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What's up with all the new accounts astroturfing AI? There are multiple in these threads. People from the 'foundation model' companies having to keep up the AI

What's up with all the new accounts astroturfing AI? There are multiple in these threads. People from the 'foundation model' companies having to keep up the AI hype? Usually they provide grandiose claims (like the top-level comment) without any evidence or just anecdotal evidence that is not verifiable.

Auracle 5mo ago
Just what kind of evidence do you suppose they could have?
- troupo 5mo ago
  Showing actual improved products and features. Showing actual code. etc.
  - hparadiz 5mo ago
    I shipped a project at work in 3 months instead of the estimated original 6-9 months.
    - evgen 5mo ago
      Sure you did. We can't see the project, of course, because she lives in Canada...
      - hparadiz 5mo ago
        I had to convert a build pipeline from just one linux distro to multiple and then get arm64 going. Not the most difficult thing in the world but quite annoying when there's 100 binaries and a complex dep tree with lots of moving pieces. Anyway AI for sure increased project cadence by at least 2x. Not sure why there's so much denial in these threads.
        troupo 5mo ago
        I can also claim a bunch of things. If you manage to read the comment I was originally replying to, and my reply: --- start quote --- - Just what kind of evidence do you suppose they could have? - Showing actual improved products and features. Showing actual code. etc. --- end quote --- Note how you provided neither. It's just claims. > Anyway AI for sure increased project cadence by at least 2x. As in: you claim this. Also, no one denies that you can ship a lot of code much faster with AI. However, somehow, very little actual evidence of grandiose claims (see farther up in the context) besides anecdotal "I'm so faster and features are being shipped left and right". See also a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158565
        hparadiz 5mo ago
        The amount of critical CVEs released in a week is a metric.
        microtonal 5mo ago
        Oh, I certainly believe this. LLMs tend to be quite good at the: I'll give you a well-designed example, now extrapolate to other cases-cases. I think it's a great example of using LLMs effectively. In the end becoming more productive is understanding where LLMs work great and where they fail miserably. But it is a step similar to, say going from assembly to a higher-level programming language, not the silver bullet that AI astroturfers like you to believe (fire all the programmers to buy more tokens!)
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
    Not a bot (although I have been accused of it, due to my activity here, and on GitHub, but I’ve been this way for longer than LLMs have been a thing. I’m retired, “on the spectrum,” and don’t participate in any other social media). I’m currently working on a rewrite of an app that originally took two years. It’s been about three months, and I’m probably about 70% done. It’s a total “from scratch” rewrite; both client and server (two versions of each, as I also have administrative code). It’s a pretty big system, for one guy. I couldn’t do it, without the LLM. It’s not been a cakewalk. I’ve needed to toss out large swaths of LLM-generated code, and rewrite by hand, but, for the most part, it’s been a huge help. But I’m also not doing it in a manner that eats tokens. I just use the standard $20/month subscription as a chat. I suspect my workflow is not one that Anthropic or OpenAI really wants out there. But I also bet that many HN accounts are bots; although I think many may be ones run by enthusiasts, not some AI cabal.
    - troupo 5mo ago
      > It’s not been a cakewalk. I’ve needed to toss out large swaths of LLM-generated code, and rewrite by hand, but, for the most part, it’s been a huge help. Same here :) > not some AI cabal. There are enough enthusiasts to make it feel like one. Also an unhealthy doze of marketers, people buying into hype, AI psychosis etc.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
        > There are enough enthusiasts to make it feel like one. Also an unhealthy doze of marketers, people buying into hype, AI psychosis etc. There's absolutely no question that AI is a real thing, and that there's going to be a lot of money made, so there's a bunch of folks with commercial interest in pushing it. It's just different from crypto. This has actual real-world utility for just about everyone. I am increasingly hearing people say "Ask ChatGPT," where they used to say "Google It" (where they used to say "Look it Up at the Library").
    - customguy 5mo ago
