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I Am An AI Hater

• ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  watching the tide turn (or, more accurately, the undercurrent bubble up) on AI has been interesting
  • marcosdumay 1y ago
    It's interesting that the social reaction started to surface as soon as the companies failed to get more investment and decided to increase prices. I know it was there the entire time, so what exactly was suppressing the attention towards it? Was it satisfied customers or the companies paying to deplatform the message?
    • taormina 1y ago
      Are they running out of funds to drown out the protesters with their own marketing?
    • emseetech 1y ago
      It may have started earlier. This study came out a year ago, showing consumers overwhelmingly were turned off by companies slapping "AI" on products. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19368623.2024.2368040 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19368623.2024.2... | Adverse impacts of revealing the presence of “Artificial Intelligence (AI)” technology in product and service descriptions on purchase intentions: the mediating role of emotional trust and the moderating role of perceived risk Witness how quickly we went from being awed by Dall-E and Midjourney to saying "looks like AI" as an insult.
    • deadbabe 1y ago
      It has nothing to do with that. In a hype cycle, at the beginning, it is easy to harvest attention just by talking about the hype. But as more people do this, eventually the influence market is saturated. After this point, you then will get a better ROI on attention by taking the opposite position and discussing the anti-hype. This is where we currently are with AI, the contrarians are now in style.
    • mingus88 1y ago
      I can only speak to my social circle but initially LLMs were a lot of fun. Like my kids playing with Photo Booth filters on a new device. I don’t think the social reaction was there the whole time. It feels more like we have been playing around with them for two years and are finally realizing they won’t change our lives as positively as we thought And seeing what the CEO class is doing with them makes it even worse
• FredPret 1y ago
  Me too. I bounce off of any product landing page that has "AI" slapped on it, which lately is ~99% of them. On the other hand, if I saw a product labelled "No AI bullshit" then I'd immediately be more interested. But that's just me, the AI buzz among non-techies is enormous and net-positive.
  • esseph 1y ago
    The AI buzz among non-techies inflates the bubble.
  • Atlas667 1y ago
    lol, marketing knows no bounds. Almost like its all emotional-level gimmicks anyways. If I see "No AI bullshit" I'd be as skeptical if it said "AI Inside". Corpos tryina squeeze a buck will resort to any and all manipulative tactics.
  • srhtftw 1y ago
    For me use or mention of AI is a signal the manufacturer either doesn't care about quality or doesn't know or care that it's no longer special. It's plastic.
  • const_cast 1y ago
    When a random ass product has "AI!!1!" slapped all over it it's a clear sign that the business suits and sales fuckheads who don't know anything about anything are running the show. Which, granted, describes most companies. But ultimately they do not serve you or your technical needs, because they are literally incapable of understanding them. Any intersection between your technical needs and their provisions is of pure coincidence.
• hlieberman 1y ago
  Preach, my brother, preach!
• notfed 1y ago
  "I strongly feel that AI is an insult to life itself." - Hayao Miyazaki I'm going to start using this quote.
  • badsectoracula 1y ago
    AFAIK that wasn't a general response to AI but of a very particular implementation of a procedural animation system shown to him by some (IIRC) students for the movement of a disabled person and he found it distasteful as it reminded him of someone he knows who is disabled and had issues moving. The quote was taken a little bit out of context.
  • the_af 1y ago
    Have you watched the video that goes with it? It's online, and very amusing. Regardless of how you feel about AI, the specific instance Miyazaki was reacting to was, indeed, an insult to life itself!
    • frozenseven 1y ago
      It's out of context. They used reinforcement learning to make a ragdoll move. So much drama over nothing.
      • the_af 1y ago
        What do you mean? As far as I know, the context is that Miyazaki hated it because it reminded him of a friend with disabilities. That's why he said it was an insult to life itself. Miyazaki's attitude to tech in general is ambivalent, isn't it? He used to be very conservative and traditional, yet in Princess Mononoke you can tell he used some CGI. I think I agree with his approach: the work/vision comes first, and tech can be used but not as a gimmick, and always careful not to overpower the artistry.
        • frozenseven 1y ago
          For what the demo actually was, Miyazaki's reaction didn't make sense. The anti-AI activists' use of this soundbite makes even less sense.
• monkaiju 1y ago
  I love the high citation per sentence ratio and couldn't agree more with the sentiment. It seems that, finally, people are starting to verbalize sufficiently direct responses to the AI slop being flung at us from all angles.
  • danielbln 1y ago
    Outright rejection won't help with making AI go away. We can only change it, but it is here to stay.
    • cmiles74 1y ago
      I suspect the cost will rise and we'll start seeing much less of it. As the free tier gets smaller and less useful, I think we'll see the pool of people who use AI casually start to shrink. Seeing which use-cases make it through will certainly be interesting.
      • mingus88 1y ago
        I’ll bet call center workloads stick. That whole industry is literally just a sweatshop for English language speakers who just follow scripts (prompts) and try to keep customers happy. Seeing as how so many people volunteer to make meaningful relationships with LLMs as it is, it has to be more effective than talking to a “Bill” or “Cheryl” with a heavy South Asian accent.
