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

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

#401

Post by FabHK » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

trumpdong wrote: post #293

peteforde wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The false equivalency in this explanation is off the scale. It wasn't just that crypto was an obvious grift; it was that you didn't need to be an experienced developer to confirm that 99% of the "web 3.0" nonsense that what was being thrown around literally made no technical sense. You might reject LLMs on principle, or find that they don't work for you. But I think we're well past any debate of whether they do anyth…

Crypto also obviously does something at all. If anyone was saying it didn't, they were just as delusional as people saying that AI does nothing at all.

Crypto has no technological merit compared to earlier solutions, except "permissonlessness", which enables the circumvention of rules and regulations (at huge expense). But, sure, enabling crime is "doing something".

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

#402

Post by maccard » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #391

maccard wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 autoco…

I’ll agree it’s an edge. But edges aren’t worth the GDP of a middle sized European country.

> every level of "it can't do it" has fallen and generally faster & more decisively than predicted

I disagree. The agent + harness model was a huge leap and really moved the bar. The tools became genuinely useful for coding very quickly.

> 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

At some point, the exponential improvements have to show results or it’s just a Ponzi scheme.

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

#403

Post by trumpdong » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #401

trumpdong wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto also obviously does something at all. If anyone was saying it didn't, they were just as delusional as people saying that AI does nothing at all.

Crypto has no technological merit compared to earlier solutions, except "permissonlessness", which enables the circumvention of rules and regulations (at huge expense). But, sure, enabling crime is "doing something".

Enabling crime is massive. You have to remember that "crime" includes things like "selling abortion pills", "selling LSD", "selling ivermectin" and of course "supporting Palestine Action"

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

#404

Post by didgetmaster » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 1:52 PM UTC

Just like with politics, you see large numbers of people dividing up into two different camps. Pretty soon every statement that raises a legitimate concern about AI will be seen as 'hating AI' and every observation about how AI helped in a particular situation will be seen as coming from an 'AI fanboy'.

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

#405

Post by xtiansimon » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

You say anti-ai; I say pro-human (warts and all).

And I think there is a debate about llm biases [1].

And the obvious question of who owns and controls llm/ai technology. The wealth of humanity should be invested in humans and not a handful of llm’s and corporations who “own” them [2].

I think these are examples of thoughts which run through people’s mind——biases—-which direct replies even if they’re not directly expressed.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48401243

[2]: Senator Bernie Sanders’ legislation “American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/bernie-san...

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

#406

Post by SlinkyOnStairs » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

senordevnyc wrote: post #341

SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a more of a generational divide in perception and discussion. I would also say there is a loss of nuance. The youth are facing an enormous employment crisis. Many have found themselves completely unemployable through no fault of their own. And then AI leaders go around to commencement speeches to rub it in. There's no loss of nuance, the situation has just escalated a lot.

And then AI leaders go around to commencement speeches to rub it in. This is a good example of anti-AI bias. This didn’t happen. Out of thousands of commencement speeches across the country, a handful of speakers, none of whom are “AI leaders”, mentioned AI in passing and students booed. So yeah, I’d say there’s a loss of nuance.

"This didn't happen, except for that few times where it did happen and massively blew up in the media"

That you fail to understand why those students took such great offense to what was said at those speeches doesn't make it "anti-AI bias".

Those students reacted like that, and I used it as an example, because it's very emblematic of how tech companies and leading figures act.

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

#407

Post by egberts1 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 2:15 PM UTC

I am guarded on today's LLM after much unit testings myself.

For as long as LLM use the probabilistic predictive next-token for an algorithm, there shall be glaring errors when encountering a complex-logic (or even compound-logic).

In short, use AND, OR, NOR, XOR sparingly when doing AI prompt. Elevate your err-dar when doing so.

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

#408

Post by anovikov » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

Because, at least numerically, there are more people here who represent labor than capital. AI is a win for capital, loss for labor. That simple. This creates this surprising effect, approximately for the same reason more people support Palestine than Israel here, and Ukraine than Russia.

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

#409

Post by convolvatron » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

classifying things into two camps here is kind of a mistake. it remains to be proven that AI represents some kind of real general intelligence with reasoning, and that you can give it high level goals and just have it manage your entire codebase. I personally have seen large balls of vibe code that crossed the line of just being huge and unmaintainable, even for the AI.

It's also clear that it's valuable enough at minimum around the edges in prototyping, testing and analysis that it's not going away.

So any reasonable person would understand the situation is still evolving and maybe push back on strong claims of software development being already completely obsolete. is that anti-AI?

edit: you know, I might just be old, and maybe about to be irrelevant. what I don't understand is why that seems to make people so angry. I'm sure the future will sort itself out.

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

#410

Post by gacgacgac » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

trumpdong wrote: post #313

gacgacgac wrote: post #93

> Users don’t care whether the code was written by AI or by hand This is very much not settled, and very much depending on your market. Selling games to gen-z? Yeah, they are going to care a lot.

They only care if you tell them, so don't.

Lying to customers is shitty behavior. They'll ask.

Do you feel this way about apps that gather information about you? "It says it has no tracking cookies.." Or apps that sell your email address? What if I claimed my product was vegetarian?

Like, wtf kind of attitude is "just lie about it".