      For 5 million comments like yours I haven't seen a single one with the old code vs. the new code. I understand that not all code is public that way, of course, and I don't mean to put you on the spot personally. But where are all the open source projects that now do the same with better error handling using less resources? Where are 100+ MB Electron apps reduced to more correct sizes like a few MB, or even a few dozen kB? Why aren't startup times getting slashed across the board? Why isn't RAM usage falling faster than RAM prices are increasing?
sph 5mo ago
Elsewhere I called it akin to Bannon's "flood the zone" marketing strategy. HN is lousy with new accounts (created in the past year) that are overwhelmingly excited for the so-called AI revolution.
- hparadiz 5mo ago
  Just woke up from half my nights sleep to see what HN is talking about at 1 am pst on a Friday. Oh look more useless arguing. People who do things care about the doing more than how the sausage was made. I do not care how software gets built. Only that it works. Results is the only thing that matters and I hope everyone in this thread internalizes that fact.
  - noodletheworld 5mo ago
    > People who do things care about the doing more than how the sausage was made. Then do it. Be successful. Be wonderful. Show us all the great results. If you only care about results, then go do the things. Why are you complaining? Whats wrong with differing views? When people cannot accept other people critiquing AI; that is literally AI psychosis. Heres a trick: what is AI bad at? Stop and ask yourself what it really sucks at. Nothing come to mind? You're living AI psychosis. If you can't accept that anything it does is wrong or bad, that you are only successful when you use AI you are, flat out, gas lighting yourself. Now go read the comments by recent new accounts about AI. Yeah. Either there are a lot of bots, or a lot of really really troubled people out there right now.
    - hparadiz 5mo ago
      Your diatribe is irrelevant. This account is my real name. I have nothing to hide. The metrics speak for themselves. We just had a week with 7 major zero days announced for pretty much every major OS and architecture. Reality doesn't care about your opinion.
      - troupo 5mo ago
        > I have nothing to hide. The metrics speak for themselves. What metrics? Where are the amazing new projects and features you built? Where are the amazing products and features you built that are better than existing ones (run faster, consume fewer resources etc.)? For a person who "has nothing to hide" somehow none of your comments ever mention what projects you work on, what you ship, or what metrics you employ.
Groxx 5mo ago
There's good money to be made in prolonging the hype.
mxkopy 5mo ago
Financial incentives
jaccola 5mo ago
Can usually sniff them out because their comments are long and give lots of (vague) examples.
fenomas 5mo ago
Please read what the HN guidelines say about insinuations of astroturfing, because it very much applies here.
- latexr 5mo ago
  Crucially, those rules were written before the invention of the new astroturfing machine which makes it more trivial than ever. HN had to impose restrictions around new amounts already, such as limitations on Show HN, so clearly something is going on and being recognised as such.
  - fenomas 5mo ago
    If you think the guidelines should be changed you can mail dang, but unless they change the civil thing would be to follow them.
    - latexr 5mo ago
      I find it worrying that you’re more concerned with the civil thing than the right thing. Placing an undue emphasis on civility is how bad actors control the conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkKo1_RP_0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkKo1_RP_0c The comment you’re replying to wasn’t uncivil. It wasn’t rude. It was a lament. I’m not advocating for this rule to change (I’d appreciate if you didn’t straw man and mischaracterise what I said), but I am saying if a problem happens over and over and people notice it and talk about it, then you should maybe pay attention. The rule for new accounts came about from multiple comments and even submissions asking for it, not private emails. It came about from community conversation and outcry.
      - fenomas 5mo ago
        > Placing an undue emphasis on civility is how bad actors control the conversation. The load-bearing word in that claim is "undue", and it's not justified here. I'm not doing arcane rules-lawyering, I'm just saying people should avoid doing things the site guidelines quite specifically ask them not to do. > I’m not advocating for this rule to change (I’d appreciate if you didn’t straw man and mischaracterise what I said), I wasn't suggesting you did, I was suggesting the person I originally replied to might. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you Does that mean I now repeat your parenthetical back to you? ;)
expedition32 5mo ago
Real inventions don't need hype they speak for themselves.
vanuatu 5mo ago
not an astroturf and didn’t want to be associated with my main which has identifying info. Wanted to offer a perspective aside from the majority skeptic view on HN Also I provided the list of actual hype ha

