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

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

skarlso.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 116 posts

Re: Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#51

Post by sokoloff »

stavros wrote: post #26

I feel like this article makes the same tired point I see every time a new technology comes alone: "but if we don't know how to shoe our own horses any more because we got cars, soon nobody will know how to shoe horses!" Yeah. And that's OK. Because nobody will need to shoe horses any more! If I forget how to write tests, what's the problem? It means that I never need to write tests any more. If I do need to write te…

How many times per year do you hear people saying something so obviously flawed that you first wonder how they feed themselves, only to realize with horror that no one else seems to notice and instead is transmitting and discussing the idea as it was some grand insight they’d just never thought about it that way?

Critical thinking skills are skills that I think are incredibly useful and, if never taught or allowed to atrophy you can get, well, this...

People not understanding basic science, arithmetic, and reading comprehension at what was once an 8th grade level, can be easily tricked in everyday situations on matters that harm themselves, their family, and their community. If we dig deeply enough, I bet we could find some examples on this theme in modern times.

Re: Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#52

Post by pell »

philosophty wrote: post #35

The elephant in the room here is that, like so many issues, AI has become political for some people. In this case your "AI skeptic friends" are your "defund the police" and "abolish ICE" friends. For 95% of people AI is just a new technology to be loved and feared. There are some real technical debates to be had about the capabilities of LLMs and agents but that's not what's driving this "AI skepticism" at all. The "…

> The elephant in the room here is that, like so many issues, AI has become political for some people. In this case your "AI skeptic friends" are your "defund the police" and "abolish ICE" friends. For 95% of people AI is just a new technology to be loved and feared.

I really don’t think there is this “elephant” at all. If you reduce critique, skepticism and fear people might have to political slogans of mainly fringe online activists, I wonder how objective your assessment of those attitudes can actually be.

I recommend you take a look at this research published by Pew. You can see that concern about AI is much higher than 5% and is shared across the political spectrum: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/03/how-the-us-p...

Re: Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#53

Post by stavros »

sokoloff wrote: post #51
stavros wrote: post #26

I feel like this article makes the same tired point I see every time a new technology comes alone: "but if we don't know how to shoe our own horses any more because we got cars, soon nobody will know how to shoe horses!" Yeah. And that's OK. Because nobody will need to shoe horses any more! If I forget how to write tests, what's the problem? It means that I never need to write tests any more. If I do need to write te…

How many times per year do you hear people saying something so obviously flawed that you first wonder how they feed themselves, only to realize with horror that no one else seems to notice and instead is transmitting and discussing the idea as it was some grand insight they’d just never thought about it that way? Critical thinking skills are skills that I think are incredibly useful and, if never taught or allowed to…

If they're useful, they won't atrophy. It's as simple as that.

Re: Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#54

Post by ImHereToVote »

stavros wrote: post #41
ImHereToVote wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are both right. You won't need the skills. The problem is that you will want to eat and have housing. Maybe we get UBI. But if Jeff Bezos and some friends own all of the production. What would they do with your UBI dollars? Where can he spend them? He can make his own yachts and soldiers.

You're making a logical leap in "you don't need the skills, but there's someone willing to pay you for them". Who is this person who's paying for useless skills, and doesn't that go against the definition of "need"?

Oh, I agree with you. Perhaps I phrased it poorly.

Re: Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#55

Post by stavros »

ang_cire wrote: post #43
stavros wrote: post #26

I feel like this article makes the same tired point I see every time a new technology comes alone: "but if we don't know how to shoe our own horses any more because we got cars, soon nobody will know how to shoe horses!" Yeah. And that's OK. Because nobody will need to shoe horses any more! If I forget how to write tests, what's the problem? It means that I never need to write tests any more. If I do need to write te…

> "but if we don't know how to shoe our own horses any more because we got cars, soon nobody will know how to shoe horses!" No, this would be more akin to saying, "if we don't know how to change our car's oil anymore because we have a robot that does it, soon nobody will know, while still being reliant on our cars." For your analogy to work, we would have to be moving away from code entirely, as we moved away from ho…

> we don't know how to change our car's oil anymore because we have a robot that does it

OK, are we worried that all the robots will somehow disappear? Why would I have to change my own oil, ever, if the robot did it as well as I did? If it doesn't do it as well as I did, I'm still doing it myself.

Re: Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#56

Post by stavros »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #54
stavros wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a logical leap in "you don't need the skills, but there's someone willing to pay you for them". Who is this person who's paying for useless skills, and doesn't that go against the definition of "need"?

