[HN Gopher] My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary
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My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary
Author : wallflower
Score : 642 points
Date : 2026-03-22 14:28 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (rpastro.square.site)
(TXT) w3m dump (rpastro.square.site)
| poulpy123 wrote:
| nice !
| 0x38B wrote:
| Me and my brother just saw the movie tonight and we stayed for
| the credits. I thought the images were beautiful.
| Tommix11 wrote:
| I loved that they changed the ending. I did not like the ending
| in the book.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| About to see the movie in two days, read the book ages ago
| and remember I wasn't too fond of the book ending either, so
| now I got a bit more excited :)
| Sivart13 wrote:
| I don't think they changed much about the ending. There's
| one scene added that's not in the book, but the outcomes
| are all the same.
| minitech wrote:
| What changed about the ending?
| 0xf00ff00f wrote:
| No spoilers please, not everyone has seen the movie!
| throw0101d wrote:
| Somewhat related, nature photographer/youtuber Danni Connor had
| her recording of a red squirrel used in the movie _Dune_ (Part 1)
| for the sound of the desert mouse ( _muad 'dib_). Her
| interviewing with (Oscar-winning) sound designer Mark Mangini on
| it:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtfzjehDg74
|
| * transcript: https://otter.ai/u/PA9dbWFA7BgPgLZN9CSo1WFAjXk
|
| * https://www.iflscience.com/wildlife-photographers-viral-squi...
|
| * https://markmangini.com/Mark_Mangini/Blog/Entries/2021/11/7_...
|
| Story of her 'adopting' the squirrels:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDlh62AVPo
|
| The name of the squirrel is "Baby Pear"; her viral tweet:
|
| * https://twitter.com/DaniConnorWild/status/127534941750838476...
| j_bum wrote:
| Incredible work, OP. What a proud feeling you must have.
| Congrats!!
|
| My wife and I saw the movie this weekend, we thought it was
| great. I adored the book, yet I recognize a book can't be
| perfectly translated to the screen.
|
| I thought the directors did a good enough job at translating the
| sci-fi into something the masses would enjoy.
|
| Kudos to you
| superchink wrote:
| Would you recommend reading the book first?
| zyberzero wrote:
| Not the parent, but I've seen the movie and read the book. I
| think there are a few gaps in the movie that's explained by
| the book, but there are some artistic freedom as well between
| the book and the film.
|
| I would recommend reading the book first at least.
| aczerepinski wrote:
| Book is better but they're both good. I don't think order
| matters.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I agree; the movie is more of a relationship/self-
| reflection/friendship story, with some pop science and
| space stuff mixed in to keep it interesting.
|
| The book is more of a true sci-fi novel, with the
| relationship stuff keeping it interesting.
|
| I liked both a lot, and think both could be enjoyed fully
| with or without the other, in either order.
| estebank wrote:
| I found that I would have enjoyed the movie a bit more if
| I hadn't read the book, but it was still a solid 8/10.
| I'm really glad that a movie like this did well in
| opening weekend.
| alistairSH wrote:
| As a general rule, always read the book first. In this case,
| that holds true - there was too much in the book to cover
| completely in the movie. It's a pretty quick read as well -
| you could probably bang it out in a long afternoon, if you
| were inclined.
|
| That said, I never read Harry Potter and can't imagine going
| back and reading it now. So, YMMV.
| elictronic wrote:
| I don't think it does here. This has been one of the times
| where I enjoyed the movie more than the book. I liked the
| character in the book, in the movie I couldn't take my eyes
| off them.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I watched the Harry Potter movies first and then read the
| books and thoroughly enjoyed the books, and the movies
| didn't spoil them at all.
| 9dev wrote:
| They might be a special case considering the audience,
| books, author, actors, and the movies themselves grew
| alongside each other; it's pretty singular, I think.
| gukov wrote:
| The audiobook version is amazing, if that's your thing.
| TyrunDemeg101 wrote:
| Both are wonderful. I thought the movie was an excellent
| adaptation of the book.
|
| But I am glad I read the book first, I got much more out of
| it - it goes a lot more in depth into the science and
| engineering challenges that occur throughout. Which I
| appreciated. I'm not sure I would have read the book in the
| same way if I had seen the movie first.
| j_bum wrote:
| That's a tough one. I'd recommend the book first, but I can
| see arguments for both orders.