Auracle 5mo ago

Just what kind of evidence do you suppose they could have?

troupo 5mo ago
Showing actual improved products and features. Showing actual code. etc.
- hparadiz 5mo ago
  I shipped a project at work in 3 months instead of the estimated original 6-9 months.
  - evgen 5mo ago
    Sure you did. We can't see the project, of course, because she lives in Canada...
    - hparadiz 5mo ago
      I had to convert a build pipeline from just one linux distro to multiple and then get arm64 going. Not the most difficult thing in the world but quite annoying when there's 100 binaries and a complex dep tree with lots of moving pieces. Anyway AI for sure increased project cadence by at least 2x. Not sure why there's so much denial in these threads.
      - troupo 5mo ago
        I can also claim a bunch of things. If you manage to read the comment I was originally replying to, and my reply: --- start quote --- - Just what kind of evidence do you suppose they could have? - Showing actual improved products and features. Showing actual code. etc. --- end quote --- Note how you provided neither. It's just claims. > Anyway AI for sure increased project cadence by at least 2x. As in: you claim this. Also, no one denies that you can ship a lot of code much faster with AI. However, somehow, very little actual evidence of grandiose claims (see farther up in the context) besides anecdotal "I'm so faster and features are being shipped left and right". See also a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158565
        hparadiz 5mo ago
        The amount of critical CVEs released in a week is a metric.
      - microtonal 5mo ago
        Oh, I certainly believe this. LLMs tend to be quite good at the: I'll give you a well-designed example, now extrapolate to other cases-cases. I think it's a great example of using LLMs effectively. In the end becoming more productive is understanding where LLMs work great and where they fail miserably. But it is a step similar to, say going from assembly to a higher-level programming language, not the silver bullet that AI astroturfers like you to believe (fire all the programmers to buy more tokens!)
- ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
  Not a bot (although I have been accused of it, due to my activity here, and on GitHub, but I’ve been this way for longer than LLMs have been a thing. I’m retired, “on the spectrum,” and don’t participate in any other social media). I’m currently working on a rewrite of an app that originally took two years. It’s been about three months, and I’m probably about 70% done. It’s a total “from scratch” rewrite; both client and server (two versions of each, as I also have administrative code). It’s a pretty big system, for one guy. I couldn’t do it, without the LLM. It’s not been a cakewalk. I’ve needed to toss out large swaths of LLM-generated code, and rewrite by hand, but, for the most part, it’s been a huge help. But I’m also not doing it in a manner that eats tokens. I just use the standard $20/month subscription as a chat. I suspect my workflow is not one that Anthropic or OpenAI really wants out there. But I also bet that many HN accounts are bots; although I think many may be ones run by enthusiasts, not some AI cabal.
  - troupo 5mo ago
    > It’s not been a cakewalk. I’ve needed to toss out large swaths of LLM-generated code, and rewrite by hand, but, for the most part, it’s been a huge help. Same here :) > not some AI cabal. There are enough enthusiasts to make it feel like one. Also an unhealthy doze of marketers, people buying into hype, AI psychosis etc.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
      > There are enough enthusiasts to make it feel like one. Also an unhealthy doze of marketers, people buying into hype, AI psychosis etc. There's absolutely no question that AI is a real thing, and that there's going to be a lot of money made, so there's a bunch of folks with commercial interest in pushing it. It's just different from crypto. This has actual real-world utility for just about everyone. I am increasingly hearing people say "Ask ChatGPT," where they used to say "Google It" (where they used to say "Look it Up at the Library").
  - customguy 5mo ago
    For 5 million comments like yours I haven't seen a single one with the old code vs. the new code. I understand that not all code is public that way, of course, and I don't mean to put you on the spot personally. But where are all the open source projects that now do the same with better error handling using less resources? Where are 100+ MB Electron apps reduced to more correct sizes like a few MB, or even a few dozen kB? Why aren't startup times getting slashed across the board? Why isn't RAM usage falling faster than RAM prices are increasing?

