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Show HN: How much of Hacker News is about AI?
This website counts titles containing the standalone word "AI", case-sensitive and
word-bounded. "OpenAI" doesn't count. "AI-powered" does. There's a toggle for a
wider vocabulary: artificial intelligence spelled out, LLM, GPT, and model and
vendor names.
Some quick stats:
- 14.4% of new HN titles this year, against 10.9% in 2025. On the wider
vocabulary, 21.9% and 16.1%.
- First month above 1% was Oct 2016. Above 5%, Feb 2023. Above 10%, May 2025.
- Over the last five years the quietest month was Jan 2022 at 0.8%. The peak
was Feb 2026 at 15.9%.
- 13.6% on weekdays against 12.4% at weekends.
- Show HN runs highest of any category at 19.8% this year, which makes this
post part of the number.
As of this post, today is at 15% for the standard filter and 19% for the extended.
- regexman1 1mo agoBrilliant
- sharemywin 1mo agoit would be cool to use embeddings to categorize into like 10-20 categories and get a giant pie chart
- beekthos 1mo agoNot a bad idea. I'd look at creating a separate page for embeddings. Crypto and NFT's would be the next best candidates to add. Something for me to work on over time.
- missingpackage 1mo agoAt first I thought about how many posts were written by AI
- beekthos 1mo agoMost of the time things make sense in my head until someone points it out haha. I should have written it as "related to AI" or something like that.
- missingpackage 1mo agoI have mixed feelings about it, honestly. I may be biased because AI is my job but in my case specifically, when it comes to posting on social media AI really helps me communicating better what I'm trying to communicate without that feeling of i-forgot-to-write-that. If this makes sense . But I understand that people is probably overreacting because of the huge amount of nonsense stuff that is being posted nowadays by some people who really abuse it to farm visuals
- eladhefetz 1mo agoWorking also with AI on daily basis, coding, architecture, planning, I tend to agree with you, need to know how to use AI, need to know how to filter out the un-needed content. go to the AI when you already know what you want and at least high level knowledge of path. when asking it to code, know the architecture and choose a language you are familiar with. The bottom line is, you must lead the process. Come in with a clear goal and a high-level strategy be judgmental, AI accelerates output, but judgment is still your responsibility
- whatisthiseven 1mo agoMultiple times authors have been asked about AI usage on HN, because readers (rightfully) suspected it was AI written. I don't have a problem with AI written articles, or assisted. But then the authors lie or make ludicrous excuses for why their article "sounds" like AI. Then I check with Pangram and yep. It is completely AI written. You get a few free checks on Pangram each day or so. Just start checking and encourage people to be honest. AI has its place. Lying about it and misrepresenting it makes everyone dislike AI more, even as they use it themselves.
- p-e-w 1mo ago> Then I check with Pangram and yep. It is completely AI written. “AI detectors” do NOT work reliably. Even humans who are ever-so-certain about being able to identify AI usage constantly embarrass themselves when that claimed ability is put to the test. Look up “AI Monet Instagram” for a social experiment where hundreds of cocksure users pointed out “AI signs” in what was claimed to be an AI-generated painting in the style of Monet, but was actually a genuine Monet.
- sebastiennight 1mo agoMonet's often been classified as A Genius Impressionist, so arguably one step above A.I.
- whatisthiseven 1mo agoYes, they do work. Pass enough of someone's work through one, such as Pangram with a low FPR, and you can gain confidence. Add in your own intuition plus multiple scans of someone's work, plus any weird claims they make, and you can raise the certainy bar. There is room for error, but come on. To say they don't work at all and you can't combine multiple methods to come to reasonable conclusions? I'll accept it is with fault. The problem could be alleviated if people just were honest about the use of generative AI usage and others didn't judge so harshly the use rather than the outcome. I said at the start I don't care if it was used. I just want honesty.
- 1mo ago
- bklosky 1mo agoyou could fetch the text from linked blog posts over time and run 'em through pangram, I bet >20% of blogs linked on HN today are totally LLM written
- beekthos 1mo agoSeveral people have asked for this already, so I'll add it to my to-do list. I just want to be careful about flagging posts that appear to be written by AI. Perhaps I set certain thresholds of certainty to filter by. What I have currently is easily verified and matched by the words we are filtering for. It is also interesting to note that I have already received 5 AI written emails to the email I linked in the footer.
