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How much of HN is AI?

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101–110 of 370 posts

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#101
post #34

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.

Forbidding AI posts is a net positive, not negative.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#102
post #14

Democratization 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…

Eternal September: AI edition

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#103

Sometimes there's an obvious AI comment, how is it auto-hidden/downvoted?

Contrary to popular belief, it's quite easy to spot something written with AI. You just need the skill/gift. I usually spot them rather quickly and will flag on sight. Other users will do the same.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#104
post #29

Earlier 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…

> "They lie about it being dangerous!" and simulataneously "They hacked a system with zero day exploits! Everyone involved should goto jail!"

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?

#105
post #14

Democratization 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…

I joined in 2008, that was even after lurking for a while, and it’s almost unrecognizable now in comparison has been for many years. Was mostly entrepreneurship, tech was present but was a means to an end. It wasn’t tech for the sake of tech, which is what it feels like in the recent past. The discussion on entrepreneurship topics seems to have an employee mindset more so than an owner mindset. I find it similar to how renters vilify landlords but being a landlord is not massively glamorous and can be quite risky, renters are generally out of touch with the costs involved and the profit of a landlord is all I’m saying. There’s definitely some shitty landlords tarnishing the reputation of them all. This is what has happened in tech too, the startups we loved turned evil. My gut reaction of any new tech product is no longer curiosity, it’s mistrust.

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?

#106
post #14

Democratization 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.

You don't even need explicit barriers, the masses are staying on Reddit/Twitter regardless. Only the discerning are seeking out better and newer options and those options are staying the right size rather than absorbing the eternal September.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#107

AI 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…

It is a tragedy that a handful of irresponsible outlier datacenter operators have soured public opinion so thoroughly in the past 2 years. For comparison, Loudon County, VA is among the wealthiest in the country and is home to the largest aggregation of datacenters in the world. Yet these datacenters don't have the externalities that are mentioned here.

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?

#108
I think its very easy to note and come to the conclusion that this is the most disruptive tech of our industry. HN is full of people from all walks of life, but people from all walks of life are using AI (or LLMs). The way I hear people describe using AI is the way people used to talk about Google.

As 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?

#109

AI 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…

I really wish there was a way to filter out discussions about AI on HN. It feels like lately they take up a good 1/3 of posts on the front page. I don't want to hear about some new AI startup.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#110

AI 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…

Well your point on it being wrong to interact with a whole industry sounds more like a policy and political party line. This is just nerds discussing bleeding edge things.
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