AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust • Hacker News Board

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#51

Post by daveguy » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 5:37 PM UTC

nonsensical_ wrote: post #43

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there was an actual spark, it was the 2016 election as this was the first time when all the disinformation, professional troll farms and Russian influence truly came into play on a world changing scale. I'll never forget how insane HN went in 2016, felt like basically the whole English language internet went insane. And it's been a decade since then (wow).

Even back then it seemed like a tempest in a teapot situation on HN. People thought they were raw and edgy saying “fuck Trump” like it amounts to anything. I remember at least one, maybe two YC-backed companies dedicated to removing Trump. That’s right - a startup business plan that amounts to impeaching a president. Now there’s a billion+ dollar enterprise. All this, and here we are in 2026. It just shows immaturity…

But also, fuck trump.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#52

Post by Havoc » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

mitxela wrote: post #23

Havoc wrote: post #15

I worry for the next generation. You and I have a baseline. A brain that did most of it’s developmental phase while there was still some unified accepted version of truth (even if dubious) Future generations will have to develop in a more splintered reality. A world where there is nothing to hold on to. Not even a dubious commonly accepted narrative

note this started years before generative AI, arguably around 2014 with the gamergate era

Agreed. Truthiness started to wobble earlier, but I think it's fair to say it still existed. New era will shatter it into a thousand pieces

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#53

Post by eigencoder » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

philbo wrote: post #22

I think one way to approach this is by deliberately choosing less capable tools (but still AI-assisted). You don't have to delegate huge tasks to agents wholesale, but it requires fighting against mainstream harnesses to do so because they exist to sell you more tokens. Model providers are not incentivised to offer less autonomous flows. I wrote about this frustration a few months ago [1], then realised that if the m…

Have you tried `pi`? What do you think of it?

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#54

Post by OroPla » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #15

I worry for the next generation. You and I have a baseline. A brain that did most of it’s developmental phase while there was still some unified accepted version of truth (even if dubious) Future generations will have to develop in a more splintered reality. A world where there is nothing to hold on to. Not even a dubious commonly accepted narrative

I am not sure I believe in this "unified accepted version of the truth". Before the Internet it was a lot easier for the unified media [1] to convince people of whatever it wanted them convinced, but I find it a lot better for people to be exposed to opposing views. Who knows, maybe your country is the bad guy [2].

[1] https://pomf.space/MkiGm3hi.mp4

[2] https://youtu.be/3K1Z-8EvS74

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#55

Post by marssaxman » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 7:48 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #15

I worry for the next generation. You and I have a baseline. A brain that did most of it’s developmental phase while there was still some unified accepted version of truth (even if dubious) Future generations will have to develop in a more splintered reality. A world where there is nothing to hold on to. Not even a dubious commonly accepted narrative

The experience you envision does not sound so strange to me, having grown up in an intensely religious subculture which had a sense of truth quite distinct from that of mainstream society. Observing the blatant conflict between different communities' world-views engendered a healthy skepticism which has served me well through life. I think the kids will be all right.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#56

Post by monegator » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #15

I worry for the next generation. You and I have a baseline. A brain that did most of it’s developmental phase while there was still some unified accepted version of truth (even if dubious) Future generations will have to develop in a more splintered reality. A world where there is nothing to hold on to. Not even a dubious commonly accepted narrative

we still have books. Hard truth. Hoard books.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#57

Post by icedchai » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 10:39 PM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #42

scrollaway wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may have been when you noticed it but it wasn’t the spark. If there was an actual spark, it was the 2016 election as this was the first time when all the disinformation, professional troll farms and Russian influence truly came into play on a world changing scale. But there was splintering of online communities and the death of nuance for years prior as well. Twitter contributed a lot by giving voices to everyone,…

> If there was an actual spark, it was the 2016 election as this was the first time when all the disinformation, professional troll farms and Russian influence truly came into play on a world changing scale. I'll never forget how insane HN went in 2016, felt like basically the whole English language internet went insane. And it's been a decade since then (wow).

2016 was an acceleration point into madness. We were going down hill anyway, and the hill suddenly steepened. Covid didn't help. Now we have half the world with AI psychosis. I can only hope things even out a bit in the next 10 years... but they won't.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#58

Post by vouaobrasil » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 10:42 PM UTC

Art9681 wrote: post #20

Every generation has had tech doomers. Every single one. History repeats. Yet we collectively move forward. This time it will be no different. These folks are wasting time when they could be doing something productive.

Actually, it seems that every time we do move forward, we do make things worse. So I think the tech doomers actually have a point.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#59

Post by danjl » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 10:59 PM UTC

The assumptions we made about code always led to the biggest issues. If you assumed a junior engineer, or even a senior engineer not familiar with the local practices, would not make certain mistakes, then those mistakes always slipped through. If anything, the AI makes us be _better_ reviewers, since we need to check more of our assumptions at the door. I used to check the compiler assembly output, in case I could optimize it either by hand, or by changing my code to use a do-while instead of a for loop. I don't do that anymore. The same thing is happening with AI-generated code. I used to have to check it all very carefully, and regenerate code when the AI chose to add a whole new mechanism to the code base rather than re-using an existing mechanism, to keep the code solid. That happens less and less, and soon, it won't make sense to read over the code at all. Maybe in some specific circumstances that will be necessary, but less and less overall. And that's ok. We have moved to higher and higher levels of abstraction over the decades that I've been coding, and each time we can take on bigger problems and invent new things.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#60

Post by icedchai » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 11:05 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #40

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense yes. I trust that my coworkers will be accountable for their outcomes and accomplish them with the high quality bar I know they intrinsically hold themselves to. And that they understand our shared goals and if they don't, they will work to become aligned. And if I can't say that for a coworker, well, that's performance feedback.

Your coworkers are if anything less reliably deterministic than an AI. And the human version of a prompt injection is called social engineering and it’s far more of an issue than actual prompt injection and has been for an extremely long time.

Prompt injection is often not the issue: it's prompt quality. If given a vague spec (prompt), the human is more likely to understand the problem domain, see what's missing, ask clarifying questions. AI is more likely to assume and take a probable path, which may not always be correct. It's (probably) not going to tell you no, what you're asking makes no sense.