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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?

#501

Post by trumpdong »

habinero wrote: post #305
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.

If people just wanted to make their own stuff and have fun, that's fine. Knock yourself out. However, it's launched this enormous tidal wave of mediocrity that emboldens the dumbest people to do the dumbest shit and make it my problem. I just had to yell at one of the IT guys for trying to hook up our Duo to Claude, and I'm still mad about it lol.

What's a Duo?

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

#502

Post by api »

downrightmike wrote: post #470
pj_mukh wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To OP's point, I am curious why a tech forward crowd would consider AI-training/inference anywhere close to a significant contributor of greenhouse gasses? Datacenters are like a tiny blip on emissions plots [1] I think AI is a convenient foil to get people whipped up and out to vote, but I know HN is not the forum for that. The technical data clearly says that closed-loop water coolers don't use that much water and…

They basically undo all the reduce renew recycle efforts we've been doing since the 90's

Reduce will never happen unless population falls. Not in a big way.

It should be: reuse, recycle, renewable. First try to reuse and make things more reusable. Then try to recycle. Last, substitute renewable for non renewable sources for things like energy.

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

#504

Post by rootusrootus »

thierrydamiba wrote: post #490
_0ffh wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thoughtful comment, and I'd like to add another angle: However meaningful it is to say the community is divided, I also think that individuals are "divided" on the question as well. I can speak from myself as an example (although n=1): I am incredibly open to machine learning and the advances it brings. On the other hand I am extremely conscious of the fact that the current LLMs do often write bad code, which becomes…

There’s also the uncomfortable reality that a lot of people spent a lot of time learning how to do things that anyone can prompt now… We tend to ignore that reality but it hangs above all these discussions like a dirty cloud

That does not seem like it should be controversial. I have known for quite a long time that a motivated high school kid could learn to code well enough to be perfectly useful. Especially with popular languages like Python.

This is just an object lesson for everyone who thought all that software guys did was write code that there is just a little bit more to the job than that. Actual developers should already have known.

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

#505

Post by trumpdong »

littlexsparkee wrote: post #160
haunter wrote: post #153

The more close you are to the fire the more you understand how dangerous it is. HN always have had a sizable anti-tech crowd (I don't want to say luddite because it's borderline pejorative). If you see the technology from close and you understand the human impacts of it then there is a reason some would rather stay clear from it. I know some FAANG engineers who doesn’t allow their kids to have smartphones or use soci…

I'd imagine nearly all here are positive about technology itself, what they're against is: hype, 'progress' at all costs regardless of collateral damage, consolidation, anti-consumer practices - tech as wielded for power. If you pay attention long enough, it's hard not to become wary.

AI Dungeon was pretty cool, and harmless.

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

#507

Post by rootusrootus »

p4bl0 wrote: post #161
dang wrote: post #14

It's simply divided. With every such division A vs. B, the A team thinks HN is anti-A and the B team thinks it's anti-B. This is an invariant. You can see from the following megathread, currently on the front page, that HN is by no means anti-AI: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406174 . Sometimes it just takes the right initial condition (e.g. title) to brin…

Thanks for putting it this way. I have to admit I was really astonished by the question as I feel like HN is very much pro-AI at least in the sense that there is more AI promotion on HN than there is AI acceptance among people in the real world. It's been months if not years since most of the posts are about genAI, and in a largely favorable way. It's actually quite fascinating that for some people it feels like the…

I hang around a few developer-centric communities, and my gut feeling is that HN is by far the most pro-AI. It's somewhat rare to find people all-in on "developers just got replaced by AI, pick a different career field guys" anywhere but here. Maybe there are just more developer-adjacent types on HN.

I do find it somewhat amusing to read the commentary here and ponder why some of these people are wildly enthusiastic about making software development a dead field but simultaneously don't think it's also going to put them out of work. Programmers may be a lucrative target, but LLMs are "good enough" at many other knowledge disciplines too.

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

#508

Post by croes »

> AI “writes bad code,”

> execution speed starts to matter more than the elegance of the code.

Have you considered that some mean by bad code, slow code?

Sometimes AI produces code that is the equivalent of tables in tables in tables html styling.

https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/157043617/Homer-Simpsons-B...

The users don’t care, but they only see the front

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

#510

Post by trumpdong »

slibhb wrote: post #373
frankie_t wrote: post #289

First of all, I expect to be a loser in the socioeconomical effect the AI brings. This isn't really about the technology itself but about the political systems we have now. From the pure job perspective, I will either lose my job, or will keep it but it will be increasingly more stressful and less interesting. There are literally zero benefits for me as a worker. The only hope is that the economic effect will be so h…

You don't need "generational wealth" to leverage AI. If anything the opposite is true; AI empowers people with less to do more. Hiring humans is expensive, tokens are much cheaper. Also, programmers will be least negatively affected by AI. Humans will need to be in the loop in the forseable future, and programmers are a good candidate for those kinds of positions. But more generally, I'll never understand this attitu…

They were saying you need it to benefit from AI. AI users aren't the beneficiaries as now they need to work more for the same pay.
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