Please stop the AI confidence theater • Hacker News Board

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#271

Post by Razengan » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 12:54 PM UTC

saratogacx wrote: post #242

Razengan wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unironically UBI or something similar could eliminate the need for -most- people to resort to petty scams.

Probably not, it just re-baselines. Now the scams aren't for bread money but are for entertainment money. If the time resource isn't changing and the effort isn't changing but the needs fulfilled become wants fulfilled you're getting more joy from each dollar scammed instead of just substance. It may make pity scams less effective though so I'd expect the implementation to change to focus more on creating urgency and…

> Now the scams aren't for bread money but are for entertainment money.

The prospect of not being able to pay for food or rent carries a desperation that isn't there when just wanting to buy a video game or hire a Hooker :)

Maybe with hard drug addiction, but that's a different societal problem to tackle.

> it just re-baselines

If fewer people are chronically -desperate- for money, it could leave a smaller workforce pool available to professional scammers for "hiring ghost writers to pump out low quality ebooks" or "paying people to leave 5 star reviews" etc

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#272

Post by rnd33 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

apsurd wrote: post #165

harimau777 wrote: post #159

Can someone explain to me: I have big problems with how AI companies stole artist's art and I have big concerns with how AI might be overused or misused. However, I don't understand how people can still say that AI is useless. Everyday when I use AI I am impressed with everything it can do. Particularly in coding, AI is useful right now (this may or may not be due to how messy the codebase that I'm working in is). To…

from a coding perspective, it’s about actual value creation. the llms cost money. The subscriptions are a great value subsidized by the frontier model companies. llms ability to output usable code is insane, I agree. It changed the industry and the shape of what the job means. But the ability to code 10 X more output doesn’t magically create more value. In fact, I am personally skeptical and I’m planning on the first…

Subsidized from a capex perspective maybe, but the profit margins for API-priced inference tokens are likely very high.

Also, a lot of people get stuck on the idea that the main use case of LLMs is to generate more production code. I don't see it like that at all anymore. It's just as useful or even more useful as a problem-solving partner, generating throw-away prototypes, conducting experiments, verifying assumptions against code and documentation, performing one-off UI or smoke testing.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#273

Post by AaronAPU » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

drawfloat wrote: post #223

AaronAPU wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally do own a business and my profits are held back by the mere fact that I don’t actively try to manipulate people into giving me their money.

Why does your username contain “APU”?

It’s part of my identity? Nobody is going to see those letters, google them, find my products, figure out wtf they even are and buy them. To call it marketing is stretching the definition to the point of absurdity.

The idea that you can’t even in passing mention something you spend all day every day working on, because then it’s “marketing” is exactly the sort of consequence which leads to so many of us loathing marketing as an industry.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#274

Post by cwmoore » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #268

cwmoore wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a name for this right? Marketers that discredit free markets, lawyers that ruin the law, accountants w bank on loopholes, social services that thrive without a social safety net, the lobbyists of democracy, what else? Actual mercenaries and prostitutes kinda fall under the “all is fair in love and war” frame, but the others?

> Actual mercenaries and prostitutes kinda fall under the “all is fair in love and war” frame Why single out sex workers here? I understand the other examples, but unless you're talking about sex workers tricking people/robbing them or something else, it seems like a service-profession like any other, like a cleaner or what not, but I'm guessing you wouldn't actually put 'Actual mercenaries and cleaners kinda fall un…

So no single term, for something so widespread, must be taboo to talk about, or too risky to address, and threaten the social status of someone connected to the uglier side of a profession.

Of course I didn’t “single out” anyone, but you got that.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#275

Post by joecasson » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 2:19 AM UTC

cassianoleal wrote: post #246

Cytobit wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seek out services when a need arises. Marketers' job to invent new needs that didn't exist before

Exactly that. Their job is to manipulate me into believing I need something that has never missed in my life - enough for me to trade my own health (in the form of work hours, which I exchange for money) for it. Literally trying to convince me that a thing I never wanted or needed is worth dying a little in exchange for it.

A plumber puts an ad in the paper / Google for their services in your area. This makes you aware of their services. This is marketing their services to you. By seeing the ad, are you manipulated into using their services?

