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Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

#751

Post by TylerE »

hunterpayne wrote: post #563
michaelhoney wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very optimistic about people using LLMs to explore their medical issues. Human bodies are complex and doctors are time- and intelligence- limited. An LLM can be a really useful partner.

Dear god no. ML is useful for medicine and has been for some time. LLMs in medicine are 100% malpractice and should be treated as such. LLMs << ML

Very easy to say from an ivory tower when you're not the patient stuck in a rural area with poor care, and a symptom list a mile long.

The alternative isn't "run everything by a human doctor", it's nothing.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

#752

Post by nondrool »

d0mine wrote: post #728
apical_dendrite wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably mean USAGM (US Agency for Global Media) and its affiliated programs (Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, etc) rather than USAID. USAID was a humanitarian aid agency that focused on programs like famine relief, disaster response, and medical aid in some of the poorest countries on Earth.

It is how these agencies operate. They mask malevolent activity behind good front (“think of the children“, “age verification“ -> censorship/total surveillance. Medical aid -> overthrowing governments).

Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse is what you're speaking of. Not wrong about there being a facade, IMF trap you with wells, but this distinguishes the boogeymen used to give up civil liberties.

It's similar to enshitification drawing attention to the decay cycle. These get used constantly with a good example being KYC is needed to stop money laundering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

#753

Post by supertroop »

bah9 wrote: post #720
supertroop wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an example of a perspective that is solely lacking: I was a professional programmer for 40 years. I loved writing code in my youth. But then I started to love something more: making bigger things. I’ve grown out of the infatuation with my own self satisfaction with writing code. Now I’m addicted to architectures. There’s a point when you realize coding gets in the way and needs to be delegated. That’s why AI…

>Now I’m addicted to architectures But architecture creation can also be delegated to ai if you give agent enough context about functional/non-functional requirements, certain business side restrictions etc. Your work is to be feedback loop mechanism between people and llm, no? Please, give me encouraging examples of technical tasks that cant be delegated to ai with accurate prompting

I guess I wasn’t very clear. At this point I haven’t found of level of abstraction where AI cannot be helpful. I have set it upon architecture problems but the main obstacle is the domain knowledge that it lacks. My company is working on uploading all of our internal specs as skills, but AI gets confused with poor English and outdated specs. Some groups have succeeded and the high level arch suggestions are being reviewed.

The challenge is guiding the model through decades of human slop: poorly written or missing specifications!

Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

#754

Post by johnfn »

peteforde wrote: post #703
happytoexplain wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that the GP said, >Mentioning AI brings out a sharply negative side of HN that I had not seen before 2023 And the parent said, >I would say that HN was at least as sharply negative during the cryptocurrency craze And your response was, >The false equivalency in this explanation is off the scale. The parent in fact said a very straightforward, non-controversial thing, and you responded in anger, as if they sa…

Yeah, I didn't reply in anger. Pointing out false equivalency != angry unless you are deep in the "words I don't like are violence" camp. Feel free to respond to what I actually said, though!

I'm with GP here, there is nothing to respond in what you actually said because you misunderstood the comment you replied to.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

#755

Post by li2uR3ce »

llm_nerd wrote: post #557
knivets wrote: post #221

> Over the past six months, there hasn’t been a single day where I’ve checked the HN Best RSS feed without seeing a post about how AI “writes bad code,” “introduces bugs,” “creates technical debt,” or something along those lines. because it's true > Users don’t care whether the code was written by AI or by hand, or which framework you used. They care that the product works. How can you guarantee that it works though?…

>because it's true I mean, it's just as true that most teams “write bad code,” “introduce bugs,” “create technical debt,” or something along those lines. There is this amazing thing that happens where when we talk about AI code, it's always compared against some idealized infinitely capable professional following every best practice, purposefully and carefully crafting every line. Which is fantasy. Most of you are cr…

> AI is absolutely imperfect, just like teams of human developers.

The old "nothing's perfect therefore everything is equally imperfect" fallacy. It's not a binary. While everything is flawed, somethings are more flawed than others. Welcome to the world, it's complex.

> when we talk about AI code, it's always compared against some idealized

Have you ever seen a development mailing list? Seems like when human code is scrutinized it's held to a high idealized standard. "Technical debt" is a concept that originated from looking at human code. How then can it be true that applying it to AI code is setting a higher standard? It's setting the same standard. These things existed and were applied to human code before AI exploded.

The whole "many eyes" thing can be quite brutal. We don't always get the many eyes but when we do... wars are waged. It's brutal out there for anything getting scrutiny. Currently, AI code getting a lot of eyeballs. That's a good thing. Don't wish it away just because you're butthurt about your new pet tech being held to a standard. That's how it gets better.

The "problem" of AI being held to a supposed higher standard isn't a problem. It's a free pony.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

#756

Post by throw10920 »

dang wrote: post #14

It'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…

I think that the "group attribution error"[1]/"goomba fallacy"[2] are what's going on - someone will sample ~10 comments out of a thread of 500 on a site with tens of thousands of users and assume that those 10 comments are representative of the thread or all of HN.

(and a different person will do a similar sampling technique but come away with the opposite conclusion, that HN is super pro-AI)

This is why neglecting statistics in favor of vibes is a bad idea.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48035600

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48035860

Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

#757

Post by x1n13y84issmd42 »

xnx wrote: post #742
x1n13y84issmd42 wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling that a prompt accurate enough to cover all the important stuff (functional/non-functional requirements, certain business side restrictions etc) would be close in its volume and complexity to the actual software code and configuration (given the proper tools, frameworks and infrastructure in place)...

You might be thinking too near-term. If a sufficiently advanced coding agent has read all the language specs, all the code, all the software engineering/architecture books, and all of human knowledge along with it, why would it need any longer prompt than "create complete video streaming infrastructure to compete with Netflix"?

The idea of AI capable of something like that seems to be on the verge of magical thinking.

But what would the consequences for the industry be? How many competitors to every major product appear overnight once such AI is released? Why would Netflix and others, being aware of such a thing, release any of their technology to public after approx. right now?

I suspect that in such environment any kind of knowledge sharing would stop, simply to keep technological advantage. I cannot imagine a world where everyone is equally capable. If anyone can do anything, does anything have any value at all?

Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

#758

Post by lowbloodsugar »

vips7L wrote: post #654
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if AI actually delivers utopia and you get to code all you want because your every need is taken care of.

Absolutely naive if you think the capitalists will “deliver utopia”.

I think if the capitalists succeed in aligning it with their values then it will kill them.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

#759

Post by star-glider »

DrewADesign wrote: post #736
oblio wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Longshoremen in many places were paid advance salaries until retirement and then full pensions. Programmers will get a pat on the back.

> Programmers will get a pat on the back. * shoved in the back while facing the door, and told it’s their own fault for getting screwed over. If you want to know what the future holds for the software dev field, look at copywriters and concept artists. The tech world has been so coddled for so long that many developers think their high salaries, cushy work conditions and clout come from their inherent worth as people…

I'd argue that a lot of knowledge workers in general are about to experience a similar rude awakening. To the clear benefit of society as a whole, who are spared rents, but it won't be fun for the entitled.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?

#760

Post by xnx »

x1n13y84issmd42 wrote: post #757
xnx wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be thinking too near-term. If a sufficiently advanced coding agent has read all the language specs, all the code, all the software engineering/architecture books, and all of human knowledge along with it, why would it need any longer prompt than "create complete video streaming infrastructure to compete with Netflix"?

The idea of AI capable of something like that seems to be on the verge of magical thinking. But what would the consequences for the industry be? How many competitors to every major product appear overnight once such AI is released? Why would Netflix and others, being aware of such a thing, release any of their technology to public after approx. right now? I suspect that in such environment any kind of knowledge shari…

You're asking the right questions. The impact of AI continuing on the trajectory it's been on for the past 2 years is immense. It is anyone's guess if some limit will be hit.
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