Oh, I agree with you. Perhaps I phrased it poorly.

Oh, if you mean that an entire job sector will get automated away, and shareholders will keep yet more value for themselves, I definitely agree there.

Re: Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#57

Post by oulipo »

I think the issue with the original article (and this one) is that it COMPLETELY glosses over the major threats of AI to climate, trust in democracies, and the social fabric of our societies.

Which ARE being attacked right now

Re: Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#58

Post by antics »

The legacy of the electric motor is not textile factories that are 30% more efficient because we point-replaced steam engines. It's the assembly line. The workforce "lost" the skills to operate the textile factories, but in turn, the assembly line made the workflow of goods production vastly more efficient. Industrial abstraction has been so successful that today, a small number of factories (e.g., TSMC) have become nearly-existential bottlenecks.

That is the aspiration of AI software tools, too. They are not coming to make us 30% more efficient, they are coming to completely change how the software engineering production line operates. If they are successful, we will write fewer tests, we will understand less about our stack, and we will develop tools and workflows to manage that complexity and risk.

Maybe AI succeeds at this stated objective, and maybe it does not. But let's at least not kid ourselves: this is how it has always been. We are in the business of abstracting things away so that we have to understand less to get things done. We grumbled when we switched from assembly to high-level languages. We grumbled when we switched from high-level languages to managed languages. We grumbled when we started programming enormous piles of JavaScript and traveled farther from the OS and the hardware. Now we're grumbling about AI, and you can be sure that we're going to grumble about whatever is next, too.

I understand this is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, but I don't think Thomas and the Fly team actually have missed any of the points discussed in this article. I think they fully understand that software production is going to change and expect that we will build systems to cope with abstracting more, and understanding less. And, honestly, I think they are probably right.

Re: Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#59

Post by seadan83 »

renewiltord wrote: post #33

It's hard for me to take all of this seriously because I sat and listened to how Google Search was going to ruin everyone's mind and without the skill of manual research we'd all be turned into imbeciles. Back then we didn't have this particular modern meme of "extremely dangerous" for something like a syntactically inaccurate file so I suppose no one said it was "extremely dangerous" for people to copy-paste code fr…

I would quibble a bit with some of your examples, but I think the points are conveyed well.

Though, it does seem ironic. A skeptic is someone that demands convincing evidence before believing an assertion. "AGI is around the corner", "self driving will replace human drivers", "don't learn how to code", "AI will replace developers", "AI cars will eliminate car accidents." The skeptics are the ones simply asking for evidence that any of that is true. A system that can barely count the 'R's in strawberry is supposed to be AGI in 3 years from now?? Let alone deliver on any of those other promises? Incredulity aside, let us see the evidence for any of it.

Though, those that are AI nay-sayers; that say AI will be a bad thing - they are not skeptics. They are making their own assertion. Namely that AI will be used as a crutch - that the lack of a slog will be a detriment. That is a claim, not skepticism. So, just ironic to be skeptical of the 'skeptics' and the lack of evidence from the 'skeptics' is used to dismiss the 'skeptics'.

Re: Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#60

Post by ang_cire »

stavros wrote: post #55
ang_cire wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "but if we don't know how to shoe our own horses any more because we got cars, soon nobody will know how to shoe horses!" No, this would be more akin to saying, "if we don't know how to change our car's oil anymore because we have a robot that does it, soon nobody will know, while still being reliant on our cars." For your analogy to work, we would have to be moving away from code entirely, as we moved away from ho…

> we don't know how to change our car's oil anymore because we have a robot that does it OK, are we worried that all the robots will somehow disappear? Why would I have to change my own oil, ever, if the robot did it as well as I did? If it doesn't do it as well as I did, I'm still doing it myself.

> OK, are we worried that all the robots will somehow disappear?

No, you should be worried that you (or devs who come later, who never had to 'change the oil'/ write tests themselves) won't know if the robot has done it right or not, because if you can't do the work, you can't validate the work.

And the robot isn't an employee, it's just a tool you the employee use, so when you are asked whether the test was coded correctly, all you'd be able to say with your 'atrophied' test-writing skills is, "I think so, the AI did it". See the issue now?

> If it doesn't do it as well as I did, I'm still doing it myself.

I thought your unnecessary skill atrophied and was forgotten ? How are you going to do it yourself? How do you know you're still as good at it as you once were?

Post reply on HN