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Everyone in Seattle hates AI

jonready.com

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Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#891

Post by waffletower »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #752

Someone wrote on HN the (IMO) main reason why people do not accept AI. AI is about centralisation of power So basically, only a few companies that hold on the large models will have all the knowledge required to do things, and will lend you your computer collecting monthly fees. Also see https://be-clippy.com/ for more arguments (like Adobe moving to cloud to teach their model on your work). For me AI is just a natur…

I think it is incredibly healthy to be critical and perhaps even a tinge cynical about the intentions of companies developing and productizing large language models (AI). However, the argument here completely ignores the evolving ecosystem of open weight models. Yes, the prominent companies developing frontier models are attempting to build markets and moats where possible, and the capital cloud investments are incredibly centralized. But even in 2025 the choice is there, with your own capital investment (RTX, MacBook etc.), for completely private and decentralized AI. You can also choose your own cloud too -- Cloudflare just acquired Replicate. If enough continue to participate in the open weight ecosystem, this centralization need not be totalitarian.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#892

Post by stickfigure »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #752

Someone wrote on HN the (IMO) main reason why people do not accept AI. AI is about centralisation of power So basically, only a few companies that hold on the large models will have all the knowledge required to do things, and will lend you your computer collecting monthly fees. Also see https://be-clippy.com/ for more arguments (like Adobe moving to cloud to teach their model on your work). For me AI is just a natur…

No, the main reason people don't accept AI is that it isn't very good[1] at the things they want to accomplish.

Everyone I know accepts AI for the things it is good at, and rejects it for things it sucks at. The dividing line varies by task and the skill of the operator (both "how good at persuading the AI" and "how easy would it be to just do the job by hand").

In some companies the problem is management layers with thin understanding trying to force AI into the organization because they read some article in CIO Magazine. In other companies (like Microsoft) I suspect the problem is that they're forcing the org to eat their own dogfood and the dogfood kinda sucks.

[1] Yet.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#893

Post by tech_ken »

checker659 wrote: post #789
assemblyman wrote: post #269

I am not in Seattle. I do work in AI but have shifted more towards infrastructure. I feel fatigued by AI. To be more precise, this fatigue includes several factors. The first one is that a lot of people around me get excited by events in the AI world that I find distracting. These might be new FOSS library releases, news announcements from the big players, new models, new papers. As one person, I can only work on 2-3…

> The fundamentals actually haven't changed that much in the last 3 years Even said fundamentals don't have much in the way to foundations. It's just brute forcing your way using a O(n^3) algorithm using a lot of data and compute.

O(n^(~2.8)) because fast matrix mult?

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#895

Post by Capricorn2481 »

tptacek wrote: post #83
wk_end wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The median age of people working local politics is probably 55, and I've met more people (non-family, that is) over 70 doing this than in anything else, and all of them are (a) using AI for stuff and (b) psyched to see any new application of AI being put to use (for instance, a year or so ago, I used 4o to classify every minute spent in our village meetings according to broad subjects). Or, drive through Worth and Br…

> The median age of people working local politics is probably 55, and I've met more people (non-family, that is) over 70 doing this than in anything else, and all of them are (a) using AI for stuff and (b) psyched to see any new application of AI being put to use

That seems more like a canary than anything. This is the demographic that doesn't even know which tech company they're talking to in congress. That's not the demographic in touch with tech. They have gotten more excited about even dumber stuff.

For people under 50, it's a wildly common insult to say something seems AI generated. They are disillusioned with the content slop filling the internet, the fact that 50% of the internet is bots, and their future job prospects.

The only people I've seen liking AI art, like fake cat videos, are people over 50. Not that they don't matter, but they are not the driver of what's popular or sustainable.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#896

Post by r0m4n0 »

nutjob2 wrote: post #887
r0m4n0 wrote: post #404

I feel like there is an absurd amount of negative rhetoric about how AI doesn't have any real world use cases in this comment thread. I do believe that the product leadership is shoehorning it into every nook and cranny of the world right now and there are reasons to be annoyed by that but there are also countless incredible use cases that are mind blowing, that you can use it every day for. I need to write about som…

Its not about the tech, the negativity is due to the mismatch between hype and reality. LLMs are incredibly useful, for certain things, like the ones you have found. Others simply don't work. Is it going to deliver on even 1% of the hype any time soon? Unlikely.

I'm mostly saying the hype is real on a lot of things today. Is it working perfectly for everything? Definitely not, but I'm of the opinion giving it another 10 years and it just might be. I'm amongst the many working to make it better and all I see is a million possibilities of what can be done that we have only worked through a few of the issues. Did it change EVERYTHING over night? No, it was a big breakthrough, the rest is still catching up.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#897

Post by waffletower »

Rebuff5007 wrote: post #760
p0w3n3d wrote: post #752

Someone wrote on HN the (IMO) main reason why people do not accept AI. AI is about centralisation of power So basically, only a few companies that hold on the large models will have all the knowledge required to do things, and will lend you your computer collecting monthly fees. Also see https://be-clippy.com/ for more arguments (like Adobe moving to cloud to teach their model on your work). For me AI is just a natur…

But why not? AI also has very powerful open models (that can actually be fine-tuned for personal use) that can compete against the flagship proprietary models. As an average consumer, I actually feel like i'm less locked into gemini/chatgpt/claude than I am to Apple or Google for other tech (i.e. photos).

Exactly. I was paying for Gemini Pro, and moved to a Claude subscription. Am going to switch back to Gemini for the next few months. The cloud centralization, in its current product stage, allows you to be a model butterfly. And these affordable and capable frontier model subscriptions, help me train and modify my local open weight models.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#898

Post by frozenseven »

utopiah wrote: post #751
hexator wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Some people really do hate AI That's probably me for a lot of people. The reality is a bit finer than this namely : - I hate VC funded AI which is actually super shallow (basically OpenAI/Claude wrappers) - I hate VC funded genuine BigAI that sells itself as the literal opposite of what it is, e.g. OpenAI... being NOT open. - I hate AI that hides it's ecological cost. Generating text, videos, etc is actually fascin…

[flagged]

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#899

Post by rng-concern »

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.

That is part of it, but the bigger part for me is, art is an expression of human emotion. When I hear music, I am part of those artists journey, struggles. The emotion in their songs come from their first break-up, an argument they had with someone they loved. I can understand that on a profound, shared level.

Way back me and my friends played a lot of starcraft. We only played cooperatively against the AI. Until one day me and a friend decided to play against each other. I can't tell put into words how intense that was. When we were done (we played in different rooms of house), we got together, and laughed. We both knew what the other had gone through. We both said "man, that was intense!".

I don't get that feeling from an amalgamation of all human thoughts/emotions/actions.

One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#900

Post by habinero »

rtp4me wrote: post #860
kahnclusions wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-re…

Yeah. You're not a coder, so you don't have the expertise to see the pitfalls and problems with the approach.

If you want to use concrete to anchor some poles in the ground, great. Build that gazebo. If it falls down, oh well.

If you want to use concrete to make a building that needs to be safe and maintained, it's critical that you use the right concrete mix, use rebar in the right way, and seal it properly.

Civil engineers aren't "threatened" by hobbyists building gazebos. Software engineers aren't "threatened" by AI. We're pointing out that the building's gonna fall over if you do it this way, which is what we're actually paid to do.

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