- smokel 1mo agoAn estimated 2,000 articles per month at 2,000 words per article would result in 4,000,000 words, which costs either $200 or $2000 to process at Pangram [1]. It might make life a lot more enjoyable for many users here, though. [1] https://www.pangram.com/pricing?category=developers https://www.pangram.com/pricing?category=developers
- noobplus 1mo agoAnd so comes the AI comments as many as the AI posts just saying for fun
- ForOldHack 1mo agoIf you read a lot, you start to get a feel for phone typos vs AI hiccups. I can guarantee that is post was made by a brain designed to eat berries in a cave. Almost all the another posts look a bit scary. I think I misunderstood - how many posts were about AI vs how many posts were written by AI. I obviously am suffering from berry fog.
- noobplus 1mo agoExactly yep. Maybe even more when time machine has been invented by that AI bot in far future I meant the number of comments by AI(-bots)
- beekthos 1mo agoSomething to maybe track later would be /newcomments, but that would only grab the most obvious comments. People can certainly direct an AI to write in a style that sounds human, but I'm sure it'll still catch a fair amount.
- caminanteblanco 1mo agoWould there be some way to see what percentage of the front page meets those qualifications? I don't browse /new very often, so I have less of an idea of how representative that is. It would be interesting to see if they trend similarly. Thanks for the cool project!
- beekthos 1mo agoYeah, that's probably the main limitation right now. This is measuring /new, so it's every submission rather than just the stuff that makes the front page. lcamtuf's survey (linked in the footer) was looking at the front page, and the number there was quite a bit higher. So there's likely some effect from voting, although I haven't dug into that yet. I think Algolia has a way to filter for front-page stories, which should make it pretty easy to add. I haven't tested that yet though but will certainly look into it!
- rzmmm 1mo agoIt's remarkable how stable 20-30% show HN concentration is after late 2022, for the extended stats.
- beekthos 1mo agoThe Show HN volume went 805/month to 4,199/month over that same time period, so from 3.2% of all submissions to 13.4%, while HN overall only grew 1.3x. So the flat ~24% held through a 5x expansion in the denominator, which makes it a lot more interesting honestly.
- xpct 1mo agoGood. Now do what % of posts link to AI generated articles.
- grey-area 1mo agoThat would be a much more depressing statistic.
- ChrisArchitect 1mo agoRelated: How Much of HN is AI? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435728
- beekthos 1mo agoYes! This post was the inspiration and is credited in the footer.
- hartator 1mo agoWould be curious to see how many comments are AI generated.
- blitzar 1mo agoI wonder what the longest chain of Ai on Ai comments are.
- beekthos 1mo agoWorking on it!
- RetroTechie 1mo agoHow would you propose to determine that, reliably?
- Dwedit 1mo agoThe topic of an article being AI and an "AI-Generated Article" are two completely different things.
- chilipepperhott 1mo agoI don't believe that is their point.
- stronglikedan 1mo agoIt's not their point as stated in the description, but it is the point inferred from the title alone. "How much of Hacker News is about AI?" would have been better.
- stronglikedan 1mo agoAgreed. "How much of Hacker News is about AI?" would have been a more accurate title.
- beekthos 1mo agoAgreed it is confusing and as I mentioned earlier in a different comment, it made sense in my head reading it until someone else pointed it out. Looks like they've amended it to make it clear.
- lanewinfield 1mo agoI expected this to call out the number of links that are obviously vibe coded, like itself! If you see: - ALL CAPS subheaders - a light beige background - burnt sienna anchor and/or highlight text - a "• LIVE" (or really any pulsing • symbol with an ALL CAPS follow-up) - tons of variation in font sizes (this one has 15 different text sizes!) - more typically, a lot of overexplaining ...you know it's vibe'd, specifically with Claude!
- noxss 1mo agoInterestingly, we can deduce that the actual percentage will always be higher since not everyone uses those labels/words.
- philipwhiuk 1mo agoRecursive given that this is AI generated from another post on how much AI was on HN.
- Vaslo 1mo agoI tried to click on the link at work and it got blocked as "pornography".
- lupire 1mo agoWho would do this project and not use an LLM to classify what counts as "AI"?
- marshblocker 1mo agoYou don't need a website for this.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- waldrews 1mo agoEvery technical topic involves AI now. Even if it's about why the ancient Greeks didn't turn their steam engines to industrial use - the AI's should be researching the details. We might as well ask which topics involve humans or use language.
- kingkemol888 1mo agoThis is a good project!
- geludobre 1mo agoAI itself, is an increasing topic, overall, in our day-to-day personal and professional life. It's either embrace it now, or cry later.
- zhixingheyi2023 1mo ago[dead]
- ryanmerket 19d ago[dead]