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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?

#791

Post by DrewADesign »

tekknik wrote: post #790
DrewADesign wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have wasted quite a number of hours trying to use LLMs to write things for less common languages. Sure they can one-shot some impressive stuff in C#, Python, and JavaScript… but try working in Object Pascal: it’s non-obvious hallucination after non-obvious hallucination, presented confidently enough to make it difficult to see it’s complete garbage, so you waste a ton of time trying to polish a turd.

yet i’ve written a language using an LLM, of which there can be no prior knowledge since it’s new, and it can write that code just fine. it’s all about context.

Creating a new paradigm is a problem with a lot more groundwork laid that working in an existing little-known paradigm. One is creating patterns which only have to be good to be correct. The other has to be correct to be good. They are completely different problems.

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

#792

Post by kypro »

I don't think HN is anti-AI anymore? Your perspective is the most popular perspective here.

When I was saying that we were getting agents to code junior-level stuff mid last year and that we'd probably be able to do similar with senior engineers soon, people were pushing back hard. Some people were still parroting the line they heard from others – that AI is just a stochastic parrot that just parrots stuff it's seen before.

Today? Yeah, basically everyone agrees that in the vast majority of cases you probably shouldn't be writing code by hand. I think the only nuance left is to what extent you need to understand what's been written. For now if you have a product with consumers you probably do need to understand what you're shipping. Vibe coding something with AI vs an experienced SWE using AI to write code they design is still a very different process, but increasingly we're moving towards a world where most code doesn't need to be understood. I know the way we're building now we're trying to minimise the need for that via harness engineering.

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

#793

Post by ben_w »

maccard wrote: post #361
helloplanets wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet it’s not. That was my point as well. That it hasn't been output, even though it could be done by a talented solo developer given enough time, and that current LLMs definitely aren't able to do so. > The problem is that they don’t generate acceptable code, they generate code that needs to be edited to be acceptable. You've never had an LLM output a one line bugfix that is correct to the point where you don't…

> You've never had an LLM output a one line bugfix that is correct to the point where you don't have to edit it? I have. I’ve also had IDEs and static analysers do the same thing. I can also take my car out of gear and have it roll down a hill but that doesn’t mean it can run without fuel. Only a sith deals in absolutes, and in the general cases LLMs don’t generate acceptable code.

My experience is that when I ask for a clear and well defined problem, of the scale of "add motion blur (linear, spin, and zoom) to the filters menu; include standard dialog box (see existing design) for user input on all options", this works something like 90% of the time, is obvious garbage 5% of the time (in my experience, when it claimed to be writing "unit tests" it was actually performing regexes on the source code), and is subtly wrong the other 5% of the time.

If you use the planning mode, and your first move in the project is "write plan to reimplement photoshop" then you blindly say "continue" until the plan is done, then you get 0.9^{number of features} success, which of course on the scale of photoshop is going to be a failure. But this is still in one sense a 10x speedup in that 9 times out of 10 you're only doing code review, not having to re-write it. But code review is a real thing, so it's 10x on writing code not 10x on delivery.

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

#794

Post by gwbas1c »

If anyone is still reading...

I think because AI fundamentally changes what a computer is, and how we interact with the computer.

A non-AI computer appeals to a certain kind of person, specifically someone who works alone. It behaves a certain way. It's predictable (to the kind of person who likes it.)

AI is a completely different kind of computer. It's social, so for someone who works alone, the whole rules change. Now you're interacting with a thing that's more like working with a person.

---

Personally, I don't think it needs to be an either-or situation. I also think the window to "get with the program" is going to narrow over the next decade or so, and for those of us who can't adapt, we need to make sure we plan to retire or change careers.

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

#795

Post by tpdly »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #750
tpdly wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you undervalue the contribution of internet-scale data to foundation modeling, and because LLMs can obsolete the content they required, I think its fair to characterize it as theft. Obviously RL contributes a lot to capabilities, but the judgement that an LLM uses to 'synthesize information' is born from the training data. The scale of the data really is beyond intuition. books3, for example, would 230 yrs of…

Can you steal something that is free and openly available? I just don't understand this argument. "Theft" feels like a nice, heavy, moral accusation to toss at those you're debating with, but the actual prerequisites for theft don't even exist in this situation.

I mean, not that I'm a huge fan of IP laws, but yes?

Like I said, if you provide an alternative to all these blogs and forums (because you trained on them or because you scrape them for RAG) then you are stealing their traffic. Search engines were/are already doing that, but the foundation training

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

#796

Post by johnfn »

dang wrote: post #773
johnfn wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the very long and thoughtful comment. It's an fun and interesting idea to think about, and I certainly don't mind reading long tangents :) But I want to push back on it a tad: I think it misses my point a little bit. I completely am fine with HN being a negative place - I wouldn't have been here so long if this bothered me! But I don't think all divisiveness is made equal. And in particular, I think the…

Yes, not all divisive topics are equally divisive. It depends on how people feel. More people feel more intensely about AI than about Typescript, and certain other topics exceed even AI in intensity. The dynamic I was describing is powered by feelings so it makes sense it would show up more where those are more intense. I think that accounts for the differences you've experienced, no? > I completely am fine with HN b…

> That can't be true, or else the personal attacks, derisive and incendiary content you're describing wouldn't bother you!

FWIW, I think we agree on almost everything, but just a clarification on this point. I am perfectly fine (in fact I delight in reading) if HN is negative in the flavor of "You are completely wrong, here are sources 1 2 and 3 that show you exactly why you are wrong". I have read plenty of anti-AI writing on HN of that form and enjoyed it. OK, I don't love it when it's directed at me, but everyone needs to be told they are wrong sometimes. But I very strongly dislike "Only an inexperienced person could hold a view like that", i.e. personal attacks.

> No argument there, but this is what we're already doing, or at least trying to do, regardless of the topic. If we knew a more effective way to do it, we'd be there!

Godspeed :)

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

#797

Post by merrua »

customguy wrote: post #473
KaiserPro wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think thats really it. For me personally I am vaguely indifferent to programmers using LLMs to make more shitty code. My worry is the second and third order effects For work currently, as an SRE, I'm being asked to maintain and look after slop as if its properly built and instrumented. Our platform has clear rules and conventions, and AI isn't following those. For the wider world, I fucking hate that image/vi…

This is the opposite of a loom. With a loom you can very easily see that what it makes is exactly like cloth made by hand, except it's more uniform and faster. There also wasn't this weird drive to drive out the heretics so the AI messiah may dwell among us, this desire to put all eggs in one basket, instead of welcoming competition and a control group.

The industrial loom didn't make cloth the same as made by hand. All machine made cloth is worst than the best weavers could make. The cloth was just okay, and could be made faster and at scale and then sold. Now you can't buy cloth to the standard it used to be made.

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

#799

Post by tonymet »

most of the criticism seems to assume that it produces low quality products. but I've found it produces the quality level set by the supervisor. And hand coded code quality has been very low for a long time, evidenced by decline of code quality in consumer products and services. So I'm hoping AI with the right supervision will start to improve code quality.

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

#800

Post by zionsati »

What I've experienced was if you let an agent "fix" the problems, and keep vibe coding away, at some point they'll stop working. Fixing one breaks another, and the tests you think you had as guardrails turned out to be useless because they're contradictory. The specifications (hence spec driven coding with AI) become very important. If you get that wrong, the agents will try their best to somehow fit the output to your requests. For simple UI projects, sure, you can quickly see it visually. For anything complex (most real world systems are), there's a lot of reading and re-reading AI produced code. This could be slower and more time consuming, and often cause mental fatigue because there's no way you can gauge the level of THIS particular AI's output, unlike when you're doing PR reviewing for a actual human. You tend to take shortcuts because you know them, how they code, and their strengths and weaknesses. With AI, it's random, and I've personally seen prod going down because of it.

So yes, I think the crowd is anti-AI where it matters. But claiming AI-assisted version could have been deployed 10x faster, I doubt you've really maintained any real world software systems.

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