I feel like you could replace “AI” with “computers” across much of TFA and it would read like something from a few decades ago (ignoring the web development specifics…)
That lends some credence to the “AI is a tool” position I hear in some forums, though I do think there are real harms from the vast scale of AI deployment.
Not if he can also deliver equally good or better results, which I suspect he will. Not everyone needs it to do a good job, and for others, it could be a net negative.
Using computers created an unambiguous productivity boost. Same cannot be said for all types of software engineering with AI; that's why we keep having this debate. The results are mixed.
> I feel like you could replace “AI” with “computers” across much of TFA and it would read like something from a few decades ago
No you can't. Here is a quick sample
Computer crawlers routinely scrape websites using underhanded tactics like residential proxies and falsified user agents. The damage to open source infrastructure is overwhelming both servers and maintainers alike. Denial of service (DDoS) has forced deployment of defensive software and intrusive CAPTCHAs. The number of known computer bots grows monthly. These bots blatantly ignore the long established robots.txt industry standard.
Computer slop is spammed on social networks resulting in a new threat of misinformation and scams. Computer search prioritises misinformed overviews over real sources.
Computers have produced untold exabytes of spam. Hit pieces, security vulnerabilities and data leaks, creation and distribution of CSAM… Copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale, massive increase in water and electricity consumption. etc.
> Computers have produced untold exabytes of spam. Hit pieces, security vulnerabilities and data leaks[...] massive increase in water and electricity consumption. etc.
Then you must blame cars and airplanes as mass murdering tools as well.
I guess I'll say it unhedged (since nobody else has yet): I agree with the author. I don't 100% align with his particular assignment of threats and externalities to AI, but I think overall it sucks and I don't want to use it. I think he's in a space that's getting overwhelmed by AI and AI output and I salute him putting his money where his mouth is. I wish him luck.
It's a tough predicament when the industry you're in is moving towards violating your personal preferences and ethics.
I'm neither agreeing with or disagreeing with the author's stance. But this tension crosses the line of "I have an opinion" to "I have an opinion that impacts my livelihood".
Programmers then: "We don't need unions, it's a bunch of communism that keeps me from making as much money as possible"
Programmers now: "Oh no, holy shit, what am I going to do as the market forces us to be a bunch of fucking gremlins. Too bad I threw away the power of collective bargaining"
It seems people keep forgetting why unions formed in the first place. Given a chance a company of any size will fully optimize for its own profit regardless of how awful the side effects are to individuals, the environment, and society at large.
Yeah. But, unlike China, the West doesn't seem to want to invest very much into real-world engineering. Except maybe military for forever wars, which is ethically way worse.
This is a side effect of capital accumulation. There's no one to buy the products (as low/middle class gets squeezed) so no reason to invest. Instead, oligarchs hold money in assets and compete over control, ultimately with violence.
I love the pro-union sentiment, but I don't think we need to treat "programmers" so monolothically, and we definitely should act like its too late. Now is the perfect moment to unionize!
See West Virginia coal mining in the early 20th century. Resulted in a lot of violent conflict as desperate workers were getting squeezed for every penny and owned little of their own, often working in company towns.
I was probably close to where the author was a couple months ago, and now am even more on the "doomer" side of things. But I think many skeptics of the technology have the idea in the back of their mind that "if this thing actually pans it out will be worse than if it doesn't".
If it doesn't pan out, the thing evaporates in a bubble, your job goes back to normal. If it does, your job is toast no matter what (and seemingly many jobs). If software is primarily supply constrained, that will eventually change.
Lately I'm more inclined to believe the latter is true, but I think skeptics are often hedging like this.
The question for optimists is, if AI succeeds in it's promise, what sort of society do they envision being the result? For one thing, I don't think everyone except the extremely wealthy being on basic income is ideal or better than what we have now.
By putting almost everyone else on basic income because they're jobs were automated? How much would that need to be? Even if it's enough for basic needs, you're relegating most of the population to a low class status with limited options for improving their situation.
Food insecurity could be fixed now if it wasn't a politically divisive issue. There's no reason to believe UBI won't be even more divisive.
I don't understand what you're saying. I agree that food insecurity could be fixed; it's a redistribution problem. UBI is a way to fix it.
But I don't see how we are forcing people to be low class with UBI (as opposed to having them unemployed or doing precarious work that doesn't pay even the basic needs).
Yeah I'd actually call myself a "pessimist" personally, I think AI seems to be advancing at a rate where we should be concerned about that. I used to be of the mind that dooming was entirely about marketing/hype, but I don't believe that any more. The models are really good, the huggingface hack was extremely concerning, and when their executives post things like this, I believe them (even if I don't like them): https://x.com/deanwball/status/2094788634729660906
Absolutely. Actually truly taking aboard the belief that your 401K is now 100% up in the air, much less your career, much less your childrens' whole lives... it's tough.
I was lucky enough to be thrust through this in 2023 by DALLE-2, but the body of the normal distribution is just starting to pass the rubicon, month by month, day by day... Lowkey agonizing watch so many people go through something so relatable, only to turn to primal, nationalistic urges and downright epistemic denialism.