|
| By reading the book first, you'll have a better background
| and understanding of the context of the plot, the science,
| and the overall objectives of the mission. There are also
| several "twists" in the book that were cut from the movie for
| runtime.
|
| I enjoyed the movie after reading because I got to see the
| story "come to life".
|
| But I could also understand the perspective of enjoying the
| movie first, and then having the story/world expanded 8x with
| a 16hr book.
|
| You'd could equate "movie -> book" order to watching the LoTR
| standard editions first, and then watching the extended
| editions.
|
| I listened to the audiobook narrated by Ray Porter (on
| Audible) and would recommend that production if you enjoy
| audio.
|
| I don't think you can go wrong either way :)
| csours wrote:
| I read the book before watching the movie - I'd recommend the
| opposite.
|
| Watching the movie first will set the stage for a lot of
| details that work better in a book than a movie.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Would you recommend reading the book first?_
|
| I recommended it to a co-worker, who ended up going with the
| audio book, and found he found it good.
| dahart wrote:
| The book is fantastic, I'd recommend reading it one way or
| another. ;) Speaking personally, I lose some motivation to
| read a book after seeing the movie. But book-based movies of
| course rarely if ever live up to the book. I read first, so I
| can't speak to the other way around, but I think I was
| looking forward to the movie a lot more than I would have if
| I hadn't read the book. I also suspect I was more forgiving
| of the movie than if I'd seen it cold.
| RulerOf wrote:
| I watched the movie and then read the book.
|
| I tend to prefer movies as a storytelling medium, and enjoyed
| watching the story unfold that way. I ended up just wanting
| to know more about things that were implied in the movie but
| not explained, and the book filled in those gaps well.
|
| So if you want to do both, and want to get something new when
| you do each, then, having done it that way, I would recommend
| it.
|
| Edit: reviewing my app history, it took me somewhere between
| 10-11 hours to read the book, and I do not read fiction
| especially fast.
| shubhamjain wrote:
| Amazing! Kudos to Hollywood, for going to this length to license
| the work, credit the author, involve him in the project. To
| respect realism as a goal for its own, even though "no one will
| notice" and a similar image might be "just a prompt away." I know
| how common is the latter these days.
| tomasphan wrote:
| I doubt that good looking IMAX quality astrophotography is just
| a prompt away.
| double07zip wrote:
| This is amazing. Your photos are art!
| DorkyPup wrote:
| This is incredible and wonderful news, huge congratulations! As
| someone who works at the intersection of design and engineering,
| the detail about delivering "starless versions" so the credit
| typography doesn't compete with the bright stars is exactly the
| kind of invisible technical problem-solving I love reading about
| on here.
|
| On a personal note, I find it very refreshing to hear that a
| major studio opted for real captured photography. Love that they
| specifically wanted the authenticity of real narrowband data and
| that speaks to the production team's vision. Enjoy the premiere
| night, feel incredibly proud. I was already planning on watching
| the movie this weekend (it releases here on the 26th) and now I'm
| doubly excited because I know this neat little tidbit.
|
| I'm pretty sure this "Dad did something crazy" moment is going to
| be a core memory for your kids. Congrats!
| vintagedave wrote:
| I'm curious how the starless versions are created. From the
| steps at the end, I couldn't see a 'this is how stars are
| removed' step. Maybe it's part of stacking (but most stars
| would remain present?) or the calibration process treating
| stars as noise?
| roblh wrote:
| I feel like the stars are probably pretty easy to mask out
| since they're very bright relative to the rest of the image.
| Once you have the mask, each one is small enough that you
| could probably fill it with the values from adjacent pixels.
| Kinda like sensor mapping to hide dead pixels. That's just a
| guess though, I'm sure there's more to it than that.
| touisteur wrote:
| Bright stars are so bright they literally mask areas of the
| sky. You'll probably need deconvolution algorithms (CLEAN
| being the standard some time ago, don't know whether some
| AI/deep-inv approach works nowadays...) to remove them.
| joshumax wrote:
| There are several "AI" deconvolution tools to remove
| stars which work exceptionally well: two of the most
| popular ones being StarNet and RC-Astro's
| StarXTerminator. I'm willing to bet that the author used
| the latter for star removal as it's become something of a
| standard in the astrophotography world.
