HN is actually one of the more AI-positive sites around. Some people just generally hate or fear AI because it's called AI and that comes with 100 years of scifi fearmongering baggage and modern fashionable doomerism. A lot of people hate AI because it enables behavior that they don't like: spam, slop, and other low effort content that drains energy and attention but provides no value. Others dislike being pushed to introduce AI into their workflow and tokenmaxxing policies. A few fear job loss or may be unable to find employment in their desired field due to AI tools. I've personally never used AI at all (because it didnt interest me) but have been growing interested due to HN articles and comments extolling it's virtues.
Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
111–120 of 812 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#112I think ever since @dang posted the updated rules against LLM comments/posts, the tide has turned.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#113There are two different crowds using "AI": - One crowd is using to research algorithms, libraries, write boilerplate code, write test harnesses, introspect and integrate with APIs, do hands-off refactoring, and automating what would otherwise be boring tasks. They still think about architecture, best practices, understanding things in detail and the general shape of the solution is in their hands. - Another crowd is…
I wouldn't say those are 'camps' without seeing some data in support of that.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#114> Users don’t care whether the code was written by AI or by hand
That's true, but they care deeply about the consequences of that:
> about how AI “writes bad code,” “introduces bugs,” “creates technical debt,” or something along those lines.
So whomever your strawman is, they got a point.
Note that I'm "anti-ai", I use it a fair bit and even received the trendy email asking me to watch out how much I spend in it cause it's expensive. I'm also not delusioned into believing the "it's 10x faster" and "code doesn't matter anymore" marketing. If the thing fails it's my name on the git blame and my number they call at night so I'll review that code thank you very much.
I feel like past the wow effect it's pretty easy to see the seams and the limits, even on "frontier" (god do I hate that term) models, and nothing replaces human skill for now if you're working on something with any significance.
Dang sums it all, I dont perceive hn as being pro or against AI, it's a mix, but if you're polarized, whatever "side you're on" you'll feel the other side is over represented.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#115I spend quite a bit of time every day on HN, I see the vast majority of posts are about AI and how AI is accomplishing more and more.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#116Technology is not some pure thing detached from emotions, society, feelings, and consequences.
Code isn't just a means to an end for a lot of people.
More people are now realizing that society has no protections around losing your job - what little power they had is going to be stripped away. Or its going to be used to reduce their power - you know have to work more bc you can use ai to do it! Ive already seen this.
Sure ai in a vacuum is a really interesting thing, oh its cool it can produce code or whatever. The underlying issue however is capitalism.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#117you know how in third grade you have these confusing feelings about a girl and it's upsetting and you pretend you hate her and tease her etc? people here are in love with AI, it's that simple. can't stop talking about it. go ahead and deny it, that will just convince us more.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are going to be asked to do your job, faster, and you are going to have a massive headache managing a bunch of machines mostly doing your job.
That is the status quo now . If LLMs get better and better, managers will simply direct them, well, directly. That's what the parent comment means by the machine learning to do your job. It completely , not mostly , replaces you.
Managers can barely direct me without shitting their pants. What saves them most of the time is my ability to say "No". Until LLMs can do that, which seems quite hard to do so far, good luck replacing me.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are going to be asked to do your job, faster, and you are going to have a massive headache managing a bunch of machines mostly doing your job.
That is the status quo now . If LLMs get better and better, managers will simply direct them, well, directly. That's what the parent comment means by the machine learning to do your job. It completely , not mostly , replaces you.
> managers will simply direct them
that Made me laugh. what you say won't happen. it's not that AI won't be sufficiently intelligent, it's that managers are not.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#120It's simply divided. With every such division A vs. B, the A team thinks HN is anti-A and the B team thinks it's anti-B. This is an invariant. You can see from the following megathread, currently on the front page, that HN is by no means anti-AI: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406174 . Sometimes it just takes the right initial condition (e.g. title) to brin…
While I agree that it's "divided", I wouldn't say "simply". Mentioning AI brings out a sharply negative side of HN that I had not seen before 2023. It is the only subject where, when I have shared that I built something with it, I have gotten derogatory comments claiming I am inexperienced, unintelligent, and that the thing I built (a hobby project) is unimpressive or embarrassing. This has never happened in the deca…
Its divided because its the first time the previously more class unaware techbros have been critically challenged by the consequences of their actions - oh shit we might lose our jobs.
10 years ago "Disrupting X" was seen as a good thing. Now its come for them its a different story.