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> That said, there is also a vocal anti-AI crowd here, or at least there used to be. Most of those people seemed to have left for greener pastures seeing how ha

by zahlman 2mo ago

> That said, there is also a vocal anti-AI crowd here, or at least there used to be. Most of those people seemed to have left for greener pastures seeing how half the HN front page is "someone made XYZ but now with AI" these days. There is still a vocal anti-AI crowd here. The problem is that they don't seem to be very good, overall, at upholding HN commenting guidelines. (This is probably just a fatigue effect.) I keep seeing green accounts making pithy, uncivil snipes on this topic, with heavy use of sarcasm and reference to anti-AI "thought-terminating cliches" (e.g. mentioning the topic of water use and expecting that mention to stand in for an entire argument, while not acknowledging any of the well-established refutations). But the thing about "someone made XYZ but now with AI" is that most of it is posted by "someone", or someone with a connection to "someone". Hence the complaints about the state of Show HN. And the thing about "someone"s is that they do not care how many anti-AI people are lurking around. There's nothing the anti-AI people could do, in principle, to stop it. Consequently, the presence of those posts is not evidence that the anti-AI people are leaving. > On the other hand, since the day ChatGPT was unleashed upon the general public, you should assume all online interaction is happening through AI and should probably be ignored. …And yet you're still here?

GPerson 2mo ago
My clear-eyed perspective is that AI companies and their supporters are getting away with a massive crime against humanity, so it’s probably relatively more difficult for me to contain my frustrations than the people who are happy about it. When you plunder a little you get punished according to the rules, but these companies have proved when you plunder enough you get to start writing the rules.
- inquirerGeneral 2mo ago
  [dead]
- fragmede 2mo ago
  "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." is usually misattributed to Stalin, but it says that's not a new phenomenon. Now that you've said it out loud, how does that make you feel? It doesn't change anything. The "crime against humanity" of doing some work and charging money for it, is kind of a non-starter for conversation though.
  - GPerson 2mo ago
    [flagged]
- zahlman 2mo ago
  ...What has that got to do with anything I said?
  - GPerson 2mo ago
    This is your comment. Is it not? Unless this is not your comment, I don’t understand what could possibly be the confusion. > There is still a vocal anti-AI crowd here. The problem is that they don't seem to be very good, overall, at upholding HN commenting guidelines. (This is probably just a fatigue effect.) I keep seeing green accounts making pithy, uncivil snipes on this topic, with heavy use of sarcasm and reference to anti-AI "thought-terminating cliches" (e.g. mentioning the topic of water use and expecting that mention to stand in for an entire argument, while not acknowledging any of the well-established refutations).
    - 131428 2mo ago
      Zahlman doesn't get it. He has been cancelled by industry shills on Python infrastructure and now apparently thinks the industry will appreciate him for backing it up here. Classic programmer mistake. The industry only understands one thing: Constant opposition like in the 1990s and early 2000s, which were better for the profession and the Internet at large.
    - zahlman 2mo ago
      It is my comment. The point of my comment is to make two observations: one that there is indeed still a vocal anti-AI crowd here, and another about their usual conduct. It did not in any way assert that they don't have a point, just that they often lean on bad arguments. The confusion is that I was talking on the meta level of what the discourse is like, and you are trying to engage in the object level of that discourse itself. That said: the fact that you can make your anti-AI argument without being incivil supports my first observation, and doesn't in any way detract from the second. For that matter, your allegation of a "massive crime against humanity" doesn't even specify the crime, let alone attempt to evidence it. And while still civil, it is loaded with emotionally charged rhetoric.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
dannyw 2mo ago
There’s a lot of different new usernames with those non-constructive comments, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just a couple very persistent people making new accounts after given a suspension or something.
tripzilch 2mo ago
I mean, if you pay attention you'll see some pretty awful things said by a very vocal pro-AI crowd as well. They take it weirdly personally when you aren't sufficiently impressed by what AI made for them, or what it can do in general. They get kind of aggressive (not passive aggressive) and tell people they will be "obsolete" or whatever, or they are "stupid" for not (being able to stand) working with it. I mean I get it, you thought it was "good enough", I think it's so shitty you can't pay me enough to work on it. That makes you worry I know something you don't know that the AI can't fix for you, and that firmly puts you in a hierarchy of me > AI > you. So you lash out. You can disagree about this, but don't pretend people like the above do not exist and are a very vocal group, here.
- astrange 2mo ago
  I wouldn't say "stupid", but trying to make AI go away by posting about it on the internet is sort of like… if you were about to get hit by a car and tried to solve it by posting about it on the internet. It's not going to solve the problem.
  - tripzilch 2mo ago
    I dunno it depends. Letting people know we're not interested in consuming their slop (code, blogs, docs, whatever), that it is revolting to us, should hopefully make them stop peddling it to us. I'm not trying to "make AI go away", I just want people to stop shoving it in my face. It's fine if you believe it's the bees knees and the best thing ever, but we don't. We don't see it that way. Not just for ethical reasons, but also because it's just not that good, it truly feels reasonably smart people are being brainwashed by a machine algorithm performing language based supra normal stimuli in order to optimize the loss-function of "how awesome do people report this algorithm is" -- which is of course exactly the red thread of a signal the RLHF has been training for. I'm not crazy. It's not actually that good. Literally everything that comes out of it, is slightly shitty. When it writes prose, it reads like a dream narrative, without structure or beat, just patches of it that make sense locally, like early Midjourney outputs. Whenever it writes code, it'll make stupid mistakes if you try anything except the things it's been literally RLHF finetuned for, because it lacks spatial insight, temporal insight and anything else that makes the human experience. When I ask it for insight to learn about a new topic, it will "fail to mention" basic key points while also assuming familiarity with jargon words and abbreviations on the subject until I ask and dig deep enough and tell me "thanks for the pushback" after having wasted my time. I tried it so many times, and I hate it. I hate working with it, and I hate people shoving its output in my face. btw I could also say the same about you -- people like me exist, our experience is valid and we're not going away because you're posting about it on the Internet.