The culture is robust already, too -- I have no illusion that the obvious arrival in ASI will change much of anything, just like evolution didn't end up killing the church like some feared. They'll simply fold that into the interwoven chitin of cherry-picked facts and party lines, accumulated over their years in the echo chamber. Any headline that seems like it should obviously pierce the veil instead gets used to reinforce it (e.g. "Oh they claim AI solved a math problem, now?? They must really be getting desparate to hide the hoax if they're willing to go that far!")
This forum bans politics and I really don't want to start a whole thing, but I guess I'll just float the anecdote that I learned about this theory of Echo Chambers in am baby epistemology course, where the example given was the MAGA movement. Take that as you will.
For someone who doesn't like doing cryptocurrency, advertising, gig economy bullshit or a host of other things, this is not a new problem. But yeah, it sucks.
not really. I don't work for FAANG because they're evil (plus im unqualified). I choose to mostly work for ethical companies. Locally declined to interview at the casino gambling company, the local buy now pay later usurers as an app, for elsevier. I left jobs when they offshored teams. I left jobs when they mandated unproven vaccines.
I don't make as much money as others though. I should totally write python and join some fintech
Not using world-changing technology because some people are using it harmfully is wild. Expanding it to people just making art (/entertainment...) that you don't like is just confusing.
Obviously I relate to the anxiety that made this man put up at least 3 mentions of how much he hates AI per page site-wide and to finish this draft before the actual site, but I can't help but see it as an unhealthy coping mechanism.
It's a shame cause this is an origami-themed freelance web developer who believes strongly in labeling natural vs. artificial prose, which couldn't be more up my alley if he tried! Shame the world is like this.
Just for clarity, in case anyone else doesn't see it -- I'll just take one paragraph:
Criticism of AI has led to harassment.
Perceived support of AI has led to molotovs and bullet-riddled doors.
AI has been used to publish hit pieces.
Computers have been used to publish hit pieces.
Generative AI is used openly to generate sexual abuse material.
Ditto, just with a much more serious crime. This one is actually a lot easier now and we need new laws for sure, but plugging your ears to the future will not speed those laws up in any way, no matter how indirect.
AI chatbots have encouraged vulnerable people to commit suicide.
Again, a serious, new twist on existing problems with suicide prevention. But A) it's far from a foregone conclusion that it's a net negative on suicide rates given that there's tons of positive anecdotes too, B) refusing to use claude code is not going to help devise legal, social, and technological solutions to that problem, and C) this is so clearly post-hoc reasoning.
For example: where's the "Social Policy", given that social media is a proven threat in this sense?
*EDIT:* And it's the guy who tried to make his own text editor after lamenting that Zed wasn't enough like Sublime?? Well, I guess it's nice to know I have an inverse doppleganger out there...
There are very serious mathematicians who refuse to use AI because they rightfully are concerned about the skill loss and harm overall. If anything it makes more sense for a mathematician to avoid AI than a software engineer though personally I think software engineers should use it sparingly as well.
It is backwards in every scenario, and it is basically tilting at windmills. There is a lot of that around, thinking it is making a difference.
Guy thinks this is his niche. Everyone will go "that's neat" and move on with life.
There was another post on here recently by a translator, whose profession is translating documents, declaring that they won't use AI in their work and anyone who does is a noob and it is no threat to what they do...and it just was amazing stuff. Of course HN pandered to it with lots of "oh yeah that's right you show 'em", but surely we all realize how fantastically silly that was. A web developer / designer who refuses to use AI is rapidly going to be very unemployed, though they might try the purist "no AI here!" angle niche for a tiny delay of that inevitable.
Such stances are very easy to make when there is no financial incentive or no competition with any meaningful money on the line. But as soon as there is competition, they don't care about "AI policies" if it is the means to make a lot of money.
The best example of this is security in open source software which maintainers have no choice but to use AI to protect themselves before an attacker can use AI to find and build exploits for security vulnerabilities faster than they can patch it.
In some sectors such as banking, crypto, defense and government, this is extremely critical. It will soon be the same with AI companies who have the AI model and someone could use AI to breach them with the goal of leaking the proprietary model.
So to them, policies like this, are actually a downgrade that they cannot afford to do.
I'm sorry, but what on earth are you talking about? This guy appears to be a web designer. You think there's no competition in that space and no incentive to churn things out fast with AI? Agree or disagree but if he's honest his money is very much where his mouth is.
That lends some credence to the “AI is a tool” position I hear in some forums, though I do think there are real harms from the vast scale of AI deployment.
Using computers created an unambiguous productivity boost. Same cannot be said for all types of software engineering with AI; that's why we keep having this debate. The results are mixed.
No you can't. Here is a quick sample
It's very much nonsense.Computers have produced untold exabytes of spam. Hit pieces, security vulnerabilities and data leaks, creation and distribution of CSAM… Copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale, massive increase in water and electricity consumption. etc.
