2025: The Year in LLMs • Hacker News Board

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#21

Post by skydhash » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 1:37 AM UTC

MattRix wrote: post #17

skydhash wrote: post #11

[flagged]

[flagged]

Why do people assume negative critique is ignorance?

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#22

Post by sho_hn » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 1:38 AM UTC

Not in this review: Also the record year in intelligent systems aiding in and prompting human users into fatal self-harm.

Will 2026 fare better?

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#23

Post by dmd » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC

skydhash wrote: post #21

MattRix wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why do people assume negative critique is ignorance?

People denied that bicycles could possibly balance even as others happily pedaled by. This is the same thing.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#24

Post by websiteapi » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 1:40 AM UTC

I'm curious how all of the progress will be seen if it does indeed result in mass unemployment (but not eradication) of professional software engineers.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#25

Post by simonw » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 1:42 AM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #22

Not in this review: Also the record year in intelligent systems aiding in and prompting human users into fatal self-harm. Will 2026 fare better?

I really hope so.

The big labs are (mostly) investing a lot of resources into reducing the chance their models will trigger self-harm and AI psychosis and suchlike. See the GPT-4o retirement (and resulting backlash) for an example of that.

But the number of users is exploding too. If they make things 5x less likely to happen but sign up 10x more people it won't be good on that front.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#26

Post by measurablefunc » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #22

Not in this review: Also the record year in intelligent systems aiding in and prompting human users into fatal self-harm. Will 2026 fare better?

The people working on this stuff have convinced themselves they're on a religious quest so it's not going to get better: https://x.com/RobertFreundLaw/status/2006111090539687956

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#27

Post by andai » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #22

Not in this review: Also the record year in intelligent systems aiding in and prompting human users into fatal self-harm. Will 2026 fare better?

Also essential self-fulfilment.

But that one doesn't make headlines ;)

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#28

Post by sho_hn » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 1:44 AM UTC

andai wrote: post #27

sho_hn wrote: post #22

Not in this review: Also the record year in intelligent systems aiding in and prompting human users into fatal self-harm. Will 2026 fare better?

Also essential self-fulfilment. But that one doesn't make headlines ;)

Sure -- but that's fair game in engineering. I work on cars. If we kill people with safety faults I expect it to make more headlines than all the fun roadtrips.

What I find interesting with chat bots is that they're "web apps" so to speak, but with safety engineering aspects that type of developer is typically not exposed to or familiar with.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#29

Post by measurablefunc » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 1:44 AM UTC

dmd wrote: post #23

skydhash wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people assume negative critique is ignorance?

People denied that bicycles could possibly balance even as others happily pedaled by. This is the same thing.

Bicycles don't balance, the human on the bicycle is the one doing the balancing.

Re: 2025: The Year in LLMs

#30

Post by simonw » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 1:45 AM UTC

websiteapi wrote: post #24

I'm curious how all of the progress will be seen if it does indeed result in mass unemployment (but not eradication) of professional software engineers.

I nearly added a section about that. I wanted to contrast the thing where many companies are reducing junior engineering hires with the thing where Cloudflare and Shopify are hiring 1,000+ interns. I ran out of time and hadn't figured out a good way to frame it though so I dropped it.