Jakob Nielsen is betting it all on gen AI
This is not so much about a particular post but rather to document Jakob Nielsen's relentless generative AI boosting.
His weekly updates are so saturated with AI subject matter and every image is AI generated they are unreadable and I can only assume the text is AI generated as well. It really doesn't matter if it isn't, in fact, because he's demonstrating in real-time how damaging the AI aesthetic is to a brand.
He also seems to be mentioning his 40 years of expertise a lot more, which might be a reaction to some negative feedback. I want to dig deeper, but I don't like the feeling that I'll have to read generated stuff carefully.
His latest newsletter triggered this post because he links to a terrible AI generated song he made (with the line "Jakob Nielsen with UX fame, forty-one years, still in the game") and spends most of the newsletter talking about the process.
29 replies
genuinely sorry. I needed an outlet because I'm hate-subscribed to his newsletter and it keeps getting worse
I'm so glad I have no idea what this means because it's surely stupid and awful.
If I were to guess (shoot me if I’m mansplaining) he’s suggesting we use AI in cultural niches to generate content. i.e. the thing where AI doofuses think it’s cool to automate the fun parts of human experience out of our hands.
You know you’ve done bad when you create the conditions for “got to give him credit for putting the work in” to this guy https://youtu.be/JZYZoQQ6LJQ
fuck yeah
I hate that you linked that and I hate that I clicked on it.
But you have to give him credit for putting the work in
the comments on that video are exceptionally cringe
i lasted 27 seconds
Skip to 1:03 for a second ... this is the super-fast lyric portion of the video. Saying all of those syllables fast causes Mr. street-sounding rap guy to lose his accent code-switch and for that verse he sounds like a generic white guy. Pretty funny actually.
i'll pass thanks
for science, please test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DIuPPmY9mw
absolutely not
(....sorry)
inspiration
He made a mil on pocket change
Ah, easy mistake to make: it’s a mill on pocket change
Teensy tiny model mill, on a stand of pocket change! Adorbs
Thanks, hate it. Amazing how much of it is just either 'im rich!' or 'buzzword'.
I like playing with these generative models but they're strictly for making weird pictures and stupid songs. Seeing the usage these very serious people make of it it's like they're looking into Fisher-Price hardware for the office.
spam, spam, spam
I don’t know anything about this dude beyond what I just read on wikipedia but a guy like this spruiking AI is probably just grasping at straws as he is swept downstream away from relevancy.
he's the "Nielsen" of Nielsen Norman Group where "Norman" is Donald Norman of The Design Of Everyday Things fame.
i remember when i used to hang on nielsen's every word, like 20 years ago
because it's funny
from https://web.archive.org/web/20240210054003/https://www.uxtigers.com/about/people his cv presented in an image without alt text
credit to Matt May for spotting this one https://mstdn.social/@mattmay/112037962750954987
p.s. read his great response to the last shitty Nielsen newsletter about AI generated accessibility: https://buttondown.email/practicaltips/archive/we-need-to-talk-about-jakob/
@fasterandworse Published a book about hypertext two years before the Web.. but two years after Hypercard.
I'm meeeltiinnnggg
When Nielsen says:
If you eliminate the need to master the crafts, it's still authorship, but what's the point of authorship when it's not fit for consumption?
This week AI will make software accessible for everyone because “traditional methods” failed but let’s not spend 5 minutes thinking about why that is.
Good response https://axbom.com/nielsen-generative-ui-failure/
Still very much in the UXniverse but nice to see pushback