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How much of HN is AI?

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Re: How much of HN is AI?

#271

Post by skydhash »

altcognito wrote: post #267
skydhash wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only a few months left for the core technologies of LLM, the transformer, to be a decade old (counting since the "Attention is all you need"). In a decade, we have gone from pure theory of computation (Turing paper in 1936) to the first general purpose computer (ENIAC in 1945). In 1971, the first email was sent over the network (ARPANET), by the early 1980s, we were looking at nationwide deployment of email s…

This is an entirely weird and bizarre conversation. The world today has network effects - specifically because of well, networking. It feels almost ridiculous comparing the impact of things like ENIAC to github because they aren't even in the same class. GIT and email (FYI, there is a predecessor to email in 1965 called MAIL) are specific implementations of systems that would have happened no matter what. GIT is awes…

> As an old person, I can tell you something: We could survive without computers and the internet. We did it.

As late as 2009, I was living without computers and internet. The most tech thingies in everyone home were the radio, the TV, the VCR (not everyone and half of them wasn't working properly) and a dumbphone.

I'm not saying that internet or any of the others is essential (in absolute). What I'm saying is that the supposedly "transformative" aspect of AI needs free offerings, dark patterns, and a mountain of hyping to just make it worthwhile to discuss in tech circles (removing the grifting on Linkedin). For everyone else, the most impact is the enormous amount of slop.

I paid for my computer. I'm paying for my internet connection and my electricity. I'm paying for my email service. Drop the free offering for any current AI service and see how much it is that transformative.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#272

Post by runarberg »

mrweasel wrote: post #217
dang wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs have helped us keep HN up and still (relatively) fast amid a huge onslaught of new traffic over the last year or so. We've been able to solve problems and find opportunities for optimization that we'd never have gotten to without the help of Claude or ChatGPT. Although this is one of those threads where people love to report how much they dislike HN, how it's a poor shadow of its former self, and how they barely…

Hopefully HN is just getting more popular, but isn't a large part of the "huge onslaught of new traffic" driven by AI companies scraping the site for content or writing comments for various reasons? Fixing the problems created by LLMs using LLMs seems like a bit like hiring a bully for security to prevent that same bully from beating you up. But yes, there's plenty of positive things that are now possible. See as a c…

I fear this is not the only reason even if it is true. The more negative reason is a loss of skill/talent. We used to be able to know what to do in these situations, and how to fix things when they went wrong. Companies like Y Combinator used to be able to hire talented systems engineers who knew how to minimize the risk of things going wrong, and fix them when they did.

Now with LLMs it is just vibe-coded until it is fixed. Find the right prompt and hope the statistics is in your favor. If this is the case, there is nothing positive about it.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#273

Post by kbelder »

otherayden wrote: post #225

I run https://www.unslop.news/ which uses an LLM (ironically) to filter out content discussing AI. There's text at the bottom to indicate what fraction of the first 3 pages gets filtered out, and it's pretty much always at 50% or more.

Then, why are you in this thread?

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#274

Post by ryandrake »

mrweasel wrote: post #203
anthonypasq wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i just gotta say that i find it hard to believe that this comment is true for you but you hang out on hackernews. almost everyone here is a software engineer or works in tech, they all use ai all day to do their entire jobs. > even thought the benefits aren't all that clear yet it isnt 2023 anymore. wtf are you talking about. >he hype will die down, especially once we start to see the actual costs, e.g. ChatGPT doesn…

> they all use ai all day to do their entire jobs I assure you they do not, many truly do not care and don't want to. That's just what the hype and the article and the stories tell you. The HN bubble tells you that's true, but 90% of my co-workers don't even want to touch Claude, despite being given a license. And again, if e.g. ChatGPT is providing so much value, why aren't people buying?

HN is in an extreme hype bubble around LLMs, because of AI coding. Normal people outside of the tech bubble range from 1. not caring at all about AI to 2. disliking or opposing it.

Meanwhile, here on HN, you have people who earnestly say things like "AI is the subtrate the future runs on"[1] (actual quote).