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#276

Post by AlexeyBelov » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 5:56 AM UTC

senordevnyc wrote: post #257

comfysocks wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I too use LLM coding tools all day everyday. If we’re specifically talking about the arguments in this thread, I have experienced both sides of the argument. Some use cases are more in-distribution than others. I wouldn’t dismiss either side out of hand. I see it more as a “yes, but…”

I’m talking about this kind of inane bullshit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48775974 Or even worse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48775860

But you _are_ building a SaaS according to your bio.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#277

Post by AlexeyBelov » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 5:59 AM UTC

ghusto wrote: post #72

> But show me something that has become so critical in your day that if I took it away tomorrow, your work would actually fall apart. Show me something truly life changing. - I no longer look at log files. If there's an MCP that gets access, I don't even download them - I don't look up implementation details, just say "I want this bit to do X". In general, I don't concern myself with technical details anymore - I don…

> I don't concern myself with technical details anymore. I don't try to debug.

To brag about this openly...

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#278

Post by its_ethan » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #250

its_ethan wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels a little disingenuous to ignore the second half of his final sentence/conclusion. Feels like you're trying to do some kind of "gotcha". The main thrust of what he was saying is in the second half: "a road sweeper could also do theirs if the sweeping trucks went away too" - you could do your job tomorrow without an IDE auto-completing common syntax, but it's a useful tool for many people. OP is saying that AI…

The original intent of TFA was "Show me something truly life changing" (emphasis mine). "No longer look at log files, or look up implementation details, or don't try to debug" are marginal improvements to already existing processes, not truly life changing. It's just more of the same but more efficient. The point is that with this AI technology, we're putting up with a lot of shit -- everything is getting worse acros…

OP hadn't been responding to any claims about being "truly life changing" he was addressing the point regarding what parts of his day are now reliant on AI such that his work would be more difficult without it.

You're the one holding him to a standard that it be "truly life changing" when that was never what he was addressing in his comment. (You're also the one adding emphasis that increases the requirements to overcome the authors, and your own, doubt). And who are you to say that these things didn't truly change the OP comments life? Not having to look up implementation details could be a time save for them on the order of hours per week. That could free up time for him to develop a new hobby, start working out, or any other manner of things that could literally change his life. You're not the only one who gets to decide what life changing means.

Also, it really is worth reflecting on the fact that we are where we are as a society because of a bunch of cumulative "I'm X% better at my job" advancements. That's literally one of the main through-lines in technological advancement since the stone age. Another through-line is that technology (even "truly life changing" technology) is frequently over-hyped. There's really nothing new going on here.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#279

Post by Izkata » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

joecasson wrote: post #275

cassianoleal wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly that. Their job is to manipulate me into believing I need something that has never missed in my life - enough for me to trade my own health (in the form of work hours, which I exchange for money) for it. Literally trying to convince me that a thing I never wanted or needed is worth dying a little in exchange for it.

A plumber puts an ad in the paper / Google for their services in your area. This makes you aware of their services. This is marketing their services to you. By seeing the ad, are you manipulated into using their services?

Scroll back up and notice most of these comments are distinguishing "marketing" from "marketers". I think a lot of people also wouldn't consider just an ad as marketing without some further details (such as the comment you replied to).

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#280

Post by ModernMech » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:31 PM UTC

its_ethan wrote: post #278

ModernMech wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original intent of TFA was "Show me something truly life changing" (emphasis mine). "No longer look at log files, or look up implementation details, or don't try to debug" are marginal improvements to already existing processes, not truly life changing. It's just more of the same but more efficient. The point is that with this AI technology, we're putting up with a lot of shit -- everything is getting worse acros…

OP hadn't been responding to any claims about being "truly life changing" he was addressing the point regarding what parts of his day are now reliant on AI such that his work would be more difficult without it. You're the one holding him to a standard that it be "truly life changing" when that was never what he was addressing in his comment. (You're also the one adding emphasis that increases the requirements to over…

> You're the one holding him to a standard that it be "truly life changing" when that was never what he was addressing in his comment.

Then maybe he shouldn't have quoted a portion asking for "truly life changing examples that can't be done without AI" with examples that are not lifechanging, and then concede that yes, his job can still be done without AI.

No one argues that AI provides marginal benefits and makes some people's tasks more efficient. But people are noticing that leaders of AI companies have promised everything from "universal high income" to "universal basic compute" and none of that is really happening.

Meanwhile, the big negatives are here now -- job losses, pay cuts, data centers taking over land, poisoning water, and straining electricity grids. If we're going to put up with those downsides, it's reasonable for people to ask where the truly lifechanging upsides are (the whole point of TFA and this entire Hacker News thread), and "I don't have to debug my PRs anymore" is decidedly not that.