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

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

#411

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

Levitating wrote: post #167
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…

That would be a world where there is very little value in local models. I don't thinkt that will be the case.

Creating and updating those local models on a regular basis still requires the massive datacenters, doesn't it? You're assuming that those local models will continue to be provided for free or a reasonable price instead of eventually being monetized.

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

#412

Post by senordevnyc »

SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #406
senordevnyc wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm specifically saying that AI leaders didn't go around making pro-AI commencement speeches. At all.

The absolute closest example is Schmidt, who was last CEO of Google more than a decade before ChatGPT launched, and is now CEO of an aerospace company. No other "AI leaders" gave commencement speeches where they were booed.

So you're blatantly lying and spreading misinformation to feed a negative narrative about the companies and executives in the AI space, then doubling down when called out. Reminds of Vance saying that he's willing to "create stories" in order to draw media attention to his cause-du-jour.

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

#413

Post by lyu07282 »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #388
lyu07282 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the engineers can use to increase their productivity which is a positive thing This might be the underlying hidden psychology: being more productive and efficient isn't benefitting the working class. It won't make them more money or make them work less hours, it just means overall more work for equal or less pay or less jobs for programmers outright. It doesn't make things cheaper or better, it just translates into…

That’s not true. If you look at the history of humanity, every invention (internet, automobiles, telephones, vaccines, etc) has increased the productivity of human race and in-return increased the quality of life and lifted millions of people out of abject poverty. Productivity increased through AI is basically the same. Over the time it would elevate the living standards of millions of people. As for making more mon…

This is the underlying split on HN. The temporarily embarrassed millionaires, the prophets of capitalism, hyper individualist "entrepreneurs" vs. people who are disillusioned from real world experiences over decades that stripped away all the LinkedIn lunatic fringe of "change your mindset of being just an employee and think as an entrepreneur".

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

#414

Post by Havoc »

maccard wrote: post #402
Havoc wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 i…

I get that results in your mind is a vibecoded full feature photoshop as the goal post, which is fair enough. That's no less arbitrary than say me defining the goal post as can it make me a useful script & thus has already delivered results with receipts.

That's why I'm saying this whole look at one point in time logic isn't useful here. Depending on where you set the cutoff you get diametrically opposed answers.

>Ponzi scheme

The IPO & bubble financial shenanigans are only loosely linked to the technological advancement. Tech genie is out of the bottle, people are intrigued and people with ability to tinker on this are spread globally. Even if the entirety of western tech & financial sphere disappeared tomorrow tech progress here would wobble and slow not stop.

Even the one global nexus where progress could have been killed globally - Taiwan - is looking like it'll de-risk shortly between CXMT and SMIC's rapid progress.

In my mind the base case assumption here has to be that the trend (that has been remarkably consistent) continues until proven otherwise. Stack enough improvements on top of each other and instead of a useful script you shall have your photoshop. Maybe...

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

#415

Post by al_borland »

I use AI for small, stand-alone utilities, with limited risk/impact. These are things I make for only myself to use.

For anything something else will use, this is a real problem you can’t simply wave away.

> AI “writes bad code,” “introduces bugs,” “creates technical debt”

Bad code is hard to maintain, for the AI as well. While all code eventually becomes technical debt, the throw-away nature of AI code, and the sheer volume it creates, tends to turn it to technical debt more quickly. If code is “cheap”/“easy”, and the AI is bad at maintenance, why not do a full re-write for every update?

Bugs are bad for users and harder to find when you don’t have a deep understanding of the code. Logic bugs are the worst of these, because the AI and linter won’t necessarily find them. Some logic bugs can cause a lot of real world issues before they are reported and found. If doing a full re-write for updates, because the AI doesn’t care, each run is an opportunity for new bugs to get injected into the code.

If I’m expected to understand and answer for the code when there are issues, I need to be able to read and understand it, not just deploy quickly.

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

#417

Post by sajithdilshan »

lyu07282 wrote: post #413
sajithdilshan wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. If you look at the history of humanity, every invention (internet, automobiles, telephones, vaccines, etc) has increased the productivity of human race and in-return increased the quality of life and lifted millions of people out of abject poverty. Productivity increased through AI is basically the same. Over the time it would elevate the living standards of millions of people. As for making more mon…

This is the underlying split on HN. The temporarily embarrassed millionaires, the prophets of capitalism, hyper individualist "entrepreneurs" vs. people who are disillusioned from real world experiences over decades that stripped away all the LinkedIn lunatic fringe of "change your mindset of being just an employee and think as an entrepreneur".

I actually don’t understand what you meant in this comment. This actually looks like some LLM generated slop to be frank.

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

#418

Post by pjmlp »

metalspot wrote: post #362
pjmlp wrote: post #204

Because for many people writing code is exactly their job, it isn't a means to an end. It is like replacing people at the supermarket with self checkouts and expext they still feel fulfilled on their job, replenishing products from the warehouse. Additionally only optimistics cannot see their job is in jeopardy. If you deploy 10x faster, than me as business owner need less of you for the same amount of work. No, the…

> If you deploy 10x faster, than me as business owner need less of you for the same amount of work An important consideration here is that velocity is not zero sum. If you are delivering in weeks what used to take months you are creating an entirely new realm of what is possible to do with software within a corporation. In the real world, I have never worked for a company that doesn't have a huge backlog (either trac…

Most companies aren't software houses.

If you fulfill your delivery contract in half the time, great for me, you now need track down another customer.

Or put in another way, an agency now only needs a third of previous team sizes to deliver the same amount of work.

The other two thirds might be lucky to have another project assigned, or get to seat on the bench, and depending on the world region (offshoring shops) get their salary halved, before being fired if seating too long on the bench.

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

#419

Post by happytoexplain »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #54
happytoexplain wrote: post #19

HN is not anti-AI. HN reflects a reasonable ratio of pro-AI and anti-AI sentiments (sometimes held by the same person! because AI covers a lot of ground).

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]:…

dang posted a good one in this comment section.

I would also suggest that if you believe your two links are "detached from reality", you may be struggling with your own bias. They're both perfectly reasonable takes that you are totally reasonable to disagree with. Try to come down from that feeling and realize that disagreeing does not necessitate that the person you are disagreeing with is insane.

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