People Do Not Yearn for Automation • Hacker News Board

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#41

Post by wvenable » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 11:16 PM UTC

RigelKentaurus wrote: post #13

A poorly thought, as a result, a poorly-written article. Almost everyone wants to automate away the boring parts of their work and life. The author created a strawman, but that is not what AI is ("Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and it shouldn’t be.")

I've been listening to the Verge podcast and I've listened to Nillay refine this article piece by piece for weeks. He had the headline in mind for a long time and I've heard most of the points addressed in this article. It's now interesting to see all that distilled into this single article.

It's definitely not poorly thought out article. People want to automate away the boring parts of their work and life but, as the meme says, people want AI to do their dishes and laundry so they can do writing and art but instead AI does their writing and art so they can do the laundry.

I'm not sure what you think the straw man is here. I think he already addresses this in the article: "I’m not saying regular people don’t use Excel or Airtable to plan their weddings or have fun throwing PowerPoint parties, or even that AI won’t be useful to regular people over time [...] Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and shouldn’t be."

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#42

Post by smallmancontrov » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 11:25 PM UTC

Legend2440 wrote: post #35

smallmancontrov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to not die of Baumol's Cost Disease along the way, though.

Baumol's cost disease also benefits you, because it makes your wages go up even if you haven't increased productivity.

Maybe on doctornews, but this is hackernews. To us, Baumol's disease means your job, which has increased productivity, disappears, while your costs, which don't have increased productivity, go up.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#43

Post by jarjoura » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 1:12 AM UTC

fmajid wrote: post #8

People totally do want to offload the drudgery. That's why there is such a thing as dishwashers, and why OpenAI has 90 million users. But they also want the drudgery to be done reliably and not require as much work checking as it would have doing it in the first place.

I disagree. In college, I worked at a bagel shop, and one of my favorite parts of the job was washing the dishes and cleaning the equipment. It was incredibly therapeutic to have my headphones on, listening to music, and think about whatever, while also getting paid to clean.

I do use my dishwasher at home, and I love that dishwasher. However, I also cook and I want to get to bed at a reasonable hour.

Funny enough, I have come across many people in my life who usually only use their dishwashers as drying racks. It's a bit odd whenever I see it, but I get it.

So, people DO like drudgery. People even seek out drudgery. There is no one-size-fits-all of what it means to live a life, and as the article states, the biggest problem for adoption is that AI is so flattening as product.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#44

Post by ahartmetz » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 1:26 AM UTC

jarjoura wrote: post #43

fmajid wrote: post #8

People totally do want to offload the drudgery. That's why there is such a thing as dishwashers, and why OpenAI has 90 million users. But they also want the drudgery to be done reliably and not require as much work checking as it would have doing it in the first place.

I disagree. In college, I worked at a bagel shop, and one of my favorite parts of the job was washing the dishes and cleaning the equipment. It was incredibly therapeutic to have my headphones on, listening to music, and think about whatever, while also getting paid to clean. I do use my dishwasher at home, and I love that dishwasher. However, I also cook and I want to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Funny enough, I…

I mean look at some games like farming simulators. I have only played Slime Rancher. Sure the Slimes are cute and fun and there is a background story, but it also gets quite repetitive...

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#45

Post by whattheheckheck » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 1:30 AM UTC

kilroy123 wrote: post #28

mft_ wrote: post #20

I want us to automate food production and distribution. I want us to automate creation of building materials and creation of buildings. I want us to automate power generation, and see the marginal cost of power drop to zero. I want us to automate clean transport. I want us to automate cleaning up the planet.

Same here. Then let's automate building vast O'Neill cylinders and habitats we can live in.

Why

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#46

Post by greazy » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:55 AM UTC

pizzly wrote: post #33

I want to automate scientific research. There are too many problems, too much data and not enough scientists. We could find cures to cancer, rare genetic diseases, new forms of energy, better batteries, better every thing. Take finding cures for cancer. You could automate finding the drug candidates, automate the manufacture of the experiment and preparing the drug candidates, automate the testing and automate the an…

Automated drug discovery is already a thing. The proceeding steps are the issue, clinical trials, formulation, safety testing, etc, economies of scale etc.

True automation of scientific research requires true AI.

I'm not really sure why tech people keep suggesting scientists aren't incorporating the latest tech.

We are all about automation. The issue is funding.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#47

Post by deterministic » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 4:00 AM UTC

Take away automation from our factories and farmers and see how quickly civilisation will fall apart.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#48

Post by applied_heat » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 4:22 AM UTC

mft_ wrote: post #20

I want us to automate food production and distribution. I want us to automate creation of building materials and creation of buildings. I want us to automate power generation, and see the marginal cost of power drop to zero. I want us to automate clean transport. I want us to automate cleaning up the planet.

Power generation is largely automated !

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#49

Post by camgunz » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 7:25 AM UTC

mft_ wrote: post #20

I want us to automate food production and distribution. I want us to automate creation of building materials and creation of buildings. I want us to automate power generation, and see the marginal cost of power drop to zero. I want us to automate clean transport. I want us to automate cleaning up the planet.

Beyond the face that these are all already highly automated, this isn't what TFA is saying. People aren't angry there are planting machines or whatever; they're angry they're forced to forego anything you can't put in a DB, like their jobs or the texture of their lives. Ironically, you have a huge case of software brain.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#50

Post by camgunz » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 7:29 AM UTC

fmajid wrote: post #8

People totally do want to offload the drudgery. That's why there is such a thing as dishwashers, and why OpenAI has 90 million users. But they also want the drudgery to be done reliably and not require as much work checking as it would have doing it in the first place.

A million percent. I would love to offload the shit parts of SWE to a model. But models are wildly unreliable (hallucination rates are sky high, insignificant differences in prompts create hugely different output, etc) so I can't trust them to do it.