Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI • Hacker News Board

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#341

Post by rundev » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

hahahacorn wrote: post #222

If society could redirect 10% of this anger towards actual societal harms we'd be such better off. (And yes getting AI spam emails is absolute nonsense and annoying). GenAI pales in comparison to the environmental cost of suburban sprawl it's not even fucking close. We're talking 2-3 orders of magnitude worse. Alfalfa uses ~40× to 150× more water than all U.S. data centers combined I don't see anyone going nuclear ov…

"The few dozen people I killed pale in comparison to the thousands of people that die in car crashes each year. So society should really focus on making cars safer instead of sending the police after me."

Just because two problems cause harms at different proportion, doesn't mean the lesser problem should be dismissed. Especially when the "fix" to the lesser problem can be a "stop doing that".

And about water usage: not all water and all uses of water is equal. The problem isn't that data centers use a bunch of water, but what water they use and how.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#342

Post by ofrzeta » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

hanwenn wrote: post #285

jabedude wrote: post #252

Did Google, the company currently paying Rob Pike's extravagant salary, just start building data centers in 2025? Before 2025 was Google's infra running on dreams and pixie farts with baby deer and birdies chirping around? Why are the new data centers his company is building suddenly "raping the planet" and "unrecyclable"?

Rob left Google a couple of years ago.

So what's he doing now? Is he retired?

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#343

Post by InsideOutSanta » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

jabedude wrote: post #252

Did Google, the company currently paying Rob Pike's extravagant salary, just start building data centers in 2025? Before 2025 was Google's infra running on dreams and pixie farts with baby deer and birdies chirping around? Why are the new data centers his company is building suddenly "raping the planet" and "unrecyclable"?

Everything humans do is harmful to some degree. I don't want to put words in Pike's mouth, but I'm assuming his point is that the cost-benefit-ratio of how LLMs are often used is out of whack.

Somebody burned compute to send him an LLM-generated thank-you note. Everybody involved in this transaction lost, nobody gained anything from it. It's pure destruction of resources.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#344

Post by nkrisc » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

pluc wrote: post #309

nkrisc wrote: post #227

What is going through the mind of someone who sends an AI-generated thank-you letter instead of writing it themselves? How can you be grateful enough to want to send someone such a letter but not grateful enough to write one?

> What is going through the mind of someone who sends an AI-generated thank-you letter instead of writing it themselves? Welcome to 2025. https://openai.com/index/superhuman/

This is verging on parody. What is the point of emails if it’s just AI talking to each other?

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#345

Post by Scubabear68 » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

All I have to say is this post warmed my heart. I'm sure people here associate him with Go lang and Google, but I will always associate him with Bell Labs and Unix and The Practice of Programming, and overall the amazing contributions he has made to computing.

To purely associate with him with Google is a mistake, that (ironically?) the AI actually didn't make.

Just the haters here.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#346

Post by WD-42 » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

tomlue wrote: post #267

nkrisc wrote: post #227

What is going through the mind of someone who sends an AI-generated thank-you letter instead of writing it themselves? How can you be grateful enough to want to send someone such a letter but not grateful enough to write one?

I think what all theses kinds of comments miss is that AI can be help people to express their own ideas. I used AI to write a thank you to a non-english speaking relative. A person struggling with dimentia can use AI to help remember the words they lost. These kinds of messages read to me like people with superiority complexes. We get that you don't need AI to help you write a letter. For the rest of us, it allows us…

I’d much rather read a letter from you full of errors than some smooth average-of-all-writers prose. To be human is to struggle. I see no reason to read anything from anyone if they didn’t actually write it.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#347

Post by macinjosh » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

gilrain wrote: post #274

jabedude wrote: post #252

Did Google, the company currently paying Rob Pike's extravagant salary, just start building data centers in 2025? Before 2025 was Google's infra running on dreams and pixie farts with baby deer and birdies chirping around? Why are the new data centers his company is building suddenly "raping the planet" and "unrecyclable"?

[flagged]

This is the most astro-turfy comment ITT

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#348

Post by xorgun » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #343

jabedude wrote: post #252

Did Google, the company currently paying Rob Pike's extravagant salary, just start building data centers in 2025? Before 2025 was Google's infra running on dreams and pixie farts with baby deer and birdies chirping around? Why are the new data centers his company is building suddenly "raping the planet" and "unrecyclable"?

Everything humans do is harmful to some degree. I don't want to put words in Pike's mouth, but I'm assuming his point is that the cost-benefit-ratio of how LLMs are often used is out of whack. Somebody burned compute to send him an LLM-generated thank-you note. Everybody involved in this transaction lost, nobody gained anything from it. It's pure destruction of resources.

Cutting trees for fuel and paper to send a letter burned resources. Nobody gained in that transaction

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#349

Post by caem » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

maplethorpe wrote: post #292

blibble wrote: post #241

> And by the way, training your monster on data produced in part by my own hands, without attribution or compensation. > To the others: I apologize to the world at large for my inadvertent, naive if minor role in enabling this assault. this is my position too, I regret every single piece of open source software I ever produced and I will produce no more

What people like Rob Pike don't understand is that the technology wouldn't be possible at all if creators needed to be compensated. Would you really choose a future where creators were compensated fairly, but ChatGPT didn't exist?

That would be like being able to keep my cake and eat it too. Of course I would. Surely you're being sarcastic?

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#350

Post by lwhi » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

jabedude wrote: post #252

Did Google, the company currently paying Rob Pike's extravagant salary, just start building data centers in 2025? Before 2025 was Google's infra running on dreams and pixie farts with baby deer and birdies chirping around? Why are the new data centers his company is building suddenly "raping the planet" and "unrecyclable"?

There aren't any rules that prevent us from changing course.

The points you raise, literally, do not affect a thing.