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Yes, the mocking, gleeful negativity really does make me concerned that this place is becoming Reddit. The fact that the highest upvoted post on this thread is
by johnfn 1y ago
Yes, the mocking, gleeful negativity really does make me concerned that this place is becoming Reddit. The fact that the highest upvoted post on this thread is just a link to Reddit isn't doing much to help me feel better. And I've been here for at least a decade, so I don't think this is the noob illusion.
- lefstathiou 1y agoBots bots bots... tearing down our stars is good business for a variety of vested interests. Don't let the bastards grind you down.
- wewtyflakes 1y agoWe are not bots, we just loathe historically bad-faith actors and especially with the current climate, we will take the opportunity of harmless schadenfreude where we can get it.
- kilroy123 1y agoI've been here for over a decade. It has become very reddit like in the past few years. I want to get into YC just to use and browse Bookface instead.
- ants_everywhere 1y ago[flagged]
- afavour 1y agoThe idea that anti-AI posts on HN are PR hit jobs (paid for by..?) strikes me as conspiracy theory. The simple reality is that hype generates an anti-hype reaction. Excessive hype leads to excessive anti-hype. And right now AI is being so excessively hyped on a scale I’m not sure I’ve seen in all the years I’ve been working in tech.
- ants_everywhere 1y agoThat explanation doesn't make any sense because it explains none of the facts
- afavour 1y agoWhen people get something shoved in their face day in day out some of them react negatively to it. Is the concept really so outlandish?
- ants_everywhere 1y agoNo, but have you seen what people are like when they react negatively? Their behavior is angry and aggressive and unpredictable. What needs to be explained is a group of people predictably all acting exactly the same way.
- afavour 1y agoYou're seeing conspiracies where there are none. A group of people all acting the same way is not suspicious when their actions are the thing that groups them together.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ants_everywhere 1y agoYour theory that there's an invisible hand that makes everyone spontaneously act the same is nonsensical. It hasn't been observed in humans nor in the wider animal kingdom.
- mvdtnz 1y ago> the people funding the anti-AI movement You can't be serious.
- ants_everywhere 1y agoWell the movement exists and they have funding so somebody is funding it. Unless you think they run entirely on the barter system.
- mvdtnz 1y agoWhat movement? What funding?
- ants_everywhere 1y agoI posted some links in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ants_everywhere&next=45245757#45246158 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ants_everywhere&next.... Not sure how to link to the specific comment id. Some of the sites have funding and programming. Politico also reports that "billionaires" (they name a couple) are funding "AI doomsayers" and have created registered lobbying groups: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/23/ai-safety-washington-lobbying-00142783 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/23/ai-safety-washingto... For the record I'm in favor of AI safety and regulating the use of AI. I don't know anything about the particular bills or groups in the Politico article though. But it's clear evidence that people with money are funding speech that pushes back against AI. The funding and use of campaigns to amplify divisive issues is well known, but I'm not claiming this is a source of anti-AI funding. You may perhaps believe that AI does not count as a divisive issue and so there are no anti-AI campaigns through this funding model. I would find that surprising but I don't know of a source yet that has positively identified such a campaign and its sourcing. There were similar campaigns against American technological domination such as the anti-nuclear movement which received a lot of funding from the pro-nuclear Russian military during the cold war. And the anti-war movement which received a lot of funding from the pro-war Russian military during the Vietnam war. Similarly the US has funded "grass roots" movements abroad. To be clear I'm not saying the anti-AI movement is similarly funded or organized. But it is clearly a movement (and its adherents acknowledge that) and it clearly has funding (including some from very wealthy donors). And they do all use similar stock phrases and examples and often [0] have very new accounts. Everything in the current paragraph is verifiable. [0] by often, I mean higher than the base rate topic for HN. I don't mean more than 50% of the time or any other huge probability.
- throwawayoldie 1y agoQuick question: if there is a paid anti-AI movement, where do I send my invoice? May as well not leave money on the table.
- ants_everywhere 1y agoI love this
- throwawayoldie 1y agoI don't love your silly theory. It sounds like you're in denial, trying to cope with the fact that not everyone thinks LLMs are the greatest thing since flush toilets.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rsynnott 1y agoBut, I mean… it’s just not good. There is no real way to spin this as anything better than embarrassing.
- johnfn 1y agoBut why even have a conversation at all? Who cares if Zuckerberg has a demo that goes awry? Does that satisfy your intellectual curiosity somehow? It certainly doesn't satisfy mine.
- rsynnott 1y agoI mean, I think it is notable that a massive tech company is blowing tens to hundreds of billions on this complete nonsense.
- Karrot_Kream 1y agoA topic that's notable but has little to discuss can get a lot of upvotes. A lot of the best stuff on this site has exactly that: lots of upvotes, little commentary, because the thing itself is notable. That's definitely not what happens on Meta threads. They usually get lots of votes then lets of repetitive spam-like comments about how ethically bankrupt Zuck or Meta or social media or algorithms or whatever are. A new comment on the behavior would be interesting, but most of the comments are basically just spam. I could probably get an LLM to generate most of them with ease. Perhaps the worst part is, even if there is novel analysis it's buried under an avalanche of "Zuck will grind you to dust" or whatever that gets repeated over and over again. For a while that was okay, this kind of stuff was just contained in those threads. But it's started leaking out everywhere. Just spam like comments tangentially related to the topic that just bash a big company. That's the lowering of SNR that I find grating.
- rsynnott 1y agoOh, no, is someone being mean to the big company? :( This is absolutely notable, and everyone should be concerned about it. Not so much the potential fakery, but the extreme deficiency of the actual product, which has had the GDP of a small country squandered on it. Like, there is a problem here, and it will have real-world fallout once the wheels fall off.
- hu3 1y agoThe signal to noise ratio certainly became worse. You'll see the same folks spamming their hatred towards tesla/microsoft/meta/google over and over with zero substance other than sentimental blabbering.
- throwawayoldie 1y agoIt's a different world than it was ten years ago. Among the ways it's different are people are far more skeptical of billionaires, Big Tech, and capitalism generally. They're willing to cut them much less slack. This is one of the few ways that the world of today is better than the world of ten years ago.