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I am totally in the same boat but also I do suspect it is a minority. It’s the same way that some people really want open source bootloaders, but 99.99% of peop

I am totally in the same boat but also I do suspect it is a minority. It’s the same way that some people really want open source bootloaders, but 99.99% of people do not care at all. Maybe AI assistants in random places just aren’t that compatible with people on HN but are possibly useful for a lot of people not on HN?

fouronnes3 2y ago
I agree with this. I'm very surprised when I see someone blindly trust whatever the AI summary says in a google query, because I myself have internalized a long time ago to strongly distrust it.
- IgorPartola 2y ago
  To me it looks like for most things I search it just verbatim is the top answer from Stack Overflow.
- wlesieutre 2y ago
  I’ve seen quite a few posts on Reddit with people asking questions like “Is a Mazda 2 really faster than a Civic Type R?!? ChatGPT told me it is” and it’s some complete nonsense numbers that could’ve been fact checked in about 5 seconds. I don’t think the little “ChatGPT might be wrong, you should check” disclaimer is doing very much.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    It's a good sign that people are even going to reddit and asking for confirmation of something that seemed suspicious to them. Sure, many of them could have googled for those answers themselves, but part of the problem is how unreliable and dishonest Google has become. Reddit sure isn't an ideal place for fact checks. It's full of PR bots and shills, but at least there are still humans commenting and I can't fault people for doing what they can in the best way they know how.
    - wlesieutre 2y ago
      For every person that asks I imagine there are a bunch that just assume it must be true because the computer told them
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Or they could have just use ChstGPT and typed “provide citations… https://chatgpt.com/share/679d7f5f-d508-8010-94fa-df9d554b629f https://chatgpt.com/share/679d7f5f-d508-8010-94fa-df9d554b62... (and then I just remembered that the free version doesn’t have web search)
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  Oh good lord, I asked it two fairly technical questions, and it contradicted both the top answers... is there a way to get rid of it? You used to be able to put 'Eliza' to sleep by using the word 'Dreamt'
autoexec 2y ago
> It’s the same way that some people really want open source bootloaders, but 99.99% of people do not care at all. In fairness to the 99.99% they don't even know what a bootloader is and if they understood the situation and the risks many of them would also favor an open option. I don't think the rejection of AI is primarily a HN thing though. It's my non-tech friends and family who have been most vocal in complaining about it. The folks here are more likely to have browser extensions and other workarounds or know about alternative services that don't force AI on you in the first place.
- DavidPiper 2y ago
  > In fairness to the 99.99% they don't even know what a bootloader is True. And awareness and education is very important for useful discourse. > if they understood the situation and the risks many of them would also favor an open option. Raising my hand as one of those people who knows what a bootloader is and also doesn't currently care about an open option. Maybe at some time in the future I will again, but for now it is very far down on my list of concerns. I suspect whether or not AI is useful/high-quality/"good"/etc is just not important to most poeple at the moment. If they are laid off from their jobs in the future and replaced with an AI, I suspect they'll start caring more. But in the general case, I've found "caring ahead-of-time" (for want of a better phrase) is a very hard thing to encourage, despite the fact that it's one of the most effective things you can do if you direct it at the "right" avenues (i.e. those that will affect you directly in the future).
  - Retric 2y ago
    > one of the most effective things you can do if you direct it in the “right” avenues The people I know who “worry” are terrible about predicting negative events that impact them. I think that’s why it’s uncommon, lots of negative health outcomes and almost zero actual benefits. Instead simply aiming for reasonable levels of resiliency in health, finances, etc tends to cover a huge range of issues. In that context having a preference for open systems makes a lot of sense, but focusing a lot of effort on it doesn’t.
mattpallissard 2y ago
I think this is the case. Most of my family and friends use and like the various AI features that are popping up but aren't interested thinking about how to coax what they want out of ChatGPT or Claude. When it's integrated into a product people are more likely to use it. Lowering the barrier to entry so to speak.
not2b 2y ago
I don't think so. I have many nontechnical friends who are furious at having to deal with bad AI, whether it's a stupid chatbot that they have to talk to instead of a real person or Google "AI overviews" that often get things completely wrong.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
AI confidence has been dwindling[0][1] so I don't think that's the biggest contributor. I do think it's as simple as appealing to stakeholders in whatever way they can, regardless of customer satisfaction. As we've seen as of late, the stock markets are completely antithetical to the improvement of people's lives. The first point does indeed come into play because oftentimes most people don't throw enough of a fuss against it. But everything has some breaking point; Microsoft's horribly launched Copilot for Office 365 showed one of them [0]: https://www.warc.com/content/feed/ai-is-a-turn-off-for-consumers-study-finds/en-GB/9770 https://www.warc.com/content/feed/ai-is-a-turn-off-for-consu... [1]: https://hbr.org/2025/01/research-consumers-dont-want-ai-to-seem-human https://hbr.org/2025/01/research-consumers-dont-want-ai-to-s...
rendaw 2y ago
I agree, but doesn't that basically mean there are two camps: people who dislike it, and people who don't care? I also agree with GP in that there isn't any visible 3rd camp: people who want it. If google themselves thought people wanted this, they wouldn't need to make an un-dismissable popup in all of their products with one button, "yes please enable gemini for me", in order for people to use it. I'm sure google thinks that people have some sort of bias, and that if they force people to use it they'll come to like it (just like google plus), but this also shows how much google looks down on the free will of its users.
- nearbuy 2y ago
  No, I like the AI summaries and I had assumed I was in the silent majority. People like convenience and it usually answers correctly.
  - surajrmal 2y ago
    You are in the silent majority. It's a costly feature for Google and they aren't the type to take a large risk of pushing out something unpopular to their most profitable product.
cheese_van 2y ago
<Maybe AI assistants in random places just aren’t that compatible with people on HN but are possibly useful for a lot of people not on HN?> Coincidentally today, I received an automated text from my heath care entity along the lines of, "Please recognize this number as from us. Our AI will be calling you to discuss your heath." No. I'm not going to have a personal discussion with an AI.
- jpc0 2y ago
  > Coincidentally today, I received an automated text from my heath care entity along the lines of, "Please recognize this number as from us. Our AI will be calling you to discuss your heath." That sets off super strong scam vibes to me... Our banking industry here and medical industry pushes phishing information down your throat so much people even worry about legitimate communication that couldn't possibly be a scam being a scam. I find that to be better for society but definitely clouds my judgement on those kinds of text. Also I have absolutely dropped my previous bank because it became impossible to speak to an actual human and willingly pay more for a bank where my phonecall goes directly to a human. Do what one of the other commenters mentioned, make the AI an assistant for the human beings that help your customers, let the humans communicate with humans.
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  For some people, its actually therapeutic, but for most, its like talking to a plant, except AI does not benefit from the exhaled carbon dioxide.
KennyBlanken 2y ago
It's not even remotely a minority. It was widely mocked everywhere when they first debuted it: https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1czcjze/how_is_ai_overview_so_comically_bad/?chainedPosts=t3_1c9ua6l https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1czcjze/how_is_ai_o... Mainstream press have been covering how much people hate it - people's grandparents are getting annoyed by it. Worse, it comes on the heels of four years of Prabhakar Raghavan ruining Google Search for the sake of trying to pump ad revenue. It's a steaming pile of dogshit that either provides useless information unrelated to what you searched for and is just another thing to scroll past, and even worse, provides completely wrong information half the time, which means even if the response seems to be what you asked, it's still useless because you can't trust it.

