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Everyone in Seattle hates AI

jonready.com

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Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#851

Post by pseudalopex »

wk_end wrote: post #36
tptacek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not at all my experience working in local government (that is, in close contact with everybody else paying attention to local government) that non-tech people hate AI. It seems rather the opposite.

Managers everywhere love the idea of AI because it means they can replace expensive and inefficient human workers with cheap automation. Among actual people (i.e. not managers) there seems to be a bit of a generation gap - my younger friends (Gen Z) are almost disturbingly enthusiastic about entrusting their every thought and action to ChatGPT; my older friends (young millennials and up) find it odious.

A Pew Research Center survey found age correlation. But not a generation gap.[1]

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/ai-in-america...

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#852

Post by skwirl »

hexator wrote: post #209
shepardrtc wrote: post #50

Ok so a few thoughts as a former Seattleite: 1. You were a therapy session for her. Her negativity was about the layoffs. 2. FAANG companies dramatically overhired for years and are using AI as an excuse for layoffs. 3. AI scene in Seattle is pretty good, but as with everywhere else was/is a victim of the AI hype. I see estimates of the hype being dead in a year. AI won't be dead, but throwing money at the whatever U…

Some people really do hate AI, it's not entirely about the layoffs. This is a well insulated bubble but you can find tons of anti-AI forums online.

On this topic I think it’s pretty off base to call HN a “well insulated bubble” - AI skepticism and outright hate is pretty common here and AI negative comments often get a lot of support. This thread itself offers plenty of examples.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#853

Post by spamizbad »

sensanaty wrote: post #780
spamizbad wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, any software engineer who tries an LLM, shrugs and says “huh, that’s interesting” and then “gets back to work” is completely failing at their actual job, I don't understand why people seem so impatient about AI adoption. AI is the future, but many AI products aren't fully mature yet. That lack of maturity is probably what is dampening the adoption curve. To unseat incumbent tools and practices you either nee…

> I don't understand why people seem so impatient about AI adoption. We're burning absurd, genuinely farcical amounts of money on these tools now , so of course they're impatient. There's Trillions (with a "T") riding on this massive hypewave, and the VCs and their ilk are getting nervous because they see people are waking up to the reality that it's at best a kinda useful tool in some situations and not the new God…

Well that's capital's problem. Don't make it mine!

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#854

Post by code_for_monkey »

wseqyrku wrote: post #847
latexr wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not clear to me what exactly you’re asking, but I’ll try to answer it anyway. I’d say that of the people who are against AI, fewer than 50% (to use your number) aren’t against it solely (or primarily, or at all) because they feel threatened for their job. Does that answer your question?

I meant more about this part: > The threat to the environment, the consolidation of resources by the ones at the top, the spread of misinformation and lies, the acceleration of mass surveillance, the decay of critical thinking My question was that how many people are actually concerned about those things? If you think about it it's kind of obvious but it takes conscious effort to see it and I suspect not many people…

anecdotal but it seems many people are concerned about those things

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#855

Post by code_for_monkey »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #726
abustamam wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as a gamer I get a lot of game news in my feeds. Apparently there's a niche of indie games that claim to be AI-free. [0] And I read a lot of articles about games that seem to love throwing a dig at AI even if it's not really relevant. Personally, I can see why people dislike Gen AI. It takes people's creations without permission. That being said, morality of the creation of AI tooling aside, there are still peo…

>morality of the creation of AI tooling aside, That's a big aside >Like, they'd enjoy a song, or an image, or a book, and then suddenly when they find out it's AI suddenly they hate it. Yes, because for some people its about supporting human creation. Finding out it's part of a grift to take from said humans can be infuriating. People don't want to be a part of that.

if I learn music had an AI involved it actually makes me feel awful. It totally just strips it of any appeal for me.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#856

Post by mips_avatar »

sph wrote: post #778
mips_avatar wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best of luck with this transition. I had a really hard time when I left Microsoft. It’s took longer than I expected to feel better but I do now.

Jesus, is it actually a thing to grieve after leaving a job? (doesn't sound like you were laid off)

Yes

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#857

Post by code_for_monkey »

something I havent seen mentioned: the people who are AI's biggest proponents are distinctly unlikeable humans. Look at Elon Musk with Grok, its disgusting. Look at Sam Altman, Alex Karp, look at Peter "Im not sure humanity should continue" Thiel. These people are wildly misanthropic, of course it gives the whole thing an unpleasant miasma.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#858

Post by fgauer »

40+ year software developer here (not saying this for ego, just that I've been doing this a long time and I've seen a lot of things). Here's how I've re-framed things in my mind due to AI:

The centralization of 'power' in AI will be the entities that want to run the bigger, more general-purpose models. Fine. So be it. Knock yourself out. Good luck building the data centers and finding power.

After that, AI now becomes a 'field leveler', and I say this with the utmost of sincerity and confidence. Need a supply chain system? Goodbye big boys. Goodbye vendor lock. Now there will be dozens, if not hundreds of small teams that can provide this for you at a fraction of the cost. Accounting you ask? Goodbye Intuit. We'll whip up what you need and you'll be off and running and you can kiss the global monsters goodbye. You get the idea.

This is a defining moment and it's awesome. Sure there will be some initial pain. Mindsets will have to change. Priorities will shift. My fundamental point is, all of the big boy/fat cats rushing in the AI race are literally rushing to completely undermine their own leverage and power. Each and every day I am amazed at what I can do, after a lifetime of staring at screens, with a $25.00/month Claude Code license. I am reaching out and lifting my neighbors, who have no technical experience at all, into a completely new playing field where they compete against entities they had no chance of competing with ever before.

Forgive my optimism, but it's hard not to be as I can now use my experience, with a tight group of trusted friends and colleagues, and a little bit of coding help (which goes a long way) to go wherever we want to go now.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#859

Post by pseudalopex »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #565
adastra22 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one have no idea what you mean by health and safety with respect to AI. Do you have an OSHA concern?

I have an “enabling suicidal ideation” concern for starters. To be honest I’m kind of surprised I need to explain what this means so my guess is you’re just baiting/being opaque, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and answer your question taken at face value: There have been plenty of high profile incidents in the news over the past year or two, as well as multiple behavioral health studies showing that we ne…

> To be honest I’m kind of surprised I need to explain what this means so my guess is you’re just baiting/being opaque

Search for health and safety and see how many results are about work.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#860

Post by rtp4me »

kahnclusions wrote: post #769
ACCount37 wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what do they have? Is the siren song of "AI effect" so strong in your mind that you look at a system that writes short stories, solves advanced math problems and writes working code, and then immediately pronounce it "not intelligent"?

Based on the absolute trash I usually get out of ChatGPT, Claude, etc, I wouldn’t say that it writes “working” code.

You and I must be using very different versions of Claude. As an infra/systems guy (non-coder), the ability for me to develop some powerful tools simply by leveraging Claude has been nothing short of amazing. I started using Claude about 8 months ago and have since created about 20 tools ranging from simple USB detection scripts (for secure erasing SSDs) to complex tools like an Azure File Manager and a production-ready data migration tool (Azure to Snowflake). Yes, I know bash and some Python, but Claude has really helped me create tools that would have taken many weeks/months to build using the right technology stack. I am happy to pay for the Claude Max plan; it has returned huge dividends to my productivity.

And, maybe that is the difference. Non coders can use AI to help build MVPs and tooling they could otherwise not do (or take a long time to get done). On the other hand, professional coders see this as an intrusion to their domain, become very skeptical because it does not write code "their way" or introduces some bugs, and push back hard.

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