sph 5mo ago

Elsewhere I called it akin to Bannon's "flood the zone" marketing strategy. HN is lousy with new accounts (created in the past year) that are overwhelmingly excited for the so-called AI revolution.

hparadiz 5mo ago
Just woke up from half my nights sleep to see what HN is talking about at 1 am pst on a Friday. Oh look more useless arguing. People who do things care about the doing more than how the sausage was made. I do not care how software gets built. Only that it works. Results is the only thing that matters and I hope everyone in this thread internalizes that fact.
- noodletheworld 5mo ago
  > People who do things care about the doing more than how the sausage was made. Then do it. Be successful. Be wonderful. Show us all the great results. If you only care about results, then go do the things. Why are you complaining? Whats wrong with differing views? When people cannot accept other people critiquing AI; that is literally AI psychosis. Heres a trick: what is AI bad at? Stop and ask yourself what it really sucks at. Nothing come to mind? You're living AI psychosis. If you can't accept that anything it does is wrong or bad, that you are only successful when you use AI you are, flat out, gas lighting yourself. Now go read the comments by recent new accounts about AI. Yeah. Either there are a lot of bots, or a lot of really really troubled people out there right now.
  - hparadiz 5mo ago
    Your diatribe is irrelevant. This account is my real name. I have nothing to hide. The metrics speak for themselves. We just had a week with 7 major zero days announced for pretty much every major OS and architecture. Reality doesn't care about your opinion.
    - troupo 5mo ago
      > I have nothing to hide. The metrics speak for themselves. What metrics? Where are the amazing new projects and features you built? Where are the amazing products and features you built that are better than existing ones (run faster, consume fewer resources etc.)? For a person who "has nothing to hide" somehow none of your comments ever mention what projects you work on, what you ship, or what metrics you employ.

Groxx 5mo ago

There's good money to be made in prolonging the hype.

mxkopy 5mo ago

Financial incentives

jaccola 5mo ago

Can usually sniff them out because their comments are long and give lots of (vague) examples.

fenomas 5mo ago

Please read what the HN guidelines say about insinuations of astroturfing, because it very much applies here.

latexr 5mo ago
Crucially, those rules were written before the invention of the new astroturfing machine which makes it more trivial than ever. HN had to impose restrictions around new amounts already, such as limitations on Show HN, so clearly something is going on and being recognised as such.
- fenomas 5mo ago
  If you think the guidelines should be changed you can mail dang, but unless they change the civil thing would be to follow them.
  - latexr 5mo ago
    I find it worrying that you’re more concerned with the civil thing than the right thing. Placing an undue emphasis on civility is how bad actors control the conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkKo1_RP_0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkKo1_RP_0c The comment you’re replying to wasn’t uncivil. It wasn’t rude. It was a lament. I’m not advocating for this rule to change (I’d appreciate if you didn’t straw man and mischaracterise what I said), but I am saying if a problem happens over and over and people notice it and talk about it, then you should maybe pay attention. The rule for new accounts came about from multiple comments and even submissions asking for it, not private emails. It came about from community conversation and outcry.
    - fenomas 5mo ago
      > Placing an undue emphasis on civility is how bad actors control the conversation. The load-bearing word in that claim is "undue", and it's not justified here. I'm not doing arcane rules-lawyering, I'm just saying people should avoid doing things the site guidelines quite specifically ask them not to do. > I’m not advocating for this rule to change (I’d appreciate if you didn’t straw man and mischaracterise what I said), I wasn't suggesting you did, I was suggesting the person I originally replied to might. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you Does that mean I now repeat your parenthetical back to you? ;)

expedition32 5mo ago

Real inventions don't need hype they speak for themselves.

vanuatu 5mo ago

not an astroturf and didn’t want to be associated with my main which has identifying info. Wanted to offer a perspective aside from the majority skeptic view on HN Also I provided the list of actual hype ha