fouronnes3 2y ago

I agree with this. I'm very surprised when I see someone blindly trust whatever the AI summary says in a google query, because I myself have internalized a long time ago to strongly distrust it.

IgorPartola 2y ago
To me it looks like for most things I search it just verbatim is the top answer from Stack Overflow.
wlesieutre 2y ago
I’ve seen quite a few posts on Reddit with people asking questions like “Is a Mazda 2 really faster than a Civic Type R?!? ChatGPT told me it is” and it’s some complete nonsense numbers that could’ve been fact checked in about 5 seconds. I don’t think the little “ChatGPT might be wrong, you should check” disclaimer is doing very much.
- autoexec 2y ago
  It's a good sign that people are even going to reddit and asking for confirmation of something that seemed suspicious to them. Sure, many of them could have googled for those answers themselves, but part of the problem is how unreliable and dishonest Google has become. Reddit sure isn't an ideal place for fact checks. It's full of PR bots and shills, but at least there are still humans commenting and I can't fault people for doing what they can in the best way they know how.
  - wlesieutre 2y ago
    For every person that asks I imagine there are a bunch that just assume it must be true because the computer told them
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Or they could have just use ChstGPT and typed “provide citations… https://chatgpt.com/share/679d7f5f-d508-8010-94fa-df9d554b629f https://chatgpt.com/share/679d7f5f-d508-8010-94fa-df9d554b62... (and then I just remembered that the free version doesn’t have web search)
ForOldHack 2y ago
Oh good lord, I asked it two fairly technical questions, and it contradicted both the top answers... is there a way to get rid of it? You used to be able to put 'Eliza' to sleep by using the word 'Dreamt'

autoexec 2y ago

> It’s the same way that some people really want open source bootloaders, but 99.99% of people do not care at all. In fairness to the 99.99% they don't even know what a bootloader is and if they understood the situation and the risks many of them would also favor an open option. I don't think the rejection of AI is primarily a HN thing though. It's my non-tech friends and family who have been most vocal in complaining about it. The folks here are more likely to have browser extensions and other workarounds or know about alternative services that don't force AI on you in the first place.