by zahlman 2mo ago

GPerson 2mo ago

My clear-eyed perspective is that AI companies and their supporters are getting away with a massive crime against humanity, so it’s probably relatively more difficult for me to contain my frustrations than the people who are happy about it. When you plunder a little you get punished according to the rules, but these companies have proved when you plunder enough you get to start writing the rules.

inquirerGeneral 2mo ago
[dead]
fragmede 2mo ago
"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." is usually misattributed to Stalin, but it says that's not a new phenomenon. Now that you've said it out loud, how does that make you feel? It doesn't change anything. The "crime against humanity" of doing some work and charging money for it, is kind of a non-starter for conversation though.
- GPerson 2mo ago
  [flagged]
zahlman 2mo ago
...What has that got to do with anything I said?
- GPerson 2mo ago
  This is your comment. Is it not? Unless this is not your comment, I don’t understand what could possibly be the confusion. > There is still a vocal anti-AI crowd here. The problem is that they don't seem to be very good, overall, at upholding HN commenting guidelines. (This is probably just a fatigue effect.) I keep seeing green accounts making pithy, uncivil snipes on this topic, with heavy use of sarcasm and reference to anti-AI "thought-terminating cliches" (e.g. mentioning the topic of water use and expecting that mention to stand in for an entire argument, while not acknowledging any of the well-established refutations).
  - 131428 2mo ago
    Zahlman doesn't get it. He has been cancelled by industry shills on Python infrastructure and now apparently thinks the industry will appreciate him for backing it up here. Classic programmer mistake. The industry only understands one thing: Constant opposition like in the 1990s and early 2000s, which were better for the profession and the Internet at large.
  - zahlman 2mo ago
    It is my comment. The point of my comment is to make two observations: one that there is indeed still a vocal anti-AI crowd here, and another about their usual conduct. It did not in any way assert that they don't have a point, just that they often lean on bad arguments. The confusion is that I was talking on the meta level of what the discourse is like, and you are trying to engage in the object level of that discourse itself. That said: the fact that you can make your anti-AI argument without being incivil supports my first observation, and doesn't in any way detract from the second. For that matter, your allegation of a "massive crime against humanity" doesn't even specify the crime, let alone attempt to evidence it. And while still civil, it is loaded with emotionally charged rhetoric.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]

dannyw 2mo ago

There’s a lot of different new usernames with those non-constructive comments, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just a couple very persistent people making new accounts after given a suspension or something.

tripzilch 2mo ago

I mean, if you pay attention you'll see some pretty awful things said by a very vocal pro-AI crowd as well. They take it weirdly personally when you aren't sufficiently impressed by what AI made for them, or what it can do in general. They get kind of aggressive (not passive aggressive) and tell people they will be "obsolete" or whatever, or they are "stupid" for not (being able to stand) working with it. I mean I get it, you thought it was "good enough", I think it's so shitty you can't pay me enough to work on it. That makes you worry I know something you don't know that the AI can't fix for you, and that firmly puts you in a hierarchy of me > AI > you. So you lash out. You can disagree about this, but don't pretend people like the above do not exist and are a very vocal group, here.

astrange 2mo ago
I wouldn't say "stupid", but trying to make AI go away by posting about it on the internet is sort of like… if you were about to get hit by a car and tried to solve it by posting about it on the internet. It's not going to solve the problem.
- tripzilch 2mo ago
  I dunno it depends. Letting people know we're not interested in consuming their slop (code, blogs, docs, whatever), that it is revolting to us, should hopefully make them stop peddling it to us. I'm not trying to "make AI go away", I just want people to stop shoving it in my face. It's fine if you believe it's the bees knees and the best thing ever, but we don't. We don't see it that way. Not just for ethical reasons, but also because it's just not that good, it truly feels reasonably smart people are being brainwashed by a machine algorithm performing language based supra normal stimuli in order to optimize the loss-function of "how awesome do people report this algorithm is" -- which is of course exactly the red thread of a signal the RLHF has been training for. I'm not crazy. It's not actually that good. Literally everything that comes out of it, is slightly shitty. When it writes prose, it reads like a dream narrative, without structure or beat, just patches of it that make sense locally, like early Midjourney outputs. Whenever it writes code, it'll make stupid mistakes if you try anything except the things it's been literally RLHF finetuned for, because it lacks spatial insight, temporal insight and anything else that makes the human experience. When I ask it for insight to learn about a new topic, it will "fail to mention" basic key points while also assuming familiarity with jargon words and abbreviations on the subject until I ask and dig deep enough and tell me "thanks for the pushback" after having wasted my time. I tried it so many times, and I hate it. I hate working with it, and I hate people shoving its output in my face. btw I could also say the same about you -- people like me exist, our experience is valid and we're not going away because you're posting about it on the Internet.