Then you must blame cars and airplanes as mass murdering tools as well.
I'm neither agreeing with or disagreeing with the author's stance. But this tension crosses the line of "I have an opinion" to "I have an opinion that impacts my livelihood".
And I'm witnessing a lot of it.
Programmers now: "Oh no, holy shit, what am I going to do as the market forces us to be a bunch of fucking gremlins. Too bad I threw away the power of collective bargaining"
It seems people keep forgetting why unions formed in the first place. Given a chance a company of any size will fully optimize for its own profit regardless of how awful the side effects are to individuals, the environment, and society at large.
This is a side effect of capital accumulation. There's no one to buy the products (as low/middle class gets squeezed) so no reason to invest. Instead, oligarchs hold money in assets and compete over control, ultimately with violence.
If it doesn't pan out, the thing evaporates in a bubble, your job goes back to normal. If it does, your job is toast no matter what (and seemingly many jobs). If software is primarily supply constrained, that will eventually change.
Lately I'm more inclined to believe the latter is true, but I think skeptics are often hedging like this.
I also dislike the future that would result in. Heck, I want to go back to pre-iPhone.
Seriously? One sixth of the U.S. population is food-insecure. You don't think that basic income would fix that?
Food insecurity could be fixed now if it wasn't a politically divisive issue. There's no reason to believe UBI won't be even more divisive.
But I don't see how we are forcing people to be low class with UBI (as opposed to having them unemployed or doing precarious work that doesn't pay even the basic needs).
I was lucky enough to be thrust through this in 2023 by DALLE-2, but the body of the normal distribution is just starting to pass the rubicon, month by month, day by day... Lowkey agonizing watch so many people go through something so relatable, only to turn to primal, nationalistic urges and downright epistemic denialism.
The culture is robust already, too -- I have no illusion that the obvious arrival in ASI will change much of anything, just like evolution didn't end up killing the church like some feared. They'll simply fold that into the interwoven chitin of cherry-picked facts and party lines, accumulated over their years in the echo chamber. Any headline that seems like it should obviously pierce the veil instead gets used to reinforce it (e.g. "Oh they claim AI solved a math problem, now?? They must really be getting desparate to hide the hoax if they're willing to go that far!")
This forum bans politics and I really don't want to start a whole thing, but I guess I'll just float the anecdote that I learned about this theory of Echo Chambers in am baby epistemology course, where the example given was the MAGA movement. Take that as you will.
I don't make as much money as others though. I should totally write python and join some fintech
January 2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743095
Obviously I relate to the anxiety that made this man put up at least 3 mentions of how much he hates AI per page site-wide and to finish this draft before the actual site, but I can't help but see it as an unhealthy coping mechanism.
It's a shame cause this is an origami-themed freelance web developer who believes strongly in labeling natural vs. artificial prose, which couldn't be more up my alley if he tried! Shame the world is like this.
Just for clarity, in case anyone else doesn't see it -- I'll just take one paragraph:
Perceived support of AI has led to molotovs and bullet-riddled doors. Computers have been used to publish hit pieces. Ditto, just with a much more serious crime. This one is actually a lot easier now and we need new laws for sure, but plugging your ears to the future will not speed those laws up in any way, no matter how indirect. Again, a serious, new twist on existing problems with suicide prevention. But A) it's far from a foregone conclusion that it's a net negative on suicide rates given that there's tons of positive anecdotes too, B) refusing to use claude code is not going to help devise legal, social, and technological solutions to that problem, and C) this is so clearly post-hoc reasoning.For example: where's the "Social Policy", given that social media is a proven threat in this sense?
*EDIT:* And it's the guy who tried to make his own text editor after lamenting that Zed wasn't enough like Sublime?? Well, I guess it's nice to know I have an inverse doppleganger out there...
Please don't propagate the "LLMs are artificial intelligence" PR bullsh*t.
1. AI models produce consistent output, so it looks the same everywhere, which makes you look like a hustler if you use it for copywriting or design.
2. Customers who are fine with this can use Lovable for $20/month, so it's loser's game to chase those customers.
Guy thinks this is his niche. Everyone will go "that's neat" and move on with life.
There was another post on here recently by a translator, whose profession is translating documents, declaring that they won't use AI in their work and anyone who does is a noob and it is no threat to what they do...and it just was amazing stuff. Of course HN pandered to it with lots of "oh yeah that's right you show 'em", but surely we all realize how fantastically silly that was. A web developer / designer who refuses to use AI is rapidly going to be very unemployed, though they might try the purist "no AI here!" angle niche for a tiny delay of that inevitable.
The best example of this is security in open source software which maintainers have no choice but to use AI to protect themselves before an attacker can use AI to find and build exploits for security vulnerabilities faster than they can patch it.
In some sectors such as banking, crypto, defense and government, this is extremely critical. It will soon be the same with AI companies who have the AI model and someone could use AI to breach them with the goal of leaking the proprietary model.
So to them, policies like this, are actually a downgrade that they cannot afford to do.