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

Even the "programmers are now obsolete" predictions have really not panned out as more people discover that while AI is an absolute boss at solving college homework level problems, it entire falls apart completely or requires a ton of babysitting to work on problems larger than homework exercises.

It's certainly useful at times, but you always have to keep problems about homework sized and generally focused on a single thing that has been done many times before or you'll have a bad time.

Good uses of AI: Asking it to implement a GStream Webp to backing store module in a GTK project.

Bad use of AI: Asking it to implement a libnftables interface for adding and removing firewall rules. The AIs completely hallucinate the entire API and output useless garbage. Plus the API is high level so even when you try to input it into the context the AI engine gets very lost. You can fight with trying to get it to understand, but in the end it's faster to just write the code yourself.

What is the point of my work, especially when I must ship for a paycheck, if I offload all my thinking and understanding to a machine. I can certainly dig deep and understand all the code the AI wrote, but when you didn’t create it, it feels so much less fulfilling. How does one find fulfillment in the AI engineering age? Isn’t solving problems and coming up with novel solutions part of why most of us got into it in the first place? When you strip that away, what is left? It’s code casino - I pull the lever, it spits out something that either feels like a dopamine hit (it works), or it spits out garbage and I prompt and pull the lever again hoping to strike the jackpot.

I find the most insufferable engineers those who use AI and think they are geniuses because they have access to this tool. Or say “AI told me …” They mistake the tools output for their own creative output or ingenuity.

I think some folks believe that anything other than slavish adoration is “anti,” and some folks think that only vehement contempt is “anti.”

I think it’s great. I’ve been using it to significantly improve my development velocity and scope.

But it is far, far from perfect. I can’t even envision the disaster that would occur, if I just let it do its thing, unmoderated. It can very well be an AFU force multiplier.

It is likely to achieve a state that approaches “perfect,” eventually. There’s still a lot of elbow grease to be decanted, though.

What's my position? GenAI will be subsumed into media toolchains. And reasoning is clearly no longer a hallmark of sentience or consciousness. That's going to take some time to sink in. Token costs are only going to drop further from here: https://www.navyaai.com/reports/ai-cost-report-token-prices-.... And there's opportunity to build businesses to bring down the rest of the costs in the article I cited.

Also, I'm with Martina Scorsese and Dua Lipa on GenAI. And having worked in and around Hollywood in the past, it blows my mind that such a corrupt oligarchy would be considered worth protection. Above the lines thrive while below the lines would be borderline homeless without the guilds. And the ones outside the guilds are.

Finally, build datacenters in the Dakotas, the Texas panhandle, and any other place far away from people where power can be generated onsite by whatever means suit the location best that's not coal.