedurally generated and manuactured for that speciffic car. It's the dumbest possible way to automate *building* things.
@miss_rodent @glyph that depends a lot on how clear the prompts given. If a naïve user doesn't give some initial prompting and ground rules about what language versions, environments and existing libraries are available for use, many coding LLMs will reinvent the wheel with brand new errors rather than using tried And tested library code honed over decades.
Don't outsource thinking to an infinite monkey machine, you still have to task it with clearly written and considered prompts.
@zymurgic @miss_rodent @glyph it can't be that stupid, you must be prompting it wrong
Oct 16, 2026, 3:38 AM@glyph I presume you've seen https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/04/12/the-peril-of-laziness-lost/
@hynek no but I am definitely vibing with the first few paragraphs
@hynek sad trombone, it pivots into the gift to the enemies of mordor fallacy at the end (I really need a snappier phrase for this)
@hynek still, otherwise very good. and wow gstack is a blast from the past at this point
Oct 16, 2026, 4:30 AM@glyph @hynek Oh I saw this one a while back and I think I kind of got to the end bit and kind of rolled my eyes. But re-skimming and this: “LLMs inherently lack the virtue of laziness” and I’m reminded how much I value the tension that having constraints brings. We can’t try everything so we have to be picky which often leads to better results!