Aim at something yes. But don't be reckless or overly optimistic.

Is work such as changing the styling of a button on the Instagram app any more useful than that?

Mining work was unglamorous and dangerous but was needed. Labeling work is the mining of the AI era.

The reality is that most of these self described rational and super intelligent devs who see themselves as good people refuse to accept that joining big tech and joining an ethical company are mutually exclusive by definition. Hence all the companies saying "We make the world a better place by doing x". Everyone knows it's not true. But it helps swallow the fantasy and selling your ethics for a big fat pay check every month.

Blacksmithing as a profession isn't dead either, it is still possible with the right approach. Just don't expect knights to come knocking asking you to make them the next Excalibur.

Unless you are confident that Google will be antitrust forced to weakening their hold in some of those markets. A crack is all you need for the water to rush in and widen the crack.

What exactly does this mean?

Sad to hear that. You sound like a keeper. Anyway, are you free this weekend? ;)

It shouldn't. Big corpo buying small companies harms us all long term.

About time Microsoft joined the fray. After the OpenAI divorce, it really looked like Microsoft was going to become another Uber.

All fun and games until they do four figures damage.

Classic LLM writing style.