Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

#91

Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

cube00 wrote: post #31

For example, automotive technicians and industrial mechanics use AI to interpret complex test results, debug electrical wiring, and inspect machinery for wear. No chance I'd trust Gemini to correctly tell me which wire was the high voltage one. You're absolutely right! I apologize for providing a factually incorrect explanation. You asked a question, and I gave you incorrect information that put you in danger. That f…

That's not how AI or any kind of assistance is to be used. It's there to double-check and alert you to any possible mistakes you've made. You still have to use your own judgement. Have you never asked a person to take a look at some of your work? Did that mean that you have to follow and obey all of their advice?

Re: Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

#92

Post by agentultra » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:25 PM UTC

Their adoption results are going to be biased by the fact that Google has a vested interest in accelerating adoption and have been sticking their AI products in front of everything they can. Seems like this isn’t going to be a useful data set for making policy decisions.

Re: Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

#93

Post by ofjcihen » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #91

cube00 wrote: post #31

For example, automotive technicians and industrial mechanics use AI to interpret complex test results, debug electrical wiring, and inspect machinery for wear. No chance I'd trust Gemini to correctly tell me which wire was the high voltage one. You're absolutely right! I apologize for providing a factually incorrect explanation. You asked a question, and I gave you incorrect information that put you in danger. That f…

That's not how AI or any kind of assistance is to be used. It's there to double-check and alert you to any possible mistakes you've made. You still have to use your own judgement. Have you never asked a person to take a look at some of your work? Did that mean that you have to follow and obey all of their advice?

Unfortunately this is grounded in a perfect world. People are prone to believing things that “sound” believable and AI is very good at producing just that.

Re: Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

#94

Post by ACCount37 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

ofjcihen wrote: post #12

Look, say what you will about Ed but when you compare his analysis against numbers and data like what we see from Google here you can’t help but see a difference https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-openai-bubble/

Look, I will say what I want: I'd trust Sam Altman to provide accurate, unbiased information about the present and the future of AI tech before I would trust Ed Zitron to do the same.

And no, I wouldn't actually trust Sam "King of the Cannibals" Altman. But I would still expect him to start with far, far more accurate data, and distort it a lot less to suit his narrative than Zitron would. That's how low the bar is.

The man made saying "the AI industry is failing" his entire personality. He'll keep saying that regardless of what the AI industry is doing, forever. You can write "tech companies often overpromise and underdeliver" on a post-it note, stick it to a whiteboard, and that will provide about as much perspective as everything Zitron has ever written, or will ever write.

Re: Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

#95

Post by bombcar » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

Xalutiono wrote: post #84

bombcar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company is ten quadrillion dollars revenue (per second), you just haven't heard of it (it's from Canada). And we spend $3b/yr just to make sure our I is capitalized.

Why are you so snarky? I don't want to share my company name (obvously?!) but i'm willing to share that one number to give more insight. Feel free to not believe me. Your company doesn't use AI at all? You are unable to use it?

My AI is frontier enough to know why I'm so snarky, perhaps you should ask yours.

Re: Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

#96

Post by Xalutiono » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #74

Xalutiono wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They release real numbers from their practical expereince running on of the biggest ai based agents on the whole planet. You wrote a snarky comment without content. Would love to actually have a real discussion about critisism like this (not because i'm affiliated with google at all, but because I like to expand my knowledge through discussions)

Please engage in good faith. Google: 1. Is not remotely unbiased. 2. Does not have desirable models, coding harnesses, or data centre capacity for AI (they rent space from SpaceX). 3. Seems to be lagging far behind in all things AI. 4. Has serious problems with internal adoption of AI tools (such as banning most team members from using competitors, but allowing the DeepMind team to use Claude, etc.) Their opinion fro…

Of course a company is not unbiased. I don't blindly just take the information of an article, i add it to my signals and evaluate it.

But the dismissivness of a normal / small blog post is weird. You can't just complelty ignore and dismiss one of the biggest companies on the planet who is also one which pushes research of it too (aka deepmind)

2. They do have gemini which I don't use for coding but I use daily for other things, it works well. They have massive data center capacity, that they are now renting space from SpaceX shows how big the demand is.

3. yes weirdly enough but doesn't matter too much, Google at least can just afford the investment in comparision to any other company playing that game. My assumption is that on one side google is just bad in releasing products (antigravity vs. gemini cli vs. unable to buy AI tokens as a normal user etc.) but also that they might just have a broader field were they want to use AI.

Claude/Anthropic can focus on coding a lot to push that frontier while google might focus more on gemini assistent and also for coding and using gemini for GCP etc.

But doesn't matter still, google was fundamental for research into LLMs.

4. No clue how this is a problem relevant to the AI Economy. Deepmind might be more independent from Google itself, Google has an internal AI coding system before the LLM stuff became popular so Google has a clear incentive of keeping the feedback loop internal. Independent of this, google is well known to control their whole ecosystem starting from the mainboard firmware. Im not even aware of any other company on the planet doing it like this.

For me its valuable enough to have a quick look. I would probably not have posted it on HN or voted up.

I'm more surprised about the generic negative sentiments people communicate here instead of having nice discussions with value.

Re: Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

#97

Post by Miner49er » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #42

olalonde wrote: post #21

These AI threads seem to attract the same kind of repetitive, low-effort dismissals that crypto threads used to.

Crypto failed and pivoted. One still cannot pay bills, taxes, buy medicine, transportation, etc. directly with crypto. It is fair to assume the same story will happen to AI.

It's not fair at all, actually. They are two very different things.

Re: Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

#98

Post by linuxftw » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

zer00eyz wrote: post #24

> AI use at work is broad but shallow: Workplace adoption spans all industry sectors and also 68% of all occupations that collectively represent 90% of total U.S. employment. Im sorry but what? Plumbers, electricians, framers, welders, auto workers, hotel staff, restaurant staff are these people using AI in their jobs? Does someone at google think that these very much manual labor jobs are only 10 percent of the work…

A friend of mine is a plumber. They use ChatGPT to write commercial bids. They developed a prompt, feed in some details, and out pops a detailed bid.

Re: Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

#99

Post by Miner49er » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #82

One possible interpretation of this article is that it’s very much in support of the idea that the AI bubble is going to burst. > AI use at work is broad but shallow: Workplace adoption spans all industry sectors and also 68% of all occupations that collectively represent 90% of total U.S. employment. However within jobs, people are using AI selectively: in a typical job AI is used for only ~21% of tasks. Translation…

Yeah, there has to be a bubble for it to burst. There doesn't seem to be one yet.

Re: Google’s ATLAS is a look at how people are using AI

#100

Post by grey-area » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:31 PM UTC

rickydroll wrote: post #88

cube00 wrote: post #31

For example, automotive technicians and industrial mechanics use AI to interpret complex test results, debug electrical wiring, and inspect machinery for wear. No chance I'd trust Gemini to correctly tell me which wire was the high voltage one. You're absolutely right! I apologize for providing a factually incorrect explanation. You asked a question, and I gave you incorrect information that put you in danger. That f…

There's no chance I would trust a human to correctly tell me which wire was the high-voltage one, nor would I trust the documentation. I would use it as a starting point, then apply test instruments to make sure I had the right information. Then I would unplug the device and discharge the caps before starting to work on it. We need to start training people that AI answers are just as fallible as answers you get from…

AI psychosis.

No, LLM generated answers are not the same as those from a qualified expert. Of course you should trust a human if that is their job and you should never trust a word generator to give you accurate answers to an important question.