Reply To: [unofficial weekender] Springtime 2026

[limburger 22468xp 1]

except these days Photoshop has built-in ‘smart’ filters that do the work …  (I think it is a ‘magic wand’ tool?)

they may have relabelled them ‘AI’ for marketing purposes, but some of that tech definitely predates ‘AI’.

I’ve used Claude Code at work. It is an amazing piece of technology.
We cannot undo any of the unethical training data that was used. 🙁
And because our management demands we use it I’d be out of a job (and given the impact won’t ever have a job if I ever make this a deal breaker).

Software engineering is not going to recover from this. It’s intellisense on a whole different level.
Not using ‘AI’ to assist is like trying to write machine code when everyone else is using high level languages.
Only the exteremely brilliant could hope to compete in that kind of market.
The genie is out of the bottle.
Pandora’s box has been opened.
There is no going back to the before times.

Yes it sucks that we can’t run these things locally (well some of these you can if you got a semi competent cpu, plenty of ram and a good gpu).
And the energy usage is beyond absurd. (one more reason for me to want solar power for my home 😉 )

You still need to know what the heck you’re doing in order to judge its output.

The only good news is that privacy laws are the one thing that might stop this from escalating.
Unfortunately privacy means nothing to shareholders when there’s money to be made.

/rant
That’s all I will say in the context of this thread while not having to tap the ‘no politics’ sign.

@pagan8th I’d say it also depends on how you’re going to use the results from your ‘AI’ usage.
Are you planning to use them as the final result ?
Or are these placeholders / templates to build on?
You could hire an actual human artist on a site like Fiverr … but that has its own ethical issues as folk doing that as a hobby often don’t need to charge what professionals would have to.
(and you won’t ever know if they used ‘AI’ to generate the image).

// —

In other news : I’ve managed to keep all my limbs and not cut myself with the powered mitre saw.
It was a ‘cheap’ thing (as these things go), but it cut the wood like it wasn’t even there.
Of course I made the basic mistake of not measuring what lenght  I needed … but that is a me problem.