| inaros wrote:
| >> I'm curious how the starless versions are created.
|
| Its done with using dedicated astrophotography software
| (StarXTerminator). Example:
| https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/
|
| So these are more artistic photo works than real science
| photos...
|
| Rod Prazeres the Astrophotographer, has given this interview
| where he talks about the process:
| https://www.astronomy.com/observing/the-astrophotography-
| of-...
| teraflop wrote:
| So this part of the blog post is essentially false: "no
| generative AI of any kind"
|
| I have yet to see a precise technical definition of what
| "generative AI" means, but StarXTerminator uses a neural
| network that generates new data to fill in the gaps where
| non-stellar objects are obscured by stars. And it
| advertises itself as "AI powered".
| cj wrote:
| I don't consider photos I take on iPhone to be "AI
| generated" or even "AI augmented" even though iPhone uses
| neural networks and "AI" to do basic stuff like low light
| photography, blurring backgrounds, etc.
| teraflop wrote:
| I agree that I wouldn't call these photos "AI generated",
| because the majority of what you're seeing is real.
|
| But that's very different to saying that no generative AI
| was used at all in their production. "AI augmented"
| sounds pretty accurate to me.
|
| Likewise, if someone posted a photo taken with their
| iPhone where they had used the built-in AI features to
| (for instance) remove people or objects, and then they
| claimed that no AI was involved, I would consider that
| misleading, even if the photo accurately depicts a real
| scene in other respects.
| hatthew wrote:
| As a photographer and machine learning guy, I would call
| a lot of modern phone photos AI augmented. AI to stack
| photos or figure out what counts as the background is a
| little bit of a gray area, but an img-to-img CNN is about
| as close as you can get to full AI generation without a
| full GAN or diffusion model.
| inaros wrote:
| So funny people are downvoting you...
|
| https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/
|
| "StarNet is a neural network that can remove stars from
| images in one simple step leaving only the background.
| More technically, it is a convolutional residual net with
| encoder-decoder architecture and with L1, Adversarial and
| Perceptual losses."
| dotancohen wrote:
| > So these are more artistic photo works than real science
| photos...
|
| I disagree. If there are many flies around a statue, and I
| photograph the statue but remove the flies in the photo
| (via AI or any other technique), then I'm still producing
| an image of something that exists in the world - exactly as
| it appears in the world.
|
| I agree that the claim "no generative AI used" is
| technically incorrect, but I do feel that the image does
| not contain any AI-hallucinated content and therefore is an
| accurate representation of reality. These structures appear
| in the image exactly as they exist in nature.
| robotfelix wrote:
| AI-related definitions aside, if it's a strictly
| subtractive/destructive tool that only removes light,
| it's hard to characterise as "generative" and arguably
| not much different to filtering frequencies!
| knappe wrote:
| Traditionally (pre-ai) you would use another image of the
| same part of the sky and negate the items that you want to
| remove from the image
|
| As an example terrestrial telescope mirrors get dusty. You're
| not going to break down the scope just to clean up the dust
| as this is a many days operation in most cases. So instead
| you would take "flats" that were of a pure white background
| and thus showed the dust in its full, dusty, glory. When you
| take your actual images, you negate (subtract from the
| original image) the flat and thus any noise generated by the
| dust. You can use this same method for removing brighter
| stars from an image that would otherwise saturate the ccd and
| wash out the background. Turns out it doesn't work for
| planes. Ask me how I know!
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Traditionally (pre-ai) you would use another image of the
| same part of the sky and negate the items that you want to
| remove from the image.
|
| I'm not an astrophotographer, so I'm interested about why
| that method would work for stars. Are not stars fixed in
| relation to the images taken? I could see how the technique
| would work with planets, maybe, but not stars.
|
| Why does the technique not work with aircraft? Because they
| generally fly on fixed routes?
| recursivegirth wrote:
| Earth moves - that's how you get the next shot without
| repositioning the telescope.
|
| This time-lapse probably better visualizes it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpeM3fxJoQ
| dotancohen wrote:
| As the Earth rotates over the course of the night, the
| background stars and nebulae move as a single unit, no?
|
| Maybe for some close stars parallax might work to remove
| them over the course of half a year. But no way could the
| Earth's rotation during a single night move background
| stars out of a nebulae.
