Even quantized local models like Qwen3.8 are good enough to handle a lot of drudgery. For example, I hooked my wife's computer up to a local model, and now she finally has a clean desktop. She just drops spreadsheets or powerpoints or whatever on her desktop and automation takes care of everything.
The caveat is that I developed software for 30 years, so I understand most of what it produces and can guide it to make fewer mistakes and fix what it can't do. The biggest challenge has been keeping my requirements focused - it's very easy to gold plate everything and prematurely optimize.
The biggest question I ask myself is why am I even still doing this. The smart people are probably already trying to figure out how to pipe raw matter and energy to their homes to build replicators.
The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
[–] adventured 2 days ago
[–] reeredfdfdf 2 days ago
I doubt that. If a clone out there offers all the Photoshop's features for free or much lower cost, without additional learning curve, then many professionals will switch to save money.
McDonalds would be gone too if somebody opened a restaurant chain serving similar food for free or 80% lower price. But that's impossible to do profitably, while freeware software has existed for a long, long time.
[–] adventured 1 day ago
The many professionals are the ones that could most easily understand how to switch to GIMP, which is free to use. They could save enormous amounts of money. They prefer to spend money and stick with Photoshop instead. That has persisted for a very long time now.
You don't want to be in the CD selling or radio business with the Internet & digital & streaming & smartphones & iPods bearing down on you. Go for concerts. Notice that humans are spending more than ever on live concerts. Disney World and Disneyland still command extraordinary pricing power, despite everybody hiding inside on their phones.
LLM clones of eg Photoshop will end up being worthless, like ideas generally. The software will be worthless for the same reason ideas are: they're too easy. Users are hard, software will be (relatively) easy.
Is the value in McDonalds in the food? Everybody knows it's not. McD captured consumers, their heft is extraordinarily difficult to displace. Ie habits, brand awareness, location, etc.