    • monkaiju 1y ago
      Not trying to "make it go away", though that'd be great, just making another irrelevant technology that I dont interact with.
      • danielbln 1y ago
        I think it will be pervasive, like the Internet is pervasive, and will be unavoidable unless you drop off the grid. For better or for worse.
• jkingsman 1y ago
  I appreciate seeing this point of view represented. It's not one I personally hold, but it is one a LOT of my friends hold, and I think it's important that it be given a voice, even if -- perhaps especially if -- a lot of people disagree with it. One of my friends sent me a delightful bastardization of the famous IBM quote: A COMPUTER CAN NEVER FEEL SPITEFUL OR [PASSIONATE†]. THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER CREATE ART. Hate is an emotional word, and I suspect many people (myself included) may leap to take logical issue with an emotional position. But emotions are real, and human, and people absolutely have them about AI, and I think that's important to talk about and respect that fact. † replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness.
  • randcraw 1y ago
    Picasso's Guernica was born of hate, his hate of war, of dehumanization for petty political ends. No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war to produce such a work. It must forever parrot.
    • petralithic 1y ago
      A human might generate a piece of media using AI (either via a slot machine spin or with more advanced workflows like ComfyUI) and once they deem it looks good enough for their purpose, they might display it to represent what they want it to represent. If Guernica was AI generated but still displayed by Picasso as a statement about war, it would still be art. Tools do not dictate what art is and isn't, it is about the intent of the human using those tools. Image generators are not autonomously generating images, it is the human who is asking them for specific concepts and ideas. This is no different than performance art like a banana taped to a wall which requires no tools at all.
      • aspaviento 1y ago
        And let's not forget that people call "art" to more things than the popular masterpieces. A guy sold an invisible sculpture¹ clamming it was art. If things like this can be called art, whatever AI makes can be called art too. 1: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-off-invisible-sculpture-18300-literally-made-nothing-1976181 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-o...
• byronic 1y ago
  A marvelous article that gave voice to things I can't articulate appropriately (although, I guess, now I can).
• _Algernon_ 1y ago
  [flagged]
• danielbln 1y ago
  Yet it is here to stay, won't go away and even if it won't get any better at the useful things it does, it is useful. The externalities are real, some can be removed, some mitigated. If you're a hater and a human, then you don't have to mitigate anything, of course. Me, I hate the externalities, but I love the thing. I want to use my own AI, hyper optimized and efficient and private. It would mitigate a lot. Maybe some day.
  • Mallowram 1y ago
    [dead]
    • danielbln 1y ago
      AI is information.
      • jerhewet 1y ago
        AI is "put Elmer's glue on your pizza so the ingredients won't slide off". AI is "three B's in blueberry". Garbage in, garbage out. Which will always be the case when your AI is scraping stuff off of random pages and commentary on the internet.
        • s1mplicissimus 1y ago
          If only it were garbage in, garbage out - that would be solvable by better training data. But it's much worse than that, because even if you'd only feed it good stuff, the output would still deteriorate. pointing index finger at imaginary baloon: pfffffffffft
      • zwnow 1y ago
        Disinformation with more and more propaganda due to being vulnerable to bad actors. There's already evidence on people spreading propaganda through LLMs.
        • 1y ago
• sindriava 1y ago
  > I became a hater by doing precisely those things AI cannot do: reading and understanding human language; thinking and reasoning about ideas; considering the meaning of my words and their context; With this the article lost all seriousness for me. I may be on board with a lot of what you are saying, but pretending you know the answer to these questions just makes you look as idiotic as anyone who says the opposite.
  • deadbabe 1y ago
    Consider that unlike a human, an AI cannot “pretend” to know anything, it is incapable of knowing how to pretend because it doesn’t actually “know” anything.
• nathias 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • idopmstuff 1y ago
    I'm devastated to say that when I just searched for the Maddox quote "for every animal you don't eat, I'll eat three," the page was indexed in Google but not live when I clicked on it. RIP.
• Mallowram 1y ago
  [dead]
  • lo_zamoyski 1y ago
    > Words are the most indirect form of perception imaginable. Both Aristotle and Cassirer knew this What?
    • Mallowram 1y ago
      Aristotle: There are no contradictions. Cassirer: “Only when we put away words will be able to reach the initial conditions, only then will we have direct perception. All linguistic denotation is essentially ambiguous–and in this ambiguity, this “paronymia” of words is the source of all myths…this self-deception is rooted in language, which is forever making a game of the human mind, ever ensnaring it in that iridescent play of meanings…even theoretical knowledge becomes phantasmagoria; for even knowledge can never reproduce the true nature of things as they are but must frame their essence in “concepts.” Consequently all schemata which science evolves in order to classify, organize and summarize the phenomena of the real, turns out to be nothing but arbitrary schemes. So knowledge, as well as myth, language, and art, has been reduced to a kind of fiction–a fiction that recommends its usefulness, but must not be measured by any strict standard of