| hatthew wrote:
| Sure, but the nebulae also move along with the stars. The
| questions is how one can subtract the stars without also
| subtracting the nebulae. (I'm assuming different filters
| and/or a database of known star positions)
| dotancohen wrote:
| The ESA catalog is not precise enough to remove a star
| from an image of the structure of a nebulae - never mind
| Hipparcos. Filters while photographing and image
| processing in post are the way to go.
|
| Don't forget that not only does the star need to be
| removed, but also the diffraction spikes. Those are
| internal reflections in the lens assembly - not mapped by
| any star catalog ))
| hatthew wrote:
| Makes sense, thanks!
| ferreyadinarta wrote:
| Wow, congratulations!!
| gwbennett wrote:
| Great, great work! Congratulations and Bravo Zulu! Looking
| forward to seeing the movie this weekend.
| hectdev wrote:
| As an amateur astrophotographer, I am both so envious and so
| happy for you. What a wonderful recognition of your talent and
| dedication to the craft. Kudos!
| manyaoman wrote:
| Those shots are stunning. Too bad I rarely pay attention to the
| credits. I always assumed a lot of effort goes into them though,
| and this post seems to confirm it.
| TyrunDemeg101 wrote:
| Congrats man! That's an awesome accomplishment!
|
| Amazing movie and the end credit visuals WERE incredible!
| post_break wrote:
| This reminds me of the photo of the vehicle assembly building
| featured in Iron Man: https://adactio.com/journal/1530/
| mkehrt wrote:
| I was wondering what these images were! I wasn't sure if they
| were real photographs or not. They're great!
| inaros wrote:
| The stars were stripped out with neural network tools
| (StarNet++/StarXTerminator) at the studio request so text
| credits would read cleanly over them. The underlying nebula
| data is real, but removing every star from the field puts this
| firmly in the category of art photography, not scientific
| imaging.
|
| No one has ever or could ever observe a nebula with zero stars
| in the frame.
| stogot wrote:
| This post makes me want to go see the movie now. Is it in imax? I
| didn't enjoy the book (Martian was his best) but maybe I will
| enjoy this
| Levitating wrote:
| Why? I am currently reading the book as well, and I even though
| I am not a scientist I feel like I am finding small
| technical/scientific mistakes that shouldn't have had to be
| there.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Everyone do yourselves a favor and _skip all trailers_ and go see
| this movie. It was a delight start to finish. I was so glad I
| knew zero what the story was.
| AnDaltan wrote:
| Dude, amazing! The images are beautiful and it's 1000 times
| better when you know they're real and not CGI/AI.
| inaros wrote:
| They are not real ... https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-
| astrophotography/
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| They're a lot more real than CG/AI. It's very rare and maybe
| not even possible to have a "true" astrophotography photo. At
| those light levels, eyes and camera sensors work very
| differently and even a "plain" astro photo has either been
| processed a lot, or else doesn't look like what our eyes
| would see.
| inaros wrote:
| >> They're a lot more real than CG/AI.
|
| Fine, but is still art photography with heavy processing.
| Not to criticize the amazing work of Rod Prazeres, who has
| now commented on this thread.
| HeavenFox wrote:
| Even straight-out-of-the-camera JPG files have been
| heavily processed - they are just hidden behind the RAW
| processor which we have taken for granted; not to mention
| smartphone photographs, which employ neural network in
| the processing pipeline.
| HeavenFox wrote:
| That is not what starnet does. It just removes the star from
| the picture you took, nothing else. It also predates
| generative AI by a few years.
|
| If by "not real", you mean "you removed the stars so it no
| longer reflect reality!", then real photograph doesn't exist.
| For example, OP uses narrow-band filters, and it's common to
| map H-alpha wavelength, which is red, to green in the images.
| Does that make it unreal?
|
| In the end, astrophotography is more art than science; the
| goal is more about producing aesthetically-pleasing images
| than doing photometry. Photographers must take some artistic
| license.
| inaros wrote:
| https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/
|
| "StarNet is a neural network that can remove stars from
| images in one simple step leaving only the background. More
| technically, it is a convolutional residual net with
| encoder-decoder architecture and with L1, Adversarial and
| Perceptual losses."
| altairprime wrote:
| Your citation is a valid copy-paste from the website
| linked, but you haven't yet replied to the assertions of
| the parent comment. Could you, in your own words rather
| than someone else's, speak more about your concerns and
| address those assertions?
