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

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

#551

Post by llm_nerd » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:03 PM UTC

HN has disparate groups, and the truth is that biased groups, even small groups, can push things that support their bias to the top of HN with ease. So the shakes-fist-at-clouds group might be small, but if something negative about AI is submitted it will always make the front page. During WWDC in a couple of days you'll see similar "DAE hate all the dumb Apple posts?" on the front page, like clockwork, despite it being a tiny percentage of the userbase voting it up.

Like yesterday there was an "HN sans AI" submission where the linked site didn't even work (maybe they should have consulted AI in their design?) and the submission kept racking up the upvotes, despite the irony that it was a submission arguably about AI.

Everyone is just working AI into their workflow that best that is possible. Others choose to tilt at windmills. Eh.

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

#552

Post by itsboring » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

api wrote: post #499

OlivOnTech wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the push forward towards more destruction of the planet we depend on to live, and the centralization of wealth in addition to the one of power.

The wealth comment is valid. The resource stuff is overblown. Look up the energy cost of AI vs ordering a burrito on DoorDash.

Interesting point! How about if instead of a burrito I order yakisoba or chicken tendies?

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

#553

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:05 PM UTC

tactlesscamel wrote: post #527

johnfn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that it's "divided", I wouldn't say "simply". Mentioning AI brings out a sharply negative side of HN that I had not seen before 2023. It is the only subject where, when I have shared that I built something with it, I have gotten derogatory comments claiming I am inexperienced, unintelligent, and that the thing I built (a hobby project) is unimpressive or embarrassing. This has never happened in the deca…

Did You build it? Or did you manage the build of it? Could you have done it without AI? If not, you didn't do it. A drill is just a tool. You can screw a screw without one. AI is just a tool, you can do things without it, too. But AI applied in a manner you could not otherwise complete on your own is not a tool. It's a slave. None of the ideas or creations presented in that instance are your own. You just cheated som…

[deleted]

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

#554

Post by otabdeveloper4 » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:05 PM UTC

> Users don’t care whether the code was written by AI or by hand

They absolutely do care if the code was reviewed and tested. Which, if it was written by AI, it definitely wasn't.

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

#555

Post by teaearlgraycold » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

polalavik wrote: post #493

whoami4041 wrote: post #482

I actually hold both extremes inside of me simultaneously. The speed at which you can ship when you have a strong vision of the end product and the architecture is extraordinary (the part of me that loves AI-assistance). The journey itself, at least for me, has been absolutely grueling though; I'd say ~30% of the time it's just straight up soul-sucking. Some of that could be because of my own incessant need for disci…

Same boat, although the soul sucking, I find, comes from the fact that AI can iterate on ideas so much faster than I could even begin to pull out a pen and paper that I find myself in an existential crisis when I use it too often. 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 t…

Wouldn’t you rather they say AI told them than claim it’s their own idea?

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

#556

Post by flkiwi » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

I'm not particularly anti-AI. I have some concerns about the intellectual property aspects of it, but my opposition is really the (a) functionally illiterate MBAs who think (?) that AI is a thinking machine that will take them right to the C-suite by allowing layoffs of 90% of the workforce and (b) evangelists who believe they're entitled to do whatever they want with other people's information to make their machine god.

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

#557

Post by llm_nerd » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:10 PM UTC

knivets wrote: post #221

> Over the past six months, there hasn’t been a single day where I’ve checked the HN Best RSS feed without seeing a post about how AI “writes bad code,” “introduces bugs,” “creates technical debt,” or something along those lines. because it's true > Users don’t care whether the code was written by AI or by hand, or which framework you used. They care that the product works. How can you guarantee that it works though?…

>because it's true

I mean, it's just as true that most teams “write bad code,” “introduce bugs,” “create technical debt,” or something along those lines. There is this amazing thing that happens where when we talk about AI code, it's always compared against some idealized infinitely capable professional following every best practice, purposefully and carefully crafting every line.

Which is fantasy. Most of you are creating absolute slop. That's just truth. Clutch your pearls and say it ain't true, but there's this weird reality that when people inherit other people's code, it's declared 100% slop, almost all of the time. It's the reason we are constantly tossing projects in the bin and starting anew.

AI is absolutely imperfect, just like teams of human developers.

>By then you have a blackbox of a codebase which is unmaintainable

Have you ever used Claude Code to work on a project? In what reality is the code unmaintainable? How is it a "blackbox"? Are you getting it to write LLVM IR or something?

In my experience, and with careful guidance and oversight, it makes spectacularly maintainable code. Better code than any human developer I have ever worked with. It helps to occasionally do cycles of refactoring as you've built out the foundation and the core becomes more evident and clear.

>or in a worst case scenario you end up losing your data or get hacked or both

This one is amazing. The industry is awash with garbage, insecure, exploited code. We were making that garbage code by the data centre full long before LLMs joined the scene.

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

#558

Post by sanderjd » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

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…

Yep. It has a lot to do with which comment threads you click on. I often read one and think "wow, I can't believe the people here are so negative" and then on another on the same front page at the same time and think "wow, I can't believe the hype here". It's just different people participating on different articles.

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

#559

Post by ath3nd » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

scarab92 wrote: post #143

foxes wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its divided because its the first time the previously more class unaware techbros have been critically challenged by the consequences of their actions - oh shit we might lose our jobs. 10 years ago "Disrupting X" was seen as a good thing. Now its come for them its a different story.

I suspect there is a lot of selection bias going on as well. Forums like this, reddit, X, readers of news sites etc tend to be filled with people that don’t have much going on in their lives, have a lot of free time to comment, are less likely to exploit the benefits of AI, and more likely to have simpler skills sets that are replaceable with AI. Talking to people in real world, I would say the overwhelming majority…

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

#560

Post by culi » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

alch- wrote: post #517

culi wrote: post #448

The HN crowd is much less anti-AI than the rest of the country. But that's a low bar A Quinnipiac poll showed 80% of Americans are "very" or "somewhat" concerned about artificial intelligence, with only 35% feeling excited about it https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3955 Gallup found that 71% of Americans oppose the construction of AI data centers in their local communities. https://news.gallup.com/poll/70977…

Ah yes, The Country.

Fair point. I looked it up and I didn't realize that possibly only around 40-50% of HN traffic is from the US

https://marcotm.com/articles/stats-of-being-on-the-hacker-ne...

I do wonder what similar polling/surveys would find in other countries