it's an identity problem
Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
721–730 of 812 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#722the way i see it HN people want to know how things work and are interested in improving their skills but ai is kind of the opposite of that. not trying to be biased here but it's true. the way to get good with ai is to optimize personal workflow, and its less about solving interesting problems along the way. the pursuit of technical knowledge is now less interesting because it's more of an academic calisthenics now more so than it was previously- at least for a certain subset of applications
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#723Earlier quoted context omitted.
The argument that LLMs are "feeding me back free and open internet" seems to skip the most useful aspect of the tool. I could never, as an individual read, let alone synthesize and make decisions with, the amount of information on the internet. The LLM takes that free and open information and feeds me back novel information based on that free information. It gives me ideas, opinions, and hard data based on that infor…
I think you undervalue the contribution of internet-scale data to foundation modeling, and because LLMs can obsolete the content they required, I think its fair to characterize it as theft. Obviously RL contributes a lot to capabilities, but the judgement that an LLM uses to 'synthesize information' is born from the training data. The scale of the data really is beyond intuition. books3, for example, would 230 yrs of…
As I understand RL makes foundation models stupider (less capable, not more) but better at following instructions.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#724I'm not anti-AI, but I see the where it is heading
* Mass surveillance which suppress the freedom of speech. ex: Palantir
* Dumbing down people so they cannot think for themselves, so the narrator is in control.
* Dropping bombs on innocent so someone can loot resources.
* Huge environmental degradation due to data centers ex: ground water pollution in Texas, desertification, waste dump due to rare earth metal extraction etc. (Earth is already is in brink of a collapse)
All of the above sacrifices just for the benefit of few rich billionaires not for the community. At this point I do not see the benefits outweight drawbacks, if it is to go on, it should be highly regulated, more than healthcare regulations. And also should be community owned not privatized.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#725Because 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…
Imagine if AI actually delivers utopia and you get to code all you want because your every need is taken care of.
0.01% chance of happening. also i am actively trying to kill my love for coding and move onto 90% agentic at this point since it's doing me more harm than good. i dont think ill get another chance to write code in the future all things considered besides for comp. programming activities
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#726I'm not anti-AI, but I see the where it is heading * Mass surveillance which suppress the freedom of speech. ex: Palantir * Dumbing down people so they cannot think for themselves, so the narrator is in control. * Dropping bombs on innocent so someone can loot resources. * Huge environmental degradation due to data centers ex: ground water pollution in Texas, desertification, waste dump due to rare earth metal extrac…
im quite concerned for the dumbing down symptom to take full effect. learn to code has become learn to read rofl
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#727Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I want to know where people _genuinely_ think the cutoff is I don't think there is/should be one at all. If you and I stand in front of a crazy fast growing plant the question on how tall it'll be tomorrow is initially interesting, but a couple measurements in when it's clear the answer is exponentially the relevant question stops being how high is it now / will be tomorrow and more holly shit how long can this keep…
> If you and I stand in front of a crazy fast growing plant the question on how tall it'll be tomorrow is initially interesting, but a couple measurements in when it's clear the answer is exponentially the relevant question stops being how high is it now / will be tomorrow and more holly shit how long can this keep going & where does this go. What’s happening here is you and I are standing in front of a plant, you’re…
>it’s growing so fast you can’t say.
That's not a fair characterization.
I can and have told you how big the plant is - it can make useful scripts right now.
I'm just avoiding that phrasing because it's just not useful measuring your rapidly growing planet by asking it repeatedly whether it has hit some arbitrary size over and over.
>But you can’t tell me how good it will be next month because it’s going so well.
Neither the companies nor I have a crystal ball. They don't know how good it'll be next month but they need to make the budget decision now. So you make a judgement call on where they think this is going based on trends. Not on a binary has it delivered photoshop yet.
>You see how crazy that is right?
You seem because you expect certainty, perfect future knowledge and binary outcomes in a world that works nothing like that so I can see how it might feel crazy
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#728I call these AI tools "proprietary non-determenistic database of the free internet". They belong to american companies which can cut off your access if american government doesn't like your country's government. They fed from the free internet that many of us grew up in, store it in humans unreadable form and sell you access to it. If some day claude starts to spit out compiled binaries instead of code nobody will no…
You probably mean USAGM (US Agency for Global Media) and its affiliated programs (Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, etc) rather than USAID. USAID was a humanitarian aid agency that focused on programs like famine relief, disaster response, and medical aid in some of the poorest countries on Earth.
It is how these agencies operate. They mask malevolent activity behind good front (“think of the children“, “age verification“ -> censorship/total surveillance. Medical aid -> overthrowing governments).
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#729https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite same same, just different time and job.
I don't see anybody using a hand drill anymore - your hands will become all weak and you will lose your ability to drill good holes by hand...
If you want anti AI sentiment, you should take a visit to /r/rust
Re: Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an example of a perspective that is solely lacking: I was a professional programmer for 40 years. I loved writing code in my youth. But then I started to love something more: making bigger things. I’ve grown out of the infatuation with my own self satisfaction with writing code. Now I’m addicted to architectures. There’s a point when you realize coding gets in the way and needs to be delegated. That’s why AI…
>Now I’m addicted to architectures But architecture creation can also be delegated to ai if you give agent enough context about functional/non-functional requirements, certain business side restrictions etc. Your work is to be feedback loop mechanism between people and llm, no? Please, give me encouraging examples of technical tasks that cant be delegated to ai with accurate prompting
I have a feeling that a prompt accurate enough to cover all the important stuff (functional/non-functional requirements, certain business side restrictions etc) would be close in its volume and complexity to the actual software code and configuration (given the proper tools, frameworks and infrastructure in place)...