George Hotz, comma.ai and tinygrad creator, warns of declining industry quality and a persistent wave of AI-generated 'slop
AI skeptic Gary Marcus endorsed Hotz's critique.
@deanwball disagree it seems existing top notch SWEs who are open to agentic coding become extremely magnified, obviously some are ideologically opposed or it’s unnatural for their thought process
Dean W. Ball@deanwballI have said before that existing SWEs, especially really good ones, are among the least well-positioned to take advantage of coding agents. And yet I find tremendous value in the agents every day.
@deanwball .
#153Gary Marcus@GARYMARCUSeven @geohotz is starting to sound like me 🤣
george hotz archive@geohotarchiveThe Eternal Sloptember https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/05/24/the-eternal-sloptember.html
#392Dean W. Ball@DEANWBALLI have said before that existing SWEs, especially really good ones, are among the least well-positioned to take advantage of coding agents. I find tremendous value in the agents every day, but I am not 'software engineering' when I do so.
george hotz archive@geohotarchiveThe Eternal Sloptember https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/05/24/the-eternal-sloptember.html
#392Dean W. Ball@DEANWBALLI have said before that existing SWEs, especially really good ones, are among the least well-positioned to take advantage of coding agents. And yet I find tremendous value in the agents every day.
george hotz archive@geohotarchiveThe Eternal Sloptember https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/05/24/the-eternal-sloptember.html
@tszzl I'm sure that's true for some, but on average I think many will ultimately come to the hotz conclusion, and this is not because they are wrong at the object level, but instead because they are being obsoleted.
roon@tszzl@deanwball disagree it seems existing top notch SWEs who are open to agentic coding become extremely magnified, obviously some are ideologically opposed or it’s unnatural for their thought process
@tszzl I feel the same way, though I am 0.1% the engineer greg is
roon@tszzl@deanwball .
#839Beff (e/acc)@BEFFJEZOS"The agent frontloads all the progress, then gives you a slot machine lever to pull to hope it gets the polish done. It never quite gets there." -@realGeorgeHotz
Spot on. Seems like a universal experience.
george hotz archive@geohotarchiveThe Eternal Sloptember https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/05/24/the-eternal-sloptember.html