How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator • Hacker News Board

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#141

Post by webdoodle » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

Timsky wrote: post #82

YC remains a great source of creative inspiration for me. However, I tend to skip most AI-related content on HN, as the topic does more harm than good to me in my daily life. Some people around me delegate more and more decisions to the chat, and that frightens. Especially if you are somehow dependent on them or your work gets evaluated by some creepy AI-driven bossware. We should admit that AI, particularly LLMs, is…

I visibly cringe when I hear people talking about using AI for anything. With the help of the social disease we call 'social media', AI is destroying thought on all levels.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#142

Post by pixl97 » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #114

pixl97 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I see far fewer discussions of open source as compared to AI. Because the big discussions of open source were decades ago now. If you add up all the discussions of open source in the past I'd assume they'd out number the AI discussions now. Also, there is very little novel to discuss about open source. Now novel and 'important' are different things, but novel is what tends to write articles and get eyeballs.

I don't really know man half the population doesn't know what open source means or cares whereas a lot of people seemingly have lots of opinions about AI. One can liberate people from big tech and the other ties them to it in sorts. And there are very very more conversations about the latter than the former. The point of discussion is to bring change. There has been a real change in how usable Linux has been lets say…

>One can liberate people from big tech

A very small portion of the population, yes.

The percentage of the population that is going to run things on their own is comparatively tiny. Mass adoption isn't going to happen because convenience and support is what most people want. Again, these things have been discussed for decades, and yet we keep seeing tighter and tighter centralization of data and services. In phones it's pretty much dead. You have apple (totally locked) and Google (on their way to totally locked).

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#143

Post by skeeter2020 » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #78

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that even work to be profitable? I don't see a way on how they can suddenly become profitable if I can be honest when the fundamental economics of the thing seems a little broken to me...

Additional revenue services aside from selling LLM tokens, such as the commerce play OpenAI announced yesterday.

We're all in trouble but OpenAI more so if they're depending on consumer spending (specifically via AI) to float the general economy - let alone theirs.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#144

Post by Imustaskforhelp » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:35 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #128

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really know man half the population doesn't know what open source means or cares whereas a lot of people seemingly have lots of opinions about AI. One can liberate people from big tech and the other ties them to it in sorts. And there are very very more conversations about the latter than the former. The point of discussion is to bring change. There has been a real change in how usable Linux has been lets say…

> I don't really know man half the population doesn't know what open source means or cares whereas a lot of people seemingly have lots of opinions about AI. I'm not the person you responded to, but I'm certain that way less than half the population knows about or considers open source, that's one of those living in a bubble illusions. Ultimately those people aren't here and have no interest in being here.

I agree that those people aren't here and have no interest.

I would say that it is the issue of lack of knowledge if anything.

Yes, there is an infinite amount of knowledge available on the internet regarding open source and that's honestly where I learnt about stuff but its overwhelming at first and required something to kickstart the whole process/ be a catalyst of sorts.

Realizing using linux that privacy matters a lot and then realizing that I can just search open source alternative to X really helped me in the beggining/still sometimes does and there are a lot of low hanging fruits that can just be told for people to follow (like use signal instead of whatsapp) so there's definitely that.

I definitely am thinking about doing something about it tbh the more I think about it but I think that partially why people don't go around doing this is because of how AI seemingly sells and open source fundamentally doesn't sell

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#145

Post by notmyjob » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

frameset wrote: post #4

It's certainly eating up a lot of the threads on HN.

I remember when UBI was consuming too much bandwidth. Foreplay to the AI saturation now. Suppose it was useful to get the hype up enough to arrive where we are. Still odd we aren’t having any UBI threads now, when it’s actually relevant. (Not that I endorse the idea, which afaict traces back to Charles Murray.)

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#146

Post by skeeter2020 » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:38 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #20

Every company is an AI company and you should probably be less interested in building an AI and more interested in how you can apply AI to solve business needs that are not directly AI-related.

Is this my CTO posting on HN? I've heard this EXACT statement repeatedly over the past 18 months. It's one of those that sounds smart but when you pull it apart there's nothing of value here.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#147

Post by skeeter2020 » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

j45 wrote: post #99

Not entirely sure it's a bubble. LLM's have applicable tech in the world today, where it's usable where software prior hasn't been able to, I don't see it going away. Where folks are trying to apply it to replace deterministic software..? Mileage may vary.

A bubble doesn't mean there's no value whatsoever, but that we've surpassed rational thought and validation. Example: we ask good developers to evaluate tools and options; not jumping in blindly to the next big thing is what makes them good in the first place. With AI, executives are literally saying if you're not all-in you have no future here. THAT is a bubble.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#148

Post by rsynnott » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #19

If you drive through San Francisco on I-80, every single billboard between the Bay Bridge and the 101 is for some kind of AI service (except, amusingly, the one for Yudkowsky's new book about AI doom). All of them look terrible and completely useless. There was one that said "Still using PowerPoint? Use our AI slide maker instead" with a picture of a three-eyed cat, as though to brag that their service makes unappeti…

I was in San Francisco a couple of months ago, and the BART was completely full of ads for an _AI pull-request-reviewing tool_. Horrifying concept.

Also, oddly, a few for Mulvad of all things.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#149

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #144

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really know man half the population doesn't know what open source means or cares whereas a lot of people seemingly have lots of opinions about AI. I'm not the person you responded to, but I'm certain that way less than half the population knows about or considers open source, that's one of those living in a bubble illusions. Ultimately those people aren't here and have no interest in being here.

I agree that those people aren't here and have no interest. I would say that it is the issue of lack of knowledge if anything. Yes, there is an infinite amount of knowledge available on the internet regarding open source and that's honestly where I learnt about stuff but its overwhelming at first and required something to kickstart the whole process/ be a catalyst of sorts. Realizing using linux that privacy matters…

It's not knowledge, it's interest. You go looking because you care. But people don't even use desktops anymore. They could, but they don't, what's the point? I know devs who haven't even put together their own PCs in decades if they ever did at all.

I don't know how you shift that, but getting people interested would be the first step. They need to have a reason to want to learn.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#150

Post by kjkjadksj » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

kordlessagain wrote: post #58

hshshshshsh wrote: post #16

Is it just me or anyone else fed up with the startup community. I cannot find anyone who actually cares about values and have backbone. The stories I grew up with of Wozniak, Jobs, Larry and the hacker community does not resemble them anymore. Everyone I know who raised money is a moron or narcissist. YC has became like a resume builder. And the genuine hackers I know of are wasting life away working on pointless pro…

The AI bubble isn't what everyone thinks it is. Everyone's panicking about "AI features" being bolted onto products like it's 2010 and we're adding social login buttons. That's not the bubble. The bubble is the assumption that current software companies have defensibility. Here's the thing: we're not adding AI to products. We're removing the need for most products entirely. Nobody shipped without search after Google.…

I don’t know how you can claim all this when ai is nondeterministic and hallucinates. Menu based software is merely a way to trigger a function, the same function, every time you want to run it. Ai in its current incarnation cannot even do that.