It's not just HN, have you seen mainstream news recently? It's just a hot topic and I think it's normal for people to talk about those a lot. If quantum computing ever goes mainstream, I'm sure you'll see a lot of articles about that as well.
The programming Reddit forbade AI posts. Unfortunately the result is NOT better level posts, but a wasteland instead.
How much of HN is AI?
101–110 of 370 posts
Re: How much of HN is AI?
#102Democratization of access has its victims. I miss the old newsgroups. I wish we could land again in that weird, colorful oceans of geeky individuals with their quirks and interesting nerdy takes. 15 years ago, HN was about bootstrapping and early YC stars. 10 years ago, HN was in full VC-enterprise sauce. 5 years ago, it was crypto and NFTs, and how I switch jobs every quarter. Now it is a blurry view into the future…
Re: How much of HN is AI?
#103Sometimes there's an obvious AI comment, how is it auto-hidden/downvoted?
Re: How much of HN is AI?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say, AI is probably the biggest thing to happen in tech, full stop. LLMs went from a toy to highly capable (along many dimensions) in just a few years. Which makes it very likely that in a few years more, we will be seeing crazy capabilities that leave us humans increasingly behind.
You really have to expand the list to ridiculous levels before you get to something as big. We've already left humans behind in many ways (but in others we've failed to build LLMs that know how to find the gaps in implementation that humans are leaving out) Cynics really say stuff like "but it's been 3 years and all they can claim is that it's changed text to speech, speech to text, photos to text, text to photos, pr…
FWIW:
The simultaneous "it's stupidly weak" and "it's dangerously strong" is a well known propaganda technique.
Re: How much of HN is AI?
#105Democratization of access has its victims. I miss the old newsgroups. I wish we could land again in that weird, colorful oceans of geeky individuals with their quirks and interesting nerdy takes. 15 years ago, HN was about bootstrapping and early YC stars. 10 years ago, HN was in full VC-enterprise sauce. 5 years ago, it was crypto and NFTs, and how I switch jobs every quarter. Now it is a blurry view into the future…
I joined HN 13 years ago (2 years after you), and back then I saw it as a bunch of libertarians and venture capitalists and some open source (and/or functional programming) enthusiast with a few interesting and nerdy projects. I was mostly here for the news about new and useful technology. I think the visual weight of the first group has increased over time as their projects of making a bunch of money while offering…
Anyhow - I find tech stuff interesting to a degree, but fundamentally I’m an entrepreneur that sees it as a tool. A means to an end. And I would love to find a place that still has that vibe. But anywhere entrepreneur related is always a cesspool of grift so it’s hard to find.
Re: How much of HN is AI?
#106Democratization of access has its victims. I miss the old newsgroups. I wish we could land again in that weird, colorful oceans of geeky individuals with their quirks and interesting nerdy takes. 15 years ago, HN was about bootstrapping and early YC stars. 10 years ago, HN was in full VC-enterprise sauce. 5 years ago, it was crypto and NFTs, and how I switch jobs every quarter. Now it is a blurry view into the future…
I think you answered your own question, simply un-democratize access. Go places with high barriers of entry.
Re: How much of HN is AI?
#107AI has turned me away from HN more and more. Most of the content is about using some data center based ML provider. My view is how so many ignore the environmental harm these constructs are doing; increasing ambient temperatures, inducing heavy metals into the water table, decreasing the access to water for human consumption in numerous drought areas, hostel ambient noise ... The wealth who are the majority finical b…
Note the intersection between eyewitness accounts of noise, water, and light pollution from datacenters and those datacenter owners' noteworthy political activity. To be specific, the operators of these datacenters are notorious bad actors in many different public spheres.
Edit: the truth is obviously very painful and unpopular in this thread.
Re: How much of HN is AI?
#108As much as I am one of the "In Betweeners" of AI (not hyper loving, nor hyper hating it) I do wish HN wasn't flooded with it, but its just the nature of LLMs currently, they are the new thing that has taken over our society in a drastic way, those who pretend otherwise will be surprised to know that the rest of society has moved forward with it.
Re: How much of HN is AI?
#109AI has turned me away from HN more and more. Most of the content is about using some data center based ML provider. My view is how so many ignore the environmental harm these constructs are doing; increasing ambient temperatures, inducing heavy metals into the water table, decreasing the access to water for human consumption in numerous drought areas, hostel ambient noise ... The wealth who are the majority finical b…
Re: How much of HN is AI?
#110AI has turned me away from HN more and more. Most of the content is about using some data center based ML provider. My view is how so many ignore the environmental harm these constructs are doing; increasing ambient temperatures, inducing heavy metals into the water table, decreasing the access to water for human consumption in numerous drought areas, hostel ambient noise ... The wealth who are the majority finical b…