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What I found insightful about this article was the framing of another article cited. > " This pretty negative post topping Hacker News last month sparked these

What I found insightful about this article was the framing of another article cited. > " This pretty negative post topping Hacker News last month sparked these questions, and I decided to find some answers, of course, using AI" The pretty negative post cited is https://tomrenner.com/posts/llm-inevitabilism/ https://tomrenner.com/posts/llm-inevitabilism/. I went ahead to read it, and found it, imo, fair. It's not making any direct pretty negative claims about AI, although it's clear the author has concerns. But the thrust is inviting the reader to not fall into the trap of the current framing by proponents of AI, rather questioning first if the future being peddled is actually what we want. Seems a fair question to ask if you're unsure? I got concerned that this is framed as "pretty negative post", and it impacted my read of the rest of this author's article

joshdavham 1y ago
I felt the same. I also definitely don't see the cited article as a "pretty negative post".
- benreesman 1y ago
  I think OP just means that in the sentiment analysis parlance, not in the critical of the post sense. Though it does sort of show the Overton window that a pretty bland argument against always believing some rich dudes buckets as negative even in the sentiment analysis sense. I think a lot of people have like half their net worth in NVIDIA stock right now.
ryandrake 1y ago
Weird what counts as "negative" on HN. Question something politely? You're being negative. Criticize something? Negative. Describe it in a way someone might interpret badly? Negative. Sometimes it seems like anything that's not breathless, unconditional praise is considered being negative and curmudgeonly. It's turning into a "positive thoughts only" zone.
- deleted 1y ago
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- phyzix5761 1y ago
  This is such a good comment. I have nothing but positive things to say about it. It's amazing!
  - zenoprax 1y ago
    You're absolutely right! /s
- perching_aix 1y ago
  Are you saying this based on the dataset shared? Like you inspected some randomized subset of the sentiment analysis and this is what you found?
- camillomiller 1y ago
  There is a relevant number of power users that also flag everything that is critical of big tech and won’t fit their frame as well, sending it into oblivion, regardless of the community rules and clear support from other voting members. But also calling that out is seen as negative and not constructive, and there goes any attempt at a discussion.
  - jaredklewis 1y ago
    How do you know who flags submissions?
    - camillomiller 1y ago
      i don’t, but I know certain users have a strong flagging penchant. check my recent submission, the vitriol it received, and read this https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-guess-which-recent-df-article-was-flagged-at-hacker-news https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-gue...
xelxebar 1y ago
Honestly, I read this a just a case of somewhat sloppy terminology choice: - Positive → AI Boomerist - Negative → AI Doomerist Still not great, IMHO, but at the very least the referenced article is certainly not AI Boomerist, so by process of elimination... probably more ambivalent? How does one quickly characterize "not boomerist and not really doomerist either, but somewhat ambivalent on that axis but definitely pushing against boomerism" without belaboring the point? Seems reasonable read that as some degree of negative pressure.
srcreigh 1y ago
> rather questioning first if the future being peddled is actually what we want The author (tom) tricked you. His article is flame bait. AI is a tool that we can use and discuss about. It's not just a "future being peddled." The article manages to say nothing about AI, casts generic doubt on AI as a whole, and pits people against each other. It's a giant turd for any discussion about AI, a sure-fire curiosity destruction tool.
- sumeno 1y ago
  It's a tool that we can use and discuss, but it's baffling to claim there aren't also a bunch of charlatans trying to peddle an AI future that is varying degrees of unrealistic and dystopian. Any number of Sam Altman quotes display this: "A child born today will never be smarter than an AI" "We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence" "ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived" "AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies." Every bit of this is nonsense being peddled by the guy selling an AI future because it would make him one of the richest people alive if he can convince enough people that it will come true (or, much much much less likely, it does come true). That's just from 10 minutes of looking at statements by a single one of these charlatans.
- sensanaty 1y ago
  If it were just any regular tool people (speaking for myself here mostly, but I see similar sentiments on HN) would be less annoyed and argumentative about it. Instead it's being shoved down our throats at every turn and is being marketed at the world as the Return of Christ. Whenever anyone says anything even slightly negative the evangelists crawl out of the woodwork to tell you how you're using the wrong model, or not prompting good enough, or long enough, or short enough, or "Well I've become a 9000000x developer using 76 agents in parallel!" type of posts.
  - srcreigh 1y ago
    So there’s new technology that many people like. Others post complaints/bug reports in threads. The people who like the technology try to help solve the problems. Why are you complaining about that? If you want to complain about AI and have no interest in learning more about it, go somewhere else. This site isn’t for that kind of discussion
epolanski 1y ago
I've always found HN's take on AI healthily skeptical. The only subset where HN gets overly negative is coding, way more than they should.
- rising-sky 1y ago
  I tend to agree with this. I just the "pretty negative" adjective jarring in this case and wanted to get a sense of what some in the community here think. Seems mostly in line with your sentiment
johnfn 1y ago
Maybe negative isn’t exactly the right word here. But I also didn’t enjoy the cited post. One reason is that the article really says nothing at all. You could take the article and replace “LLMs”, mad-lib style, with almost any other hyped piece of technology, and the article would still read cohesively. Bitcoin. Rust. Docker. Whatever. That this particular formulation managed to skyrocket to the top of HN says, in my opinion, that people were substituting in their own assumptions into an article which itself makes no hard claims. That this post was somewhat more of a rorsarch test for the zeitgeist. It’s certainly not the worst article I’ve read here. But that’s why I didn’t really like it.
- rising-sky 1y ago
  I think that's the point, the author isn't trying to get into the weeds of the debate itself, just the way the debates are usually framed and how most people might not realize it. It is a "meta" article in that sense and yes you're right, you can apply it in many other contexts where novel and advanced technology is being debated
redbell 1y ago
That pretty negative post cited was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44567857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44567857
deleted 1y ago
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joshdavham 1y ago