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49417949

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#275

Post by brazukadev »

Legend2440 wrote: post #239
thephyber wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance. Ignorance of the facts on the ground and the politics of the moment. Do you honestly believe that the ledger for automation has zero items in the "liabilities" column? Do you think that 100% of people whose job is displaced find another job in a reasonable amount of time and on the same order or pay / status? Do you believe that neighbors of recently built data centers have nothing to complain about? The t…

>Do you think that 100% of people whose job is displaced find another job in a reasonable amount of time and on the same order or pay / status? Do you not realize that the only reason we are not impoverished dirt farmers right now is because of automation? Automation is what creates wealth. None of these 'high pay/status' jobs would exist if it were not for automating the previous generation of jobs. Every time we au…

> what if it only makes the rich richer and we all starve??' Then automation happens anyway

Revolutions also happen anyway. Not sure if automated security would be enough to prevent them.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#276

Post by ryandrake »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #66

> In the first half of the month, roughly 60% of the daily HN lineup was AI-related or AI-generated, tapering off to ~50% as we approached the end of the month. This is up from 40% in February. This aligns with my much less scientific research. Every now and again, when I remember to do it, I will skim the top 10 stories and count how many are AI-related. I find it is very consistently in the 4-6 bracket. Probably a…

I've definitely seen 9/10. It gets ridiculous!

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#277

Post by altcognito »

skydhash wrote: post #271
altcognito wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an entirely weird and bizarre conversation. The world today has network effects - specifically because of well, networking. It feels almost ridiculous comparing the impact of things like ENIAC to github because they aren't even in the same class. GIT and email (FYI, there is a predecessor to email in 1965 called MAIL) are specific implementations of systems that would have happened no matter what. GIT is awes…

> As an old person, I can tell you something: We could survive without computers and the internet. We did it. As late as 2009, I was living without computers and internet. The most tech thingies in everyone home were the radio, the TV, the VCR (not everyone and half of them wasn't working properly) and a dumbphone. I'm not saying that internet or any of the others is essential (in absolute). What I'm saying is that t…

> As late as 2009, I was living without computers and internet. The most tech thingies in everyone home were the radio, the TV, the VCR (not everyone and half of them wasn't working properly) and a dumbphone.

The VCR? Hrm. What part of the world are you from? No computer and no internet? Hrm.

> Drop the free offering for any current AI service and see how much it is that transformative.

It is currently being paid for by millions of companies in Microsoft products, and I can tell you that many companies are happy with it.

Microsoft honestly has done a tremendous job integrating it with some of their products, less so in others. (Excel is a disaster, Teams has been pretty good)

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#278

Post by encrypted_bird »

mrweasel wrote: post #60
jrflo wrote: post #10

My reaction is: that's an appropriate amount. AI is probably the biggest thing to happen (in tech) in the last two decades, so I think it's fair that it's taking up a lot of the discourse.

It seems a bit self-reinforcing. AI makes almost zero (positive) impact on my day to day life and isn't actually something I interact with directly and the same holds true for most people I talk to. There's a few of my friends in tech for whom AI has obviously massively changed how they work, but again not in a clear positive direction. To me there seems to be a push to heavily prompte LLMs, even thought the benefits…

>because the technology needs to find it's way into applications and appliances.

I hear what you're saying, but speaking for myself: can we *not*? I really have absolutely zero interest in having ChatGPT on my microwave or refrigerator. In fact, I'd rather have my appliances *not* be connected to the Internet, all things being equal.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#279

Post by hn_submit »

mgl wrote: 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…

Usenet is still here. I'm using it on a regular basis. The point is very few others are.

Re: How much of HN is AI?

#280

Post by lordfrito »

alephnerd wrote: post #238
seizethecheese wrote: post #112

This is categorizing with a pretty broad brush, it seems. I took a look at a random day, and the articles that are claimed to be AI are Waymo publishing a model for self driving cars and a post about scams in Apple News ads. Sure, Waymo’s model is AI and the scams in Apple News are often AI generated, but this isn't some sort of monoculture of LLM articles. Ironically, this article could have been improved by using a…

The reality is bots and bot-like behavior (honestly, much more likely the latter than the former from what I've heard IRL) are both equally effective in fucking up discourse on HN. It absolutely has gone to shit. And a number of longtime readers and commenters have called this out as well. The degradation started during COVID with the culture war crap (a plurality of accounts I bump into that comment and post are now…

> No one who matters care about HN anymore compared to 5 years ago, and those who are left are basically using it for the same reason a smoker continues to smoke despite feeling indifferent.

Any idea where they've moved on to? Asking for a friend...

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