Dropped to page four on HN:
+20 points, 2 hours ago, 41 comments
Sudden drop visible here: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=49338139
My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
51–60 of 221 posts
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#52Of course everyone hates AI. For most people, it's actively making their lives worse, not better. AI is a really effective technology when used with restraint, in appropriate places. But it's rarely being used with restraint, and it's being inserted just about everywhere. If you're trying to work in AI on a product related to education, you've got a really high bar to clear to prove that you're actually helping stude…
No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it while the people I know who hate it all seem to be idelogically motivated (seemingly this is a cause de célèbre on the left right now?)
Can we just flag obvious flame bait comments like this?
Theres clearly no meaningful thought behind a comment like this, and all it does is stir up engagement for laughs.
The comment thread clearly shows this isn't a meaningful discussion, it’s people shouting past each other.
How can AI be bad? I only see good things! :troll face: it must be a woke left thing! :troll face:
Come on.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#53Of course everyone hates AI. For most people, it's actively making their lives worse, not better. AI is a really effective technology when used with restraint, in appropriate places. But it's rarely being used with restraint, and it's being inserted just about everywhere. If you're trying to work in AI on a product related to education, you've got a really high bar to clear to prove that you're actually helping stude…
I have yet to meet anyone outside the tech elite who hates AI.
Creatives of any kind, for sure. Artists, illustrators, musicians.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#54Dropped to page four on HN: +20 points, 2 hours ago, 41 comments Sudden drop visible here: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=49338139
Thats because it’s flame bait; there no actual discussion going on, just people shouting.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I enjoy it. I have a small army of weird little golems that mostly do what I tell them to do. What's not fun about that? The other day I asked one of them (running directly on my laptop) to "draw an svg of a circle" and it "thought" for 20 minutes and produced this : https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer#url=ht... I'm still chuckling to myself about that two days later.
> What's not fun about that? Depends on the person, I never really had fun telling someone else what I wanted built or drawn. I've always enjoyed the process more than just the results, and having the results without the intellectual activity is boring. For software, the increase usage of AI code makes my team move much faster, but our software isn't robust anymore and I fear that our longterm mission is being compro…
It's that I asked for an SVG of a circle and it created a beautiful gradient filled animated technical diagram. I wanted something closer to
Qwen 3.8 27B on xhigh is a delightfully weird over-achiever.
Here's another fun one: "Generate an SVG of a pelican eating caviar and drinking expensive wine in a tony SF restaurant" - it thought about that for almost an hour! SVG and thinking trace here: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer#url=ht...
Aside from fun with over-engineered SVGs, I'm finding the challenge of getting AI-generated code to be robust, maintainable and better quality than if I'd typed it out myself to be deeply intellectually stimulating.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it while the people I know who hate it all seem to be idelogically motivated (seemingly this is a cause de célèbre on the left right now?)
> No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? You google something, and the AI overview makes shit up. Just happened the other day with my oven - it hallucinated a diagnostic step that doesn't exist on my model. You go to type an email in gmail, and it tries to suggest sentences as you're typing. Press the wrong key and now you have to delete what it inserted. The things it suggests are just wordy…
as regards posts online, left out the part where you fret (or do not know enough to fret) about the fact that you not knowing if it is a bot or not is part of the problem, or how it could affect you if you reply or not. many times, so many bots and drones have been unleashed looking for a juicy person to take down or troll that you find it difficult to interact online under your own identity, then find it difficult to show you have an online presence when you need to without worrying that that identity will get taken down a notch or three if someone who knows your online handle interacts with one that then goes after their contacts, and so on.
the part about medical "hallucinations" is especially spot on. my last attempt at an ai-enabled zoom session was so wrong it got almost every identifying thing about me wrong (eg, race), read my blood results wrong even though the outside of normal range color guidance was there (I am anemic), then near as I can tell the person after me was (redacted) and showed me as (redacted) (I have had at least five blood panels this year; i am not (redacted)). they may have also had some other diagnoses but i think maybe i am supposed to be bound by the hipaa the ai was ignoring. pretty bad.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it while the people I know who hate it all seem to be idelogically motivated (seemingly this is a cause de célèbre on the left right now?)
> No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? You google something, and the AI overview makes shit up. Just happened the other day with my oven - it hallucinated a diagnostic step that doesn't exist on my model. You go to type an email in gmail, and it tries to suggest sentences as you're typing. Press the wrong key and now you have to delete what it inserted. The things it suggests are just wordy…
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Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#58Of course everyone hates AI. For most people, it's actively making their lives worse, not better. AI is a really effective technology when used with restraint, in appropriate places. But it's rarely being used with restraint, and it's being inserted just about everywhere. If you're trying to work in AI on a product related to education, you've got a really high bar to clear to prove that you're actually helping stude…
No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it while the people I know who hate it all seem to be idelogically motivated (seemingly this is a cause de célèbre on the left right now?)
> No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse?
I’m not sure I was go quite as far. But there are certainly
Makes my life better: LLM chat subscription
Makes my life worse: “AI” features that don’t work replacing perfectly good non “AI” features (notably Google Maps and LinkedIn job board). I don’t want fuzzy AI filters, I want concrete filters that let me drill down and browse a result list.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it while the people I know who hate it all seem to be idelogically motivated (seemingly this is a cause de célèbre on the left right now?)
> No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? You google something, and the AI overview makes shit up. Just happened the other day with my oven - it hallucinated a diagnostic step that doesn't exist on my model. You go to type an email in gmail, and it tries to suggest sentences as you're typing. Press the wrong key and now you have to delete what it inserted. The things it suggests are just wordy…
most of these complaints aren't because of AI though, managers have always looked to make staff redundant when there is a cheaper alternative regardless of quality, politicians giving tax breaks to giant corporations? was always happening before AI came along
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? You google something, and the AI overview makes shit up. Just happened the other day with my oven - it hallucinated a diagnostic step that doesn't exist on my model. You go to type an email in gmail, and it tries to suggest sentences as you're typing. Press the wrong key and now you have to delete what it inserted. The things it suggests are just wordy…
as regards posts online, left out the part where you fret (or do not know enough to fret) about the fact that you not knowing if it is a bot or not is part of the problem, or how it could affect you if you reply or not. many times, so many bots and drones have been unleashed looking for a juicy person to take down or troll that you find it difficult to interact online under your own identity, then find it difficult t…
> as regards posts online, left out the part where you fret (or do not know enough to fret) about the fact that you not knowing if it is a bot or not is part of the problem, or how it could affect you if you reply or not. many times, so many bots and drones have been unleashed looking for a juicy person to take down or troll that you find it difficult to interact online under your own identity, then find it difficult to show you have an online presence when you need to without worrying that that identity will get taken down a notch or three if someone who knows your online handle interacts with one that then goes after their contacts, and so on.
Yep, I just went from the top of my head and I left a lot of other negative experiences out. I think a lot of people are moving to burner accounts or otherwise choosing to not interact under their real identities - it's just too easy to spin up automated harassment now.
> the part about medical "hallucinations" is especially spot on. my last attempt at an ai-enabled zoom session was so wrong it got almost every identifying thing about me wrong, read my blood results wrong even though the outside of normal range color guidance was there, then near as I can tell the person after me was (redacted) and showed me as (redacted) (I have had at least five blood panels this year; i am not (redacted)).
Another fun one: a friend of mine said he "was driving a car to Sedona" during a phone call describing a neck injury several months ago. His last two follow up appointments have both had a note to "follow up on the carcinoma". Now that it's in the context, it seems impossible to get LLMs to ignore it, because "carcinoma" is an important word. A human would not have this problem.