I felt the same. I also definitely don't see the cited article as a "pretty negative post".

benreesman 1y ago
I think OP just means that in the sentiment analysis parlance, not in the critical of the post sense. Though it does sort of show the Overton window that a pretty bland argument against always believing some rich dudes buckets as negative even in the sentiment analysis sense. I think a lot of people have like half their net worth in NVIDIA stock right now.

ryandrake 1y ago

Weird what counts as "negative" on HN. Question something politely? You're being negative. Criticize something? Negative. Describe it in a way someone might interpret badly? Negative. Sometimes it seems like anything that's not breathless, unconditional praise is considered being negative and curmudgeonly. It's turning into a "positive thoughts only" zone.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
phyzix5761 1y ago
This is such a good comment. I have nothing but positive things to say about it. It's amazing!
- zenoprax 1y ago
  You're absolutely right! /s
perching_aix 1y ago
Are you saying this based on the dataset shared? Like you inspected some randomized subset of the sentiment analysis and this is what you found?
camillomiller 1y ago
There is a relevant number of power users that also flag everything that is critical of big tech and won’t fit their frame as well, sending it into oblivion, regardless of the community rules and clear support from other voting members. But also calling that out is seen as negative and not constructive, and there goes any attempt at a discussion.
- jaredklewis 1y ago
  How do you know who flags submissions?
  - camillomiller 1y ago
    i don’t, but I know certain users have a strong flagging penchant. check my recent submission, the vitriol it received, and read this https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-guess-which-recent-df-article-was-flagged-at-hacker-news https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/27/youll-never-gue...

xelxebar 1y ago

Honestly, I read this a just a case of somewhat sloppy terminology choice: - Positive → AI Boomerist - Negative → AI Doomerist Still not great, IMHO, but at the very least the referenced article is certainly not AI Boomerist, so by process of elimination... probably more ambivalent? How does one quickly characterize "not boomerist and not really doomerist either, but somewhat ambivalent on that axis but definitely pushing against boomerism" without belaboring the point? Seems reasonable read that as some degree of negative pressure.

srcreigh 1y ago

> rather questioning first if the future being peddled is actually what we want The author (tom) tricked you. His article is flame bait. AI is a tool that we can use and discuss about. It's not just a "future being peddled." The article manages to say nothing about AI, casts generic doubt on AI as a whole, and pits people against each other. It's a giant turd for any discussion about AI, a sure-fire curiosity destruction tool.

sumeno 1y ago
It's a tool that we can use and discuss, but it's baffling to claim there aren't also a bunch of charlatans trying to peddle an AI future that is varying degrees of unrealistic and dystopian. Any number of Sam Altman quotes display this: "A child born today will never be smarter than an AI" "We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence" "ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived" "AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies." Every bit of this is nonsense being peddled by the guy selling an AI future because it would make him one of the richest people alive if he can convince enough people that it will come true (or, much much much less likely, it does come true). That's just from 10 minutes of looking at statements by a single one of these charlatans.
sensanaty 1y ago
If it were just any regular tool people (speaking for myself here mostly, but I see similar sentiments on HN) would be less annoyed and argumentative about it. Instead it's being shoved down our throats at every turn and is being marketed at the world as the Return of Christ. Whenever anyone says anything even slightly negative the evangelists crawl out of the woodwork to tell you how you're using the wrong model, or not prompting good enough, or long enough, or short enough, or "Well I've become a 9000000x developer using 76 agents in parallel!" type of posts.
- srcreigh 1y ago
  So there’s new technology that many people like. Others post complaints/bug reports in threads. The people who like the technology try to help solve the problems. Why are you complaining about that? If you want to complain about AI and have no interest in learning more about it, go somewhere else. This site isn’t for that kind of discussion

epolanski 1y ago

I've always found HN's take on AI healthily skeptical. The only subset where HN gets overly negative is coding, way more than they should.

rising-sky 1y ago
I tend to agree with this. I just the "pretty negative" adjective jarring in this case and wanted to get a sense of what some in the community here think. Seems mostly in line with your sentiment

johnfn 1y ago

Maybe negative isn’t exactly the right word here. But I also didn’t enjoy the cited post. One reason is that the article really says nothing at all. You could take the article and replace “LLMs”, mad-lib style, with almost any other hyped piece of technology, and the article would still read cohesively. Bitcoin. Rust. Docker. Whatever. That this particular formulation managed to skyrocket to the top of HN says, in my opinion, that people were substituting in their own assumptions into an article which itself makes no hard claims. That this post was somewhat more of a rorsarch test for the zeitgeist. It’s certainly not the worst article I’ve read here. But that’s why I didn’t really like it.

rising-sky 1y ago
I think that's the point, the author isn't trying to get into the weeds of the debate itself, just the way the debates are usually framed and how most people might not realize it. It is a "meta" article in that sense and yes you're right, you can apply it in many other contexts where novel and advanced technology is being debated

redbell 1y ago

That pretty negative post cited was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44567857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44567857

deleted 1y ago

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