AI makes you boring • Hacker News Board

Re: AI makes you boring

#131

Post by stopachka » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

> Original ideas are the result of the very work you’re offloading on LLMs.

I largely agree that if someone put less work in making a thing, than it takes you to use it, it's probably not going to be useful. But I disagree with the premise that using LLMs will make you boring.

Consider the absurd version of the argument. Say you want to learn something you don't know: would using Google Search make you more boring? At some level, LLMs are like a curated Google Search. In fact if you use Deep Research et al, you can consume information that's more out of distribution than what you _would_ have consumed had you done only Google Searches.

Re: AI makes you boring

#132

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

Honestly, most people are boring. They have boring lives, write boring things, consume boring content, and, in the grand scheme of things, have little-to-no interesting impact on the world before they die. We don't need AI to make us boring, we're already there.

Re: AI makes you boring

#133

Post by 1shooner » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

Uehreka wrote: post #89

aeturnum wrote: post #21

I've seen people say something along the lines of "I am not interested in reading something that you could not be bothered to actually write" and I think that pretty much sums it up. Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text and when it goes well other practitioners of the form can appreciate its shape and direction. With AI you can get a lot of 'function' on the page (so to speak)…

> Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text… Whoa whoa whoa hold your horses, code has a pretty important property that ordinary prose doesn’t have: it can make real things happen even if no one reads it (it’s executable). I don’t want to read something that someone didn’t take the time to write. But I’ll gladly use a tool someone had an AI write, as long as it works (which these th…

>Code has a pretty important property that ordinary prose doesn’t have

But isn't this the distinction that language models are collapsing? There are 'prose' prompt collections that certainly make (programmatic) things happen, just as there is significant concern about the effect of LLM-generated prose on social media, influence campaigns, etc.

Re: AI makes you boring

#134

Post by imiric » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

elif wrote: post #114

And AI denial makes you annoying. Your preference is no more substantial than people saying "I would never read a book on a screen! It's so much more interesting on paper" There's nothing wrong with having pretentious standards, but don't confuse your personal aversion with some kind of moral or intellectual high ground.

I think there should be 10x more hardcore AI denialists and doomers to offset the obnoxiousness and absurdity of the other side. As usual, the reality is somewhere in the middle, perhaps slightly on the denialist side, but the pro-AI crowd has completely lost the plot.

Re: AI makes you boring

#135

Post by ossa-ma » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

Sorry to hijack this thread to promote but I believe it's for a good and relevant cause: directly identifying and calling out AI writing.

I was literally just working on a directory of the most common tropes/tics/structures that LLMs use in their writing and thought it would be relevant to post here: https://tropes.fyi/

Very much inspired by Wikipedia's own efforts to curb AI contributions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

Lmk if you find it useful, will likely ShowHN it once polished.

Re: AI makes you boring

#136

Post by fhd2 » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

Uehreka wrote: post #89

aeturnum wrote: post #21

I've seen people say something along the lines of "I am not interested in reading something that you could not be bothered to actually write" and I think that pretty much sums it up. Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text and when it goes well other practitioners of the form can appreciate its shape and direction. With AI you can get a lot of 'function' on the page (so to speak)…

> Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text… Whoa whoa whoa hold your horses, code has a pretty important property that ordinary prose doesn’t have: it can make real things happen even if no one reads it (it’s executable). I don’t want to read something that someone didn’t take the time to write. But I’ll gladly use a tool someone had an AI write, as long as it works (which these th…

Users typically don't read code, developers (of the software) do.

If it's not worth reading something where the writer didn't take the time to write it, by extension that means nobody read the code.

Which means nobody understands it, beyond the external behaviour they've tested.

I'd have some issues with using such software, at least where reliability matters. Blackbox testing only gets you so far.

But I guess as opposed to other types of writing, developers _do_ read generated code. At least as soon as something goes wrong.

Re: AI makes you boring

#137

Post by furyofantares » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #21

I've seen people say something along the lines of "I am not interested in reading something that you could not be bothered to actually write" and I think that pretty much sums it up. Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text and when it goes well other practitioners of the form can appreciate its shape and direction. With AI you can get a lot of 'function' on the page (so to speak)…

> "I am not interested in reading something that you could not be bothered to actually write"

At this point I'd settle if they bothered to read it themselves. There's a lot of stuff posted that feels to me like the author only skimmed it and expects the masses to read it in full.

Re: AI makes you boring

#138

Post by giancarlostoro » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #21

I've seen people say something along the lines of "I am not interested in reading something that you could not be bothered to actually write" and I think that pretty much sums it up. Writing and programming are both a form of working at a problem through text and when it goes well other practitioners of the form can appreciate its shape and direction. With AI you can get a lot of 'function' on the page (so to speak)…

Except its not. What's a programmer without a vision? Code needs vision. The model is taking your vision. With writing a blog post, comment or even book, I agree.

Re: AI makes you boring

#139

Post by buu700 » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

taude wrote: post #11

AI writing will make people who write worse than average, better writers. It'll also make people who write better than average, worse writers. Know where you stand, and have the taste to use wisely. EDIT: also, just like creating AGENT.md files to help AI write code your way for your projects, etc. If you're going to be doing much writing, you should have your own prompt that can help with your voice and style. Don't…

Time, effort, and skill being equal, I would suggest that AI access generally improves the quality of any given output. The issue is that AI use is only externally identifiable when at least one of those inputs is low, which makes it easy to develop poor heuristics.

No one finds AI-assisted prose/code/ideas boring, per se. They find bad prose/code/ideas boring. "AI makes you boring" is this generation's version of complaining about typing or cellular phones. AI is just a tool; it's up to humans how to use it.

Re: AI makes you boring

#140

Post by elif » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

imiric wrote: post #134

elif wrote: post #114

And AI denial makes you annoying. Your preference is no more substantial than people saying "I would never read a book on a screen! It's so much more interesting on paper" There's nothing wrong with having pretentious standards, but don't confuse your personal aversion with some kind of moral or intellectual high ground.

I think there should be 10x more hardcore AI denialists and doomers to offset the obnoxiousness and absurdity of the other side. As usual, the reality is somewhere in the middle, perhaps slightly on the denialist side, but the pro-AI crowd has completely lost the plot.

I'm all for well founded arguments against premature AGI empowerment..

But what I'm replying to, and the vast majority of the AI denial I see, is rooted in a superficial, defensive, almost aesthetic knee jerk rejection of unimportant aspects of human taste and preference.