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Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#911

Post by plagasul »

malshe wrote: post #710
plagasul wrote: post #654

Several. Yesterday a friend with no prior coding experience or knowledge showed me an app he initially built to help him study for public administration job positions. The exams for this positions are public (spain), but the tools are scarce, expensive or he did not like. So he used lovable, then switched to web gemini and claude, then paid claude. He now has +130 very active users on an initial free tier, while he f…

> Now I have a local folder where I drop my 1 student list, with names and emails, 2 my loose notes, and 3 a qualification & feedback sheet model; then claude creates a sheet per student, formats and copies the feedback to the right sheet cell, waits for my corrections, then sends everything to their school emails Yikes! Is this legal in your country?

I've built a small system to do this anonymously. There is a students.csv with real data, a notes.txt that contains my unstructured comments and grades associated to ids (not names or student data), and a model.ods that contains the grading sheet model.

Claude takes the notes.txt and produces a json with corrected comments in the structure I asked for (highlights/needs work/grade), associated to student ids (not real data). This works both for single id or multiple id, for group assignments.

Then a script takes the json, creates a model sheet per student or group of students, fills the right cells, checks the ids against students.csv to fill the real names, and produces the pdf in a pdf/ folder.

Another script sends the pdfs.

I gitignore the sensible files, including an .env with SMTP pass, and denied permissions to Claude for those files using a rule at .claude/settings.json.

There is also a config file to change language, email text and other things.

I believe this is safe and compliant with GDPR, unless Claude ignores the deny rules! Any comments appreciated. Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#912

Post by kotaKat »

My "oh shit" moment was when I was abused by an AI support robot that gave me false information and cost me financial harm.

It was never disclosed it was AI, I submitted a support query with a company, got a suspiciously fast response back, didn't realize it was A Robot, a month later got harmed and was told in response "the robot gave you a bad answer and was coached, sorry, sucks to be you".

"Coached." The only recourse I get is being told a robot was told it was wrong. That's it. No actual solution for me.

I get screwed and the AI keeps getting paid.

I'm glad people can shove hundreds and thousands into these products while people like me in the blue collar rat race get screwed again and again.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#913

Post by globular-toast »

williamdclt wrote: post #285
shreddude wrote: post #44

I could go on and on, but Claude recently decompiled the firmware of my camper van, documented all the CAN interfaces, then programmed an ESP32 module to talk to the van’s integrated systems (power, HVAC, lighting, tanks). That sort of embedded systems integration is completely out of my wheelhouse. I honestly don’t understand AI naysayers. I use Claude every day both professionally as a Solution Architect and person…

> projects I simply could not have ever approached alone. I think that's part of the divide between enthusiasts and naysayers. If you use GenAI on things that you couldn't approach alone, it's an incredible tool. If you use it on stuff that you're pretty good at, it's not a gamechanger (and if you're an expert, it's a minor boost at best). Many people's job are about doing what they're an expert at.

Classic Gel-Mann amnesia...

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#915

Post by franze »

hey, my other oh sh*t moment was that i realized that ai burns me out. it never stops. ai made our deaktop conputers as addictive as our social media feeda, so i created RainBreak https://rainbreak.franzai.com/

the ai does not need a break, but you do.

hope some of you like it

free forever

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#916

Post by hirako2000 »

franze wrote: post #915

hey, my other oh sh*t moment was that i realized that ai burns me out. it never stops. ai made our deaktop conputers as addictive as our social media feeda, so i created RainBreak https://rainbreak.franzai.com/ the ai does not need a break, but you do. hope some of you like it free forever

What's the license for ?

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#920

Post by futureshock »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #490

For me it was right at the beginning. They said it was a dungeon game. It would describe a room, etc, and I would take some action. But I thought that this dungeon was built in some intricate database. But then I told it that I wanted to leave, got to an inn, where I flirted with the bar waitress, and soon we were watching the sunset in some meadow. As cheesy as that was, it was then that I went "oh shit" this is a m…

Yes I was the exact same. I got curious during the GPT-3 release and went over to AI Dungeon. It was just running GPT-2. Hmm wow interesting. This felt new! Then I subscribed so I could use GPT-3 powered AI Dungeon. My jaw dropped. I was talking to that model for weeks. There was a whole human universe in there. You never knew what you could get it to spit out. There were glimmers that this could be huge. It was wild and untamed and practically useless, but there was a behemoth under that prompt.

I was sure this would eventually turn into something. I naturally wanted to converse with it as a chatbot, though it could only stay on task for a few turns. RL and guardrails would come later but it was clearly the foundational step towards AGI for me. From something I thought I would never see in my lifetime to very real and in front of me.

ChatGPT didn't even really rock my world, everything since that moment has been another baby step. But when you take a look back from 2026 models to 2020 it's astounding how far and how fast we've come.

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