| mourner wrote:
| Amazing achievement, congratulations! Can't seem to be able to
| read it though, it greets me with "Sorry, you have been blocked"
| CloudFlare page -- is this a HN overloading the website, or did
| the host accidentally block IPs from Ukraine perhaps?
| scientism wrote:
| That's really great news. For anyone looking for the
| astrophotography equipment, this is from one of his posts:
|
| Telescope: William Optics UltraCat 76 Mount: Sky-Watcher Wave
| 150i Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro
| rpastro wrote:
| Hey everyone, I'm the astrophotographer, but I'm not OP. I'm
| assuming OP picked up my article and posted here and that's ok!
| So I quickly created an account here to comment.
|
| Having a quick read through the comments I just want to say thank
| you for the kind words! Please follow my IG
| (https://www.instagram.com/deepskyjourney) to see more of my
| photography, and the reddit article if you want to drop a comment
| with any questions :)
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectHailMary/s/NbRv3sj3fs
|
| Cheers,
|
| Rod Prazeres
| fosco wrote:
| Can you share what equipment was used to capture those images?
| robocat wrote:
| Somewhat answered here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520283
| rpastro wrote:
| I've had multiple setups over the last 2 years, but for the
| images displayed in the movie there were two main setups: a
| William Optics RedCat 51 II and an Askar 130PHQ, both paired
| with a ZWO ASI2600MM Pro camera, typically on a Sky Watcher
| NEQ6 Pro mount, along with narrowband and RGB filters
| depending on the target.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| What sort of magnification do you need to get photos like
| that?
| sp4cec0wb0y wrote:
| Did you sell the rights the image exclusively or will you be
| able to sell those images as prints?
|
| _Jazz hands_
| rpastro wrote:
| They're non exclusive and you can find them up for sale here:
| https://rpastro.darkroom.com/collections/as-seen-in-
| project-...
|
| My website is also www.rpastro.com.au :)
| mrexroad wrote:
| _Amaze! Amaze!_
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| They are beautiful!
| lgl wrote:
| Hey Rod, your last name seems portuguese(?)
|
| Congrats on this, not only you got credits on a feature movie,
| you got one of the good ones. Cloud 9 for you, enjoy!
| rpastro wrote:
| Nice catch. I'm Brazilian but have been living in Australia
| for over 20 years and thank you!
| SchwKatze wrote:
| Hey! Great work, really glad to see a Brazilian fella doing
| such an amazing work.
|
| Greetings from Minas Gerais
| bravoetch wrote:
| First time in ages I sat through the credits!
| sllabres wrote:
| Congratulations :-)
|
| Very nice shots. It must be a great feeling to see one's own
| footage in a feature film!
|
| How long do you do astrophotography?
| pants2 wrote:
| Hi Rod, the images you have on your gallery and instagram are
| stunning but very low-resolution (unless I'm missing
| something). You mention in the article about preparing IMAX-
| ready photographs. Is there a way to download those full-res
| versions of your images?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Is there a way to download those full-res versions of your
| images?
|
| Maybe because HN is usually geared towards "programmers"
| rather than "artists", but asking for a (free?) download of
| full-res versions of a photographers photos is a bit like
| asking a developer who is publishing commercial desktop
| software for the source code of the program :)
|
| Maybe at least ask to be able to pay for a high resolution
| version (not just printed), I know I'd be interested in that
| too!
| pants2 wrote:
| I'd gladly pay a few bucks for a digital download of a
| full-res pack. I would love to use these as desktop
| backgrounds but the images in his gallery are ~1000px on
| the long end. Even if I buy a print I can't set that as my
| desktop background.
|
| Maybe the only way is to screenshot the Project Hail Mary
| credits when it comes to streaming.
| overfeed wrote:
| > I'd gladly pay a few bucks for a digital download of a
| full-res _pack_
|
| It sure sounds like you value his work at less than a
| dollar per image. The desktop-background market may not
| be something he's interested in.
|
| > Maybe the only way is to screenshot the Project Hail
| Mary credits when it comes to streaming.
|
| ...and this may be the reason he's not interested in the
| desktop background market. You make a single sale, and
| the image is trivially reproduced. Doing it for pennies
| is not a winning proposition; prints have better margins.
