The first question is for people in their late 50s to 70s. I’m worried that the level of quality that I observe with technical work out there may be a generational gap type of change. - When you were in your late 30s or 40s, did it feel like newer generations were just sharing, celebrating and generally putting out “slop” work? Were “we” putting out slop, and you just had to live with it?

If the answer is no, this is the follow-up: - Are we in the middle of an AI psychosis epidemic (pandemic?) that has yet to peak?

AI was supposed to devalue a lot of sophisticated work, but we are seeing the opposite.

And it’s not just the creator of the slop that thinks they are a genius - that’s understandable, they might need that, the sycophantic LLMs tuned for increasing engagement sniped them, etc. But the consumer of the slop also appears extremely impressed with prose that sometimes hurts to read, and lacks any intellectual value or sophistication. With absolutely no validation of value, people are almost charmed like a snake.

Last question: Is it a “hard times, strong men/women, good times, weak men/women” thing, and our generation caught the end of the good times?

I am almost sad that Knuth had to see these days.