Maybe Generative AI Is Just a Symptom of a Broader Problem in Tech

Today, I wanted to share a few different pieces of media that have been on mind that center around the field of tech. Needless to say, this is going to be a spicy one. Solutions to Manmade Problems Lately, I've been hyper focused on the problems with generative AI, but then I realized that maybe generative AI is just a symptom of a broader problem in tech. In fact, it has me thinking that maybe tech as an industry is fundamentally broken. Given that I am someone who runs a tech site, you'd think that I might not want to throw the baby out with the bath water here. Yet the more I think about the tech industry, the more I feel like we're rapidly moving toward (and are perhaps already in) some super lame futuristic cyberpunk dystopia. It first hit me this morning when I was scrolling my algorithmically curated YouTube homepage. While scrolling, a video popped up in my feed from a commentary YouTuber named Drew Gooden. You might have seen his stuff before as the algorithm regularly puts his work in the mix with other guys like Danny Gonzales, Noel Miller, Kurtis Connor, Eddy Burback, and Cody Ko (lmao). At any rate, the video of his that caught my eye was titled "Technology isn't fun anymore," and just the title resonated with my quite a bit. Naturally, I was wondering what angle he would take, and I was pleasantly surprised when the video opened with a critique of motion smoothing. If you're not familiar with motion smoothing, it's basically a feature on modern TVs that interpolates frames of media with low frame rates. Since modern TVs have such high framerates (and often framerates that aren't multiples of the source media), interpolation was added to "smooth" TV shows and movies. Of course, if you've ever seen motion smoothing on a TV, it looks horrible. It completely strips whatever your watching of its cinematics—reducing the quality of even the most artistic movies and television to that of an afternoon soap opera. Some folks like it for sports or video games, but it's very strange that it's basically the default setting for all media on modern TVs. As you can tell, Drew had me hooked with this opening, but he kept me hooked with the phrase: So many things now seem to just invent a new problem, so they can sell you the solution. Drew Gooden, 2025-03-01 Then, he just kept listing off issues with modern technology. For instance, in this video alone, he talks about the following: Streaming services allow you to rent media as long as you're willing to pay Physical media is nearly impossible to consume without shelling out tons of cash for the proper tools Sports are basically impossible to watch if your favorite team is in the region you live Google is practically useless without using the keyword "reddit" Hardware companies force you to update their systems to worse versions of themselves or brick them completely when the live service is deemed unnecessary (see TVs, smart home devices, etc.) Needless to say, I recommend checking out Drew's video if you ever feel like a boomer for hating on modern tech. Entering the Tech Field Sometimes I feel like I have a unique perspective to bring to the conversation because I prepare students to enter the tech industry. Often, my work is at odds with the culture of tech, which has some pretty disturbing values (a rant for another day). What makes my job particularly challenging is that I am at the mercy of the tech industry when I prepare my students. For example, students are not going to get jobs unless they grind LeetCode. This is not something I emphasize in my teaching because LeetCode is going to make you a bad developer, yet it's what every company is using to filter its applicants. So imagine my excitement when I saw that some college student built a tool to help other students cheat through LeetCode (Here's the tool by the way—not that I'm endorsing it). Even the students know LeetCode is bad, and now I even have some evidence software developer quality is down as a result of this obsession with LeetCode. I only imagine developer quality is going to go down as the reliance on generative AI goes up which hopefully leads to model collapse. Of course, LeetCode isn't the only hurdle for new hires. As it turns out, we're starting to outsource the behavioral interviewing process to AI as well using a fun tool known as HireVue. Because I'm out of the hiring scene (for now), I hadn't heard about HireVue until I saw this Good Work video. I highly recommend you go check them out. Anyway, now students have resorted to botting the application process just to get a chance at a LeetCode assessment followed by an interview with an AI. What a wonderful time to be entering the field. Moral of the Story Today, I'm going to keep this rant somewhat short. Though, I could probably write for hours about the ways that tech has made my day-to-day life worse. For instance, I just completed my taxes using TurboTax, and I'm getting very close to just hiring an accountant. The tool is genuinely painful to use, and I always feel like I'm leaving myself open to auditing. Likewise, the cycle of always needing to update passwords every couple of months due to data breaches tends to outweigh the convenience of the tech in the first place. Not to mention that two-factor authentication adds an additional layer of frustration. Again, I could probably rant for hours. Instead, I'm going to close this out with a little bit of politics. Generally, I try to keep this site free of that kind of stuff because I know it can get in the way of whatever knowledge I'm trying to share. But, we live in some truly dystopic times—times where protests are practically ongoing. So, I'm going to pin the problems we see with tech on the economic system that necessitates parasitic behavior: capitalism. The joys we saw with tech starting in the latter half of the 20th century have all but been wiped out by corporate greed. As productivity grows, the gains are returned to shareholders, and we see none of the benefit—only hastily crafted junk to be usurped by some other junk in the future. Surely, there are people doing good work out there, but it'll be a matter of time before they're stamped out by more rabid competition. Ultimately, I believe what we see in tech is what unfettered capitalism looks like, and it's certainly not for the benefit of the average person. People will look at a poor person and say "but they have an iPhone, so they can't be that poor." That's the level of brainwashed we are as a society. We see tech as liberation when it is the very chains that hold us back. Now, I'm not trying to go on a "return to monke" style Unabomber rant. I love my computer. I love writing code. I love having access to information and everyone. But, the modern approach to tech is unjust, and we have to stop accepting every "innovation" as just that. Sometimes the direction we move with tech is bad. It's parasitic. It's anti-privacy. It's anti-human. And, I encourage you to push back.