|
| If you want pretty and free nebula pictures, you can have
| Generative AI make as many as you like - if you want his
| work: you'll have to abide by his terms.
| pants2 wrote:
| You're right, I wouldn't pay >$1/image for download.
|
| I understand where he's coming from - even at
| $100/download others can make reprints and take away
| print sales, which is presumably where he gets most of
| his revenue.
|
| I get it. It's just too bad that I won't be able to fully
| enjoy his body of work without spending $$$ on prints.
| bryceacc wrote:
| I assume that is on purpose, you have to buy prints. Curious
| if the full res digital would be for sale but I am guessing
| not
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| He sells prints. Looks like the pricing ranges around $13-172
| for paper prints, per image. If your budget is a few dollars
| for a pack of them, you should look elsewhere.
| glidefarrow wrote:
| I was thrilled to read through to the end of the article and
| discover a fellow Brisbanite! My friends and I were discussing
| this movie the other night, they will be stoked to keep an eye
| out for your images.
| loktarogar wrote:
| The Director of Photography on the movie is also an
| Australian!
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Very cool. _Major_ bragging rights. And it is a great film to
| be associated with.
| dheera wrote:
| Also a fellow astrophotography enthusiast here! I love to
| photograph deep sky objects in the context of their landscapes.
| There is a lot of math, stacking, tracking, and denoising in
| the process, but I keep every image _very real_ as what you
| would see if your eyes were a lot more sensitive. A lot of
| people don 't realize how big some objects are in the night sky
| -- for example, Barnard's Loop is as large as about half the
| entire constellation of Orion, and Andromeda appears 6 times
| the size of the moon. We just don't see them because many of
| these objects are very _dim_ -- not small.
|
| https://www.instagram.com/dheeranet
| byt3h3ad wrote:
| hey! congratulations!! I've been quite unknowingly used your
| pictures as my desktop wallpaper for years now. don't really
| remember how I found them, but your clicks are what greet me
| everytime I turn it on.
| aanet wrote:
| Congratulations Rod. Your pics are amazing! Much success to
| you.
|
| FWIW, my friend, who is an avid astrophotographer, runs a site
| Brahmand [1] that captures breathtaking pics of the dark sky,
| with notes on how he took the pics.
|
| Awesome stuff: https://www.brahmand.me/photo-gallery/
|
| Recommended for anyone interested in astrophotography.
|
| *Brahmand in Sanskrit means the universe
|
| [1] https://www.brahmand.me/
| tills13 wrote:
| As more an more companies lazily use AI to achieve the same thing
| I am doubling down on supporting -- even if I don't really care
| about the subject -- anything that supports actual, real human
| art.
| Faaak wrote:
| A bit indiscrete, but how much does the licence cost? Is it
| around hundreds, 1k, 10k?
| Levitating wrote:
| This is kind of in line with the story, where amateur astronomers
| data from around the world is used to test a hypothesis.
|
| I am currently reading the book.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Astrophagology?
| eranation wrote:
| This just warms my heart and gives me hope. First aside from the
| fact this book got me back into reading, and the movie is one of
| the better book to film adaptations I've seen, and I'm so happy
| it gets good box office and justified word of mouth. It shows me
| another thing - there is demand for human generated content. It's
| not a big revelation, people prefer to pay a little extra for
| handmade although they might not really know the difference, they
| do it because it feels right, to support a local business, or not
| local, when traveling, I want to support their local business,
| not some conglomerate that bid the lowest and underpays their
| workers (until replaced by robots).
|
| This gives me hope because as we move to a post AGI world, the
| only thing preventing a complete dystopia is supply and demand,
| if the demand for human generated work will stay and grow, we'll
| be ok. This is not some save the earth, be vegan, "AI is bad"
| message. If you follow me you know I'm all in on agentic
| development and try to use AI for everything I can that makes
| sense, but I do it to free my time to focus on the important
| things.
|
| If more companies will go for the real thing, and more people
| like us will celebrate them for it, and vote for it with their
| pockets, then AI will serve humanity, and not vice versa.
|
| p.s. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, then read
| the book, then see the movie, I'm going to watch it twice, and
| re-read the book. Yes, it's not Dune, or Hyperion, or Children of
| Time, or The Left Hand of Darkness, but it's such an amazing
| storytelling journey that made me go back reading after a 15
| years hiatus.
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