DavidPiper 2y ago
> In fairness to the 99.99% they don't even know what a bootloader is True. And awareness and education is very important for useful discourse. > if they understood the situation and the risks many of them would also favor an open option. Raising my hand as one of those people who knows what a bootloader is and also doesn't currently care about an open option. Maybe at some time in the future I will again, but for now it is very far down on my list of concerns. I suspect whether or not AI is useful/high-quality/"good"/etc is just not important to most poeple at the moment. If they are laid off from their jobs in the future and replaced with an AI, I suspect they'll start caring more. But in the general case, I've found "caring ahead-of-time" (for want of a better phrase) is a very hard thing to encourage, despite the fact that it's one of the most effective things you can do if you direct it at the "right" avenues (i.e. those that will affect you directly in the future).
- Retric 2y ago
  > one of the most effective things you can do if you direct it in the “right” avenues The people I know who “worry” are terrible about predicting negative events that impact them. I think that’s why it’s uncommon, lots of negative health outcomes and almost zero actual benefits. Instead simply aiming for reasonable levels of resiliency in health, finances, etc tends to cover a huge range of issues. In that context having a preference for open systems makes a lot of sense, but focusing a lot of effort on it doesn’t.

mattpallissard 2y ago

I think this is the case. Most of my family and friends use and like the various AI features that are popping up but aren't interested thinking about how to coax what they want out of ChatGPT or Claude. When it's integrated into a product people are more likely to use it. Lowering the barrier to entry so to speak.

not2b 2y ago

I don't think so. I have many nontechnical friends who are furious at having to deal with bad AI, whether it's a stupid chatbot that they have to talk to instead of a real person or Google "AI overviews" that often get things completely wrong.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

AI confidence has been dwindling[0][1] so I don't think that's the biggest contributor. I do think it's as simple as appealing to stakeholders in whatever way they can, regardless of customer satisfaction. As we've seen as of late, the stock markets are completely antithetical to the improvement of people's lives. The first point does indeed come into play because oftentimes most people don't throw enough of a fuss against it. But everything has some breaking point; Microsoft's horribly launched Copilot for Office 365 showed one of them [0]: https://www.warc.com/content/feed/ai-is-a-turn-off-for-consumers-study-finds/en-GB/9770 https://www.warc.com/content/feed/ai-is-a-turn-off-for-consu... [1]: https://hbr.org/2025/01/research-consumers-dont-want-ai-to-seem-human https://hbr.org/2025/01/research-consumers-dont-want-ai-to-s...

rendaw 2y ago

I agree, but doesn't that basically mean there are two camps: people who dislike it, and people who don't care? I also agree with GP in that there isn't any visible 3rd camp: people who want it. If google themselves thought people wanted this, they wouldn't need to make an un-dismissable popup in all of their products with one button, "yes please enable gemini for me", in order for people to use it. I'm sure google thinks that people have some sort of bias, and that if they force people to use it they'll come to like it (just like google plus), but this also shows how much google looks down on the free will of its users.

nearbuy 2y ago
No, I like the AI summaries and I had assumed I was in the silent majority. People like convenience and it usually answers correctly.
- surajrmal 2y ago
  You are in the silent majority. It's a costly feature for Google and they aren't the type to take a large risk of pushing out something unpopular to their most profitable product.

cheese_van 2y ago

<Maybe AI assistants in random places just aren’t that compatible with people on HN but are possibly useful for a lot of people not on HN?> Coincidentally today, I received an automated text from my heath care entity along the lines of, "Please recognize this number as from us. Our AI will be calling you to discuss your heath." No. I'm not going to have a personal discussion with an AI.

jpc0 2y ago
> Coincidentally today, I received an automated text from my heath care entity along the lines of, "Please recognize this number as from us. Our AI will be calling you to discuss your heath." That sets off super strong scam vibes to me... Our banking industry here and medical industry pushes phishing information down your throat so much people even worry about legitimate communication that couldn't possibly be a scam being a scam. I find that to be better for society but definitely clouds my judgement on those kinds of text. Also I have absolutely dropped my previous bank because it became impossible to speak to an actual human and willingly pay more for a bank where my phonecall goes directly to a human. Do what one of the other commenters mentioned, make the AI an assistant for the human beings that help your customers, let the humans communicate with humans.
ForOldHack 2y ago
For some people, its actually therapeutic, but for most, its like talking to a plant, except AI does not benefit from the exhaled carbon dioxide.

KennyBlanken 2y ago

It's not even remotely a minority. It was widely mocked everywhere when they first debuted it: https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1czcjze/how_is_ai_overview_so_comically_bad/?chainedPosts=t3_1c9ua6l https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1czcjze/how_is_ai_o... Mainstream press have been covering how much people hate it - people's grandparents are getting annoyed by it. Worse, it comes on the heels of four years of Prabhakar Raghavan ruining Google Search for the sake of trying to pump ad revenue. It's a steaming pile of dogshit that either provides useless information unrelated to what you searched for and is just another thing to scroll past, and even worse, provides completely wrong information half the time, which means even if the response seems to be what you asked, it's still useless because you can't trust it.