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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?

#761

Post by therealdrag0 »

maccard wrote: post #234

> Let’s face it: by the time I manually ship version 1.0 of a product, the AI-assisted version could have been deployed 10x faster. Show the receipts. Where are the mobile apps, the photoshop replacements, the video and audio editors, the games and game engines that took a decade to make in the past that have shipped since Claude code came along? > By then, enough real-world feedback would have surfaced to identify t…

There’s been a massive spike in released code and apps in the last year. If you’re asking for receipts and expecting none then you’re not paying attention.

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

#762

Post by bah9 »

supertroop wrote: post #753
bah9 wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 My company is working on uploading all of our internal specs as skills, but AI gets confused with poor English and outdated specs.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 rev…

Ah, this sounds so unfun to me. As I thought, actual "thinking" is providing context due to bad, not self sufficient, documentation

I think I am just not result driven. I like to do stuff myself, not providing info to some super intelligence to do cognitive work

This role is also require way less qualifications and cognitive ability. You need local knowledge, not fundamental knowledge: why in this exact company things the way it is. Mostly not transferable

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

#763

Post by bah9 »

x1n13y84issmd42 wrote: post #730
bah9 wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 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)...

It won't be close. And result will be better. Anyway, this is different type of work

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

#764

Post by cassianoleal »

trumpdong wrote: post #484
cassianoleal wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's likely a much larger problem in between. These vibed systems will not have security built in. They will increasingly handle user information, PII, credentials, etc. We're heading straight onto a very profitable era for scammers and other cyber criminals.

You probably saw this, but future readers won't: just last week, anyone could steal any Instagram account by telling the AI support chatbox they'd lost access to their email address.

Yep and this from a company with some of the best engineers in the world in their employ. Fun times!

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

#766

Post by elcdodedocle »

The closest to a short answer I can give: I have been infatuated with this industry (not just AI, but tech in general) since I was a kid in the 80s. I have seen lots of hype. Nothing even close to this. That is already a very good reason: That it can simply tank the economy and have even worse consequences if we put too much faith in it. And I think there is pretty solid evidence that we are, but let's not get into it. Even if the hype turned out to be justified (It never is), it would still suck at so many levels: The version that is being pushed onto us is the worst possible one. It's a lead-in-gasoline asbestos-in-everything darkest-timeline type of event, only bigger. It basically promises to turn all of us into mere line operators of a dystopian knowledge stealing & gate-keeping machine that we can't own or control. I can't see how it benefits anything or anyone except from some megayatch-owning suborbital-flying useless jerks and their island visiting friends. How can a community of people built around using our brains to produce awesome things be excited about a product that is essentially designed for us to get lazy and turn them off to pay for someone else's statistical approach to it as yet another enshittified service?

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

#767

Post by DrewADesign »

star-glider wrote: post #759
DrewADesign wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> I'd argue that a lot of knowledge workers in general are about to experience a similar rude awakening.

Hard Agree. That’s why I picked up a trade after 15 years of solid knowledge work, mostly in dev roles.

> To the clear benefit of society as a whole

Hard disagree.

The problem is that a disproportionate part of the benefits will simply get transferred to the people who are already rich. I’d be gobsmacked to see anything beyond moderate benefits for everybody else, while moving the middle class demarcation farther up than it’s already risen. Our society seems to be set up to transfer wealth to the rich almost as ruthlessly as imperialism.

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

#768

Post by pj_mukh »

trumpdong wrote: post #480
pj_mukh wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To OP's point, I am curious why a tech forward crowd would consider AI-training/inference anywhere close to a significant contributor of greenhouse gasses? Datacenters are like a tiny blip on emissions plots [1] I think AI is a convenient foil to get people whipped up and out to vote, but I know HN is not the forum for that. The technical data clearly says that closed-loop water coolers don't use that much water and…

Are currently, but at the scale AI corps are trying to deploy at they'll be the largest user of electricity.

"largest user of electricity"

Compared to what? More than all heavy industry? All residential usage for a given sector? Seems like a tall ask requiring some modeling.

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

#769

Post by gwbas1c »

Some people are resistant to change and will make irrational and illogical arguments against any change they see as threatening. AI is just one of those.

Personally, I'm still struggling to figure out when I should lean into AI, and when I should do it by hand. At least with coding, for larger changes that I can explain, I try AI first. But, for small "debugging" changes, or changes that I can't explain, I still do those by hand.

Where I'm really stuck is testing; but that's because it's outside of the IDE and I'm afraid that I'll spend more time futzing with the tool then doing what I need to do.

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