Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI? • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by Havoc » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #339

Havoc wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely not at the make me a photoshop stage but I don't think that angle explains adequately explains the tone of the anti-AI hn discussions taking place at all. If it was just a toy with no shot at making something real people would go "oh cool have fun with that" and move on with their life. Instead we see pretty emotionally charged posts.

What stage is it at then? Because every new model is met with people saying they haven’t opened an editor in a year, or how they’re 10x more productive. But I’m not seeing 10x more tickets closed, 10x more bugs fixed, or 10x more feature designs that we can smash through. I see verbosity and noise when used by the people who were behind, and I see the same level of quality and excellence from people who use it like i…

>I see the same level of quality and excellence from people who use it like it’s another tool in their toolbelt

It's certainly currently an edge if you know what to tell the mystery box of magic in precise terms.

I don't think this distinction is going to endure though - every level of "it can't do it" has fallen and generally faster & more decisively than predicted. We started with it printing hello world, to autocomplete where you still needed to be able to know what the line should do, to autocompleting functions, to writing entire units, to working out architecture tradeoffs, to doing research planning architecture execution and testing all autonomously. That trajectory plus people retreating to nebulous "I'm adding taste" tells me this is going to sail straight past "tool in toolbelt" territory at Mach 10.

Everyone has their own perspective but to me "show me the receipt" at a specific point in time is a completely wrong lens for a tech that shows clear signs of exponential improvement (i.e. https://metr.org/ ).

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

#392

Post by i000 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:14 PM UTC

dag100 wrote: post #80

i000 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly common I would say. US dockworkers / longshoremen are anti-automation big time. https://ilaunion.org/the-ilas-fight-against-automation-prese... The lack of productivity-growth in construction is also telling that this industry as a whole may be a bit too pro-hammer and anti-innovation https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/why-has-produ...

People would be more pro-automation if it didn't entail losing their livelihoods and ability to access food and shelter.

That is my point people are pro-AI / anti-AI and pro-automation / anti-automation, there is nothing weird about it.

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

#393

Post by fg137 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

Is HN crowd any more anti-AI than other places e.g. reddit?

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

#394

Post by xigoi » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

trumpdong wrote: post #314

xigoi wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> assemblers, code generation, compilers, JIT. Or really, just writing bytes that can represent machine code, P-code, or bytecode. All of these things have something in common that LLMs don’t. They behave in a predictable, documentable (and usually documented) way.

Compiler optimizations are pretty unpredictable. But you can, in principle, understand a compiler. Also they're made by the same people who use them. Did blacksmiths get mad when they invented the first anvils?

While optimization may be done in unpredictable ways, it does not (by definition) change the effective behavior of the program. If you write a program to calculate prime numbers, it will always calculate prime numbers, no matter how the compiler optimizes it. If you tell an LLM to write code to calculate prime numbers, you are at the mercy of chance. (Maybe not for such a simple program, where the solution is directly in the training data, but you get the idea.)

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

#395

Post by jordansmithnz » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

A few observations I’ve made.

1. Many criticisms of AI’s usefulness focus on the present/past. They may well be right about the current state, but the trajectory things are improving at (unless we’ve hit a brick wall) means they’ll probably be wrong in a few years.

2. Some of the most vocal anti AI statements I’ve heard have come from people the most impacted by its disruption. Does the concept it cheapens your prior work, or perhaps threatens to replace you, not lead to a huge amount of bias?

Like any technology, AI has good and bad aspects. There should be criticisms of it, we need those. But focusing on where it’s headed, and being aware of bias, is going to produce the most important discussions.

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

#396

Post by armchairhacker » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:25 PM UTC

oleg_antonyan wrote: post #148

I call these AI tools "proprietary non-determenistic database of the free internet". They belong to american companies which can cut off your access if american government doesn't like your country's government. They fed from the free internet that many of us grew up in, store it in humans unreadable form and sell you access to it. If some day claude starts to spit out compiled binaries instead of code nobody will no…

> the internet we all know and love

Only accessible via proprietary ISPs that require a subscription, actively monitor and censor (pirate sites). And managed by ICANN which is based in America (and though nonprofit, certainly influenced by money and government).

Meanwhile, local models package a large part of the past internet, can be stored in your computer and accessed by the most ignorant (but literate) laymen.

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

#397

Post by manoDev » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

darksim905 wrote: post #31

manoDev wrote: post #9

There are two different crowds using "AI": - One crowd is using to research algorithms, libraries, write boilerplate code, write test harnesses, introspect and integrate with APIs, do hands-off refactoring, and automating what would otherwise be boring tasks. They still think about architecture, best practices, understanding things in detail and the general shape of the solution is in their hands. - Another crowd is…

Are we including just technical people in these crowds? Because there's a third crowd: everyone else/the general public that are standing up vibe coded websites and don't give a hoot how things work in the background or know as long as money is coming in. There are people that are using AI and thinking less and less causing their brains over the long term to become more inelastic. We're in for a very, very painful fu…

That’s exactly what AI companies want, needing an AI to fix what an AI built is the ultimate vendor lock-in that would justify their valuatuons.

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

#398

Post by skeledrew » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #196

manoDev wrote: post #9

There are two different crowds using "AI": - One crowd is using to research algorithms, libraries, write boilerplate code, write test harnesses, introspect and integrate with APIs, do hands-off refactoring, and automating what would otherwise be boring tasks. They still think about architecture, best practices, understanding things in detail and the general shape of the solution is in their hands. - Another crowd is…

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…

> I also worry about the debasement of value of human work. Looking at history, say of the weavers, it didn't work out to well for them when the powered loom came along.

They eventually moved on to other things, because that was the only option. And the world is better with the power loom. It's scary but we still have to embrace that eventually pretty much all valuable labour will be automated, and by then our society and economy needs to have been restructured for supporting humans providing 0 economic value.

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

#399

Post by YetAnotherNick » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:30 PM UTC

BigTTYGothGF wrote: post #367

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have many diverse friend groups. And HN is lot lot more anti AI then even the worst of the non technical groups I am in. e.g. [1] is so detached from reality and got to front page for multiple days recently. Or [2]. I have never seen a positive story(I am not talking about things like current model, just how positive AI could be like the Sam Altman post) in front page for a long time. Feel free to disprove me. [1]:…

> I have many diverse friend groups. And HN is lot lot more anti AI then even the worst of the non technical groups I am in. "I listen to both kinds of music, country and western."

I have made very falsifiable statement.

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

#400

Post by armchairhacker » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:31 PM UTC

AI has done widely-accepted-as-bad things (e.g. spamming social media, datacenter physical consequences) and seems to have done less widely-accepted-as-good things (code improvement, but many people aren’t convinced. Is software today better than 1-2 years ago? I can’t find clear examples.)

Good or bad, I believe the genie is out of the bottle, and we should do the best we can using and mitigating AI. But I don’t blame or disagree with anyone who’s critical.