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Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#671

Post by omgJustTest »

awbvious wrote: post #592

Not sure, but I can tell you what my "oh s** astroturfing is so bad, it's even in Hacker News" moment. And if I learned GenAI was used to make some of the astroturf, that's more an "ah s* “ than an "oh s* “ thing. I mean, the prominence, ubiquity, and breathlessness. One out of three, sure. Two out of three, maybe. And some corpo shilling definitely happens here. But this is like, well, covering an entire area with a…

My "oh sh* moment" with GenAI is ongoing and is watching all the correlated financials unwind when TSMC said "we can only support so much"[1].

Very few things in life experience exponential growth and assembled systems don't often stay that way if they don't become sigmoidal. ie its exponential and end is nigh xor its exponential then sigmoidal xor linear.

Also a bit hilarious to believe that a single 3 month cycle at TSMC could determine a severe amount of propped valutions.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/tech/943066/tsmc-ai-demand-struggle...

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#673

Post by llm_nerd »

buckle8017 wrote: post #201
andrewthornton wrote: post #77

My furnace went out during the 2025 holiday and I couldn't get an appointment with a repair person for 2 days. It was getting very cold in my house so I went into my attic and made several videos of the furnace attempting to start and gave it to gemini. It diagnosed the issue immediately and had me spin one of the components (a small exhaust fan) while the furnace tried to fire. It came on immediately. I had to do th…

Gemini almost killed you. The exhaust blower not working triggered a safety that prevented the furnace from firing. Spinning it bypassed the safety. You likely inhaled a lot more carbon monoxide than you know.

There are multiple continuous safety checks on such a system, and there was no risk of injury here. The fan itself is constantly monitored. Much more importantly, the pressure on the exhaust chamber is constantly measured (which can catch things like blocked outlets, a fan that might be spinning but not effective, etc).

If the exhaust fan couldn't maintain that negative pressure after the user stopped spinning it, the furnace would turn off again.

Their hack worked because the fan couldn't get the initial inertia up to speed (bad capacitor, dusty bearings, etc), but could maintain speed once it gets there. Have you never had an old home fan that would just hum when you turn it on but then work fine if you gave it the original crank? Same premise.

There was no risk here. If the fan didn't spin up to speed after that initial manipulation, and didn't constantly maintain the necessary flow, the furnace would have turned off again.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#674

Post by nsvd2 »

mistersquid wrote: post #631
Zopieux wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't leave us hanging, what was the issue?

> Don't leave us hanging, what was the issue? A: Linux

Yes, but in my experience Claude is much better at diagnosing issues on Linux than any other OS because it's text-native and is the best documented OS.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#676

Post by threecheese »

I had an issue with installing OpenClaw, and it helped me debug the failure and get itself working. I had to sit quietly for a moment. No reading docs or inspecting the system, just “what’s wrong here?”.

While I didnt find a use for openclaw, it opened my eyes to the potential for distributing software which, once bootstrapped a bit, can interrogate … itself, understand its own requirements, communicate with the device, and become operable.

Add capable small models to the mix, and it’s almost frightening what good (or malicious) software might be able to do.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#677

Post by [deleted] »

awbvious wrote: post #592

Not sure, but I can tell you what my "oh s** astroturfing is so bad, it's even in Hacker News" moment. And if I learned GenAI was used to make some of the astroturf, that's more an "ah s* “ than an "oh s* “ thing. I mean, the prominence, ubiquity, and breathlessness. One out of three, sure. Two out of three, maybe. And some corpo shilling definitely happens here. But this is like, well, covering an entire area with a…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#679

Post by K0balt »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #620
awbvious wrote: post #592

Not sure, but I can tell you what my "oh s** astroturfing is so bad, it's even in Hacker News" moment. And if I learned GenAI was used to make some of the astroturf, that's more an "ah s* “ than an "oh s* “ thing. I mean, the prominence, ubiquity, and breathlessness. One out of three, sure. Two out of three, maybe. And some corpo shilling definitely happens here. But this is like, well, covering an entire area with a…

FWIW the OP passes as 100% human in Pangram https://www.pangram.com/history/d33dcbcd-e82b-4ce0-bea5-e4ee... Reddit is definitely overtaken with astroturf at this point. Especially in any subreddit where there is any kind of business interest in doing so.

I was wandering around the carcass of Reddit the other day, and it’s crazy how it’s like 70 percent AI now commenting to each other in a lot of subs that used to be at least nominally interesting… and then a few clueless humans getting all riled up with an AI lol.

They’re getting 200m a year to share that garbage pit with ai training.

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