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

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

#601

Post by oblio » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 10:16 PM UTC

star-glider wrote: post #534

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…

Longshoremen are anti-cranes. Same thing.

Longshoremen in many places were paid advance salaries until retirement and then full pensions.

Programmers will get a pat on the back.

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

#602

Post by skirmish » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 10:17 PM UTC

saltcured wrote: post #439

uxhacker wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is dialectical. In other words both sides are right. There is a really important question that is been lost between the anti and pro AI camps which is really answering what AI is good at and what AI is bad at, and what is the root cause of the weaknesses. Is it intrinsic to the models that LLM's use, or the way thy have been trained. In this knowledge is where the gold mine is for the next start up. For…

> There is a really important question that is been lost between the anti and pro AI camps which is really answering what AI is good at and what AI is bad at, ... I think some of this pro/anti AI discussion is really a proxy for something else though. There is another unstated, societal disagreement about personal responsibility and the behaviors of the AI tool users. It isn't entirely new, as people have always been…

In other words, engineers are becoming (bad) middle management: happy to take credit on wins and quick to blame underlings (LLMs in this case) for any mishaps. As long as managers are allowed to play politics in workplace, of course engineers will try to do the same!

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

#603

Post by itrunsdoomguy » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 10:18 PM UTC

I am pro AI 100%. Just because I have more time to play Doom.

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

#604

Post by curvaturearth » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

I don't know, I think people need to think more like "should I do this?". Speaking from my own experience, I've made all sorts of random apps for fun using LLMs to enable that endeavor. But then I run out of tokens, and end up reading a book, going outside, or something else, and start wondering what the point was

Maybe I'm alone in thinking this way but my free time was slurped up by this promise of productivity, and I'm working to get it back.

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

#605

Post by Snacklive » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 10:36 PM UTC

I'm not particularly anti-ai i do find it useful and i use it everyday for my job, i actually find it great for iterating ideas and especially for finding information about libraries or obscure APIs

But i read everything, i write most of my code by hand and I'm very careful to not shoot myself on the foot.

I say this because on the other side of the spectrum, some colleagues at work are VERY hyped about AI and i constantly suffer the consequences of them making changes without looking, the code is brittle and often introduces bugs

So I'm mostly anti hype, i can recognize it as a useful tool, but im tired of people using it without taking a few minutes to review what is outputting

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

#606

Post by teaearlgraycold » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 10:37 PM UTC

polalavik wrote: post #595

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

both are aggravating. i think you can use AI, say you use AI, and then demonstrate your understanding of what it created through documentation or other means. Hiding it or blatantly turning off your brain and saying "AI told me" are both bad practice.

Sometimes I say an LLM told me something for a hobby project where I'm using them as a means to extend my abilities into a realm I am ignorant of. But I think if a co-worker deferred to an LLM like that I'd be super disappointed.

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

#607

Post by hunterpayne » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 10:37 PM UTC

fasterik wrote: post #513

4k0hz wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem only exists because of the marketing move to call anything even slightly ML related "AI". I see it as a double edged sword. People that want the category of AI to succeed can claim a victory when someone uses it to approximate protien folding and invent new drugs. But that also means the entire field is constantly being dragged down by low quality vibe coded sites, slop videos on social media, whatever h…

>This problem only exists because of the marketing move to call anything even slightly ML related "AI". We need to remember what "Artificial Intelligence" actually means. It refers to the field of research starting in the 1950's developing algorithms related to combinatorial search, planning, and reasoning. Machine Learning isn't AI in the sci-fi movie sense, but it's among the topics you'll find in a textbook like R…

That isn't how we break up the field of AI. ML are the algorithms that are based on statistics and other numeric methods. The other algorithms are based on logic and perhaps some philosophical methodologies. We don't really have a name for that second group, its just part of AI. Then there is Reinforcement Learning which is a sub-field of ML and incorporates a Pavlovian methodology.

AI is the sum of all of these groups. Also, the "not real AI" thing is more about not real AGI. That's a very different target.

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

#608

Post by skirmish » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 10:44 PM UTC

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.

Is it this: GitLab Duo Agent Platform with Claude accelerates development [1]? Well, Gitlab itself promotes hooking them up!

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-duo-agent-platform-with...

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

#609

Post by hunterpayne » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 10:46 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #282

maccard wrote: post #234

> Let’s face it: by the time I manually ship version 1.0 of a product, the AI-assisted version could have been deployed 10x faster. Show the receipts. Where are the mobile apps, the photoshop replacements, the video and audio editors, the games and game engines that took a decade to make in the past that have shipped since Claude code came along? > By then, enough real-world feedback would have surfaced to identify t…

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 it was just a toy with no shot at making something real"

This just isn't true. It isn't about what the LLM can do, its about what the executives think the LLM can do that's the problem.

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

#610

Post by hunterpayne » Sat, Jun 06, 2026, 10:50 PM UTC

trumpdong wrote: post #505

littlexsparkee wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ML generated propaganda videos are not. An AI DC has already been destroyed by a military because it isn't harmless. And no, I'm not talking about Iran and AWS.