Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

chrbutler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 467 posts

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#431

Post by chrz »

protocolture wrote: post #171
exceptione wrote: post #10

I think this is the best part of the essay: > But then I wonder about the true purpose of AI. As in, is it really for what they say it’s for? > There is a vast chasm between what we, the users, and them, the investors, are “sold” in AI. We are told that AI will do our tasks faster and better than we can — that there is no future of work without AI. And that is a huge sell, one I’ve spent the majority of this post dec…

It says absolutely nothing about anything. Its like 10 fearmongering tweets in a blender.

I think he's right on point

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#433

Post by schmidtleonard »

h2zizzle wrote: post #412
schmidtleonard wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History of non-european printing press development: cool! Summary of above: cool and useful! Example based on the above: cool and insightful! Slamming someone for using a european example because that's what they know: not cool, not insightful, not useful.

I don't know the history. That would be the source of my discontent. Every time things like this come up, the hyperfocus on Western experience erases whatever insight could have been gained by looking at the topic in its totality. My guess is that whatever dynamic the history of the printing press in the East might have lent to this conversation wasn't even considered until I brought it up. That was my contribution.…

[flagged]

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#434

Post by overfeed »

whstl wrote: post #426
overfeed wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing profits by reducing the cost of doing business isn't a complicated scheme. It's been done thousands of times, over many decades; first with cheaper contractors replacing full-time staff, then offshore labor, and now they are attempting to use AI.

It's not complicated because "bosses" accomplish this by saying "let's reduce the cost of doing business" to someone who actually does whatever is needed. The value of a boss/manager when there's no employees to do the work is negative. AI won't change this.

> "bosses" accomplish this by saying "let's reduce the cost of doing business" to someone who actually does whatever is needed

I don't know where you work, but in my experience, headcount reductions are strictly a top-down exercise. At best, the bosses may ask line managers who the essential people on their teams are. At worst, they get handed a list of people to fire, and they themselves may get the boot right after.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#435

Post by joks »

jstanley wrote: post #222
muldvarp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO the bleeding edge of what’s working well with LLMs is within software engineering because we’re building for ourselves, first. How are we building _for_ ourselves when we literally automate away our jobs? This is probably one of the _worst_ things someone could do to me.

This is kind of a myopic view of what it means to be a programmer. If you're just in it to collect a salary, then yeah, maybe you do benefit from delivering the minimum possible productivity that won't get you fired. But if you like making computers do things, and you get joy from making computers do more and new things, then LLMs that can write programs are a fantastic gift.

But you're not making the computer do things, you're making an idea for a new thing a computer can do and then outsourcing the part of the "making it do things" that is actually fun and fulfilling. I don't get it -- the joy for me comes from learning and problem solving, not coming up with ideas and then communicating those ideas to a tool that can do the rest of the job for me.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#437

Post by h2zizzle »

schmidtleonard wrote: post #433
h2zizzle wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the history. That would be the source of my discontent. Every time things like this come up, the hyperfocus on Western experience erases whatever insight could have been gained by looking at the topic in its totality. My guess is that whatever dynamic the history of the printing press in the East might have lent to this conversation wasn't even considered until I brought it up. That was my contribution.…

[flagged]

You should look in a mirror (and proofread). Everything you're accusing me of applies to you. It's an overwrought reaction which indicates that I hit a nerve. You'd better soothe that ego bruise with a bit of curiosity, than with the tantrum you've been throwing.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#438

Post by ben_w »

h2zizzle wrote: post #365
ben_w wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The printing press may have started by moving things away from the existing power base, but it very quickly got used by the existing power base, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_of_the_Vatican_Pr... And printing presses themselves ended up being licensed by the state, e.g. this in England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166...

Not to come down on either side, but I am begging commenters to refrain from using a Eurocentric lens when discussing a technology that wasn't even invented in Europe.

Ah, you think nothing is better than something?

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#439

Post by 01100011 »

kakacik wrote: post #213
friendzis wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment your code departs from typical patterns in the training set or ("agentic environment") LLMs fall over at best (i.e. can't even find the thing) or do some random nonsense at worst. IMO LLMs are still at the point where they require significant handholding, showing what exactly to do, exactly where. Otherwise, it's constant review of random application of different random patterns, which may or may not satis…

A contrarian opinion - I also didn't jump the train yet, its even forbidden in our part of company due to various regulations re data secrecy and generally slow adoption. Also - for most seasoned developers, actual dev activity is miniscule part of overall efforts. If you are churning code like some sweatshop every single day at say 45 its by your own choice, you don't want to progress in career or career didn't push…

Your comment is basically paraphrasing my responses to older threads on HN telling me I needed to use vibe coding.

Most of my day isn't coding. But sometimes it is. On those days, AI helps me get back to doing the important stuff. Sure, I like solving problems and writing code, but where I add value to my company is in bringing solutions to users and getting them into production.

I'm a systems/embedded engineer. In my 30 years of being employed I've written very little code, relatively speaking. I am not a code monkey cranking out thousands of lines per day or even week. AI is like having an on-demand intern who can do that if I need to, however. I basically gained an employee for free. AI can also saving me time debugging because look, I'm old and I really don't write all that much code. I mess up syntax sometimes. I can't remember some stupid C++ rule or best-practice sometimes. Now I don't have to read a book or google it.

AI is letting me put my experience and intuition to work much more efficiently than ever before and it's pretty cool.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#440

Post by 01100011 »

rafaelmn wrote: post #186
01100011 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's time to jump on the train. I'm a cranky, old, embedded SWE and claude 4.5 is changing how I work. Before that I laughed off LLMs. They were trash. Claude still has issues, but damn, I think if I don't integrate it into my workflow I'll be out of work or relegated to work in QA or devops(where I'd likely be forced to use it). No, it's not going to write all your code for you. Yes your skills are still needed to d…

This was true since Claude Sonnet 3.5, so over a year now. I was early on the LLM train building RAG tools and prototypes in the company I was working at the time, but pre Claude 3.5 all the models were just a complete waste of time for coding, except the inline autocomplete models saved you some typing. Claude 3.5 was actually where it could generate simple stuff. Progress kind of tapered off since tho, Claude is st…

Up until using claude 4.5 I had very poor experiences with C/C++. Sure, bash and python worked ok, albeit the occasional hallucination. ChatGPT-5 did ok with C/C++ and fairly well with python(again having issues with omitting code during iterations, requiring me to yell at it a lot). Claude 4.5 just works and it's crazy good.
Post reply on HN