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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?

#571

Post by Nevermark »

I have no general answer. But some themes I see:

• - Larger Concerns: I believe this is the biggest negativity driver. Sublimated, but polarizing.

Humans are not divine or ordained. Entities passing us in intelligence are a threat, exceeding any normal range of pro's and con's. Acknowledging the big picture derails practical discussion. But it indirectly polarizes many views.

• - Hype Trampoline: The powerful Newtonian equal-but-opposite reaction to unrealistic or over-optimistic claims.

• - Adaptation Style: Adapting new tech to ourselves, and adapting ourselves to new tech, are different things. Today, the fast self-adapters are getting value sooner than the fast tech-adapters. Never has this Rorschach test been so clear.

• - Negatives First Effect: A large percentage of engineers are systemically contrarian and cynical. They defensively approach new things by processing limitations first.

It looks like kneejerk negativity and an obsession with dotted i's and crossed t's to me. But their "one-sided" negative expressions don't seem to stop them from beneficial adoption.

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

#572

Post by KaiserPro »

skeledrew wrote: post #536
KaiserPro wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They eventually moved on to other things, because that was the only option. Yes, but then whole swathes of the English countryside (and then the Indian countryside) was plunged into destitution for generations and it took rebellions, massacres and revolutions to get something like comfortable living.

Yeah there was no system in place then to ensure those who were left without means to survive would be able to survive. Shouldn't be the case with the knowledge of that history and all this time we have to actually change things. We quite literally know that it's a matter of only a few years now before the vast amount of knowledge work (at least) is fully automated away; governments should be making changes to make t…

> governments should be making changes to make the economic transition more smooth.

With what money. Knowledge work brings in taxes. Taxes are spent redistributing wealth so that the bottom percent are cared for.

But all that money will be concentrated into the hands of the few (even more than it is now) and china.

After all caring for the poor is socialism, and we can't have that.

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

#573

Post by wild_egg »

_0ffh wrote: post #465
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…

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…

I'm a divided individual.

I've spent an obscene number of hours learning how to get reliably good quality code out of these things. I'm actually very happy with where the tech is right now and can't imagine ever going back to typing code by hand.

But I absolutely hate how companies and society at large are acting because of this stuff. It feels like all rationality has flown out the window. So I'm just staying in my sandbox with my little toys and hoping the mass psychosis blows over at some point.

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

#574

Post by hunterpayne »

ceejayoz wrote: post #425
senordevnyc wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quite recently, he was the chair of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Commission_o... Pretending he's some AI nobody is a bit goofy.

Pretending he has any real insight into AI is also a bit goofy. Listen to him speak. Even his own stories about his time at Google don't show himself in a good light like he thinks they do. There are multiple, multi-billion dollar products that Google made where they had to trick and lie to him to get them released. And he still tells those stories as if he was right to try to kill those products. He's an executive and has no real expertise or insight into LLMs or AI.

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

#575

Post by tcgv »

vbezhenar wrote: post #512

Because I enjoy writing code. I enjoy being paid for writing code. And I don't enjoy writing prompts for AI. Code is not just a means to an end. Code is a means to my happiness. Users might not care, but I do care. I love good code. I feel great when I can write good code. I won't say that I don't care about users. I do. But I care about me, first and foremost. And AI threatens to remove my lifestyle and workstyle. T…

Thanks for the honesty. I think this is a very useful point of view precisely because it is explicit about being based on personal motivations, and that is completely fair.

That said, as a minor wording point, I'm not sure "I'm bullish against it" is the right framing here. "Bullish" usually implies a positive expectation based on some thesis or evidence. In this case, something like "I'm resistant to it" seems more accurate.

I agree this is a change that affects every software engineer's lifestyle and workstyle. But I think it is important to separate personal motivations from critical, objective analysis when discussing new technologies (e.g. whether for or against AI) so the discussion remains valuable instead of becoming emotionally polarized.

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

#576

Post by watwut »

I find the way AI is pushed for extremely offputting. It is as if someone took thr worst tendencies of tech sociopaths and concentrated then in one place.

The condescention, the attempt to make everyone afraid of jobs, the vision of hellish dystopia that is somehow framed as thing to work toward, the lack of actually positive vision. This is the first programming tool that is forced and pushed as much and negatively.

And also, the forming monopoly, the token based payment that just screams for future frauds and abuse. The political connection, the companies taking advantage of all the work others did just so they can destroy those who created it.

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

#577

Post by hunterpayne »

LogicFailsMe wrote: post #474
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…

I think society is divided on AI because we've let the billionaire tech bro class rawdog power resources and AI deployments and I welcome the pushback on those 2 axes. The water nonsense OTOH saps my will to live. But also, the algorithms push enragement equals engagement and that favors pushing content to the product (us) that enrages the product to drive up their engagement numbers so they click on more ads. Meanwh…

The power and water requirements of AI DCs narrative is entirely nonsense. It doesn't hold up to even a cursory analysis on the back of an envelope.

And medical advances of AI are from other ML algorithms, not LLMs. They use similar technology and can run in the same DCs, but they aren't the same and people don't really have the same opinions on them both.

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

#579

Post by hunterpayne »

ofjcihen wrote: post #423
torben-friis wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, "AI good" and "AI bad" are very silly camps to describe a topic. You might have seen some comments by me receiving votes lately that some might classify as anti-AI. I'm not for banning it, I use it at work and at home, I learn about it. Here a few positions I hold, for example: - There is a fundamental deviation between what we should be seeing if we were surrounded by 100x enabled engineers and reality. We're…

I echo almost all of your points daily and it’s incredibly refreshing to see a level-headed response like this. Tbf I think this is probably the way most people see it at the moment from my discussions with others. The static comes from people who have essentially staked their entire reputation on AI one way or another.

"The static comes from people who have essentially staked their entire reputation on AI one way or another."

I have a suspicion that online, those are mostly bots.

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

#580

Post by trumpdong »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #73
mkl wrote: post #24

A lot of people on HN are anti- overhyping , which comes across as being opposed to the thing being overhyped. It was similar when cryptocurrency overhyping was popular.

Oh absolutely! This made me wonder and there was an exact post with similar title but instead of AI it said Crypto Ask HN: Why is Hacker News so anti-crypto? : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31302494 (Do note that the post is flagged and there might be some good moderation reasons for that) This is the reason that most of us at HN might dislike overhype. I have seen a lot of these crypto users move from crypto…

60k$ is not an all time low.
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