Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Where are all the disruptive software that AI promised?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 29 posts

Ask HN: Where are all the disruptive software that AI promised?

#1

Post by p-o »

It may sound obtuse, but I'm genuinely curious. I understand that AI as an assistant can be empowering, but the way AI was sold to the masses was that it would replace everyone and everything.

It would allow small team to increase their velocity 10-fold. And I can see a glimpse of that here too where so many posts and comments share how much AI transformed one's life.

So my question is, if AI is such a game changing platform, where are the apps? I'm still using the same stuff as I did before, I don't see much disruption in any field. Am I just impatient?

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the disruptive software that AI promised?

#3

Post by p-o »

olegmoca wrote: post #2

Well, in software development is does increase the velocity 10x.

It's undeniable that it has improved the productivity in _some_ areas of development. But my point stand nonetheless, if development is improved, it seems to be difficult to surface that to end user.

The premise, originally, was that AI would empower workers to do more with less. Granted this is anecdotal, but most of the stuff I use today is much the same as it was 5 years ago. It seems the world is improving at the same rate as it did before, generally speaking.

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the disruptive software that AI promised?

#4

Post by pmaroe »

No, you're not! It's only a matter of attention. Today all eyes are on the LLM itself, but the big change is happening underground. I'm not a developer — I'm just a curious arborist who owns a company that prunes trees in Italy. In 4 months we have totally changed our company with the help of AI. AI, LLMs are just tools. It's the use that changes the output!

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the disruptive software that AI promised?

#5

Post by RationPhantoms »

The signals are there but the usefulness/blast radius is being limited to "I'm not a software developer but I have this specific issue I need to write software to solve. I've done that and here is a Linkedin post explaining what it is and how I did it."

I think we're looking at the wrong demographic/professional sector and throwing up our hands. You have to look at people who don't have as much professional experience with it because everyone you didn't write software in the 2010's is writing it now.

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the disruptive software that AI promised?

#9

Post by fideli0 »

pmaroe wrote: post #4

No, you're not! It's only a matter of attention. Today all eyes are on the LLM itself, but the big change is happening underground. I'm not a developer — I'm just a curious arborist who owns a company that prunes trees in Italy. In 4 months we have totally changed our company with the help of AI. AI, LLMs are just tools. It's the use that changes the output!

That sounds really interesting. Could you elaborate a bit more on how AI has helped you to fundamentally change your company?

Re: Ask HN: Where are all the disruptive software that AI promised?

#10

Post by codingdave »

> if AI is such a game changing platform

Again, you need to question the premise. Perhaps all the sales and hype you heard simply wasn't true?

In reality, many organizations have already implemented the AI-based improvements to their systems that they need. That work is done, people are enjoying it. The AI vendors want to take it farther. Some coders want to take it farther. Some leaders are pushing it due to FOMO. But "the masses" do not want more. Step outside of the tech silos, and you'll find that most people do not want more AI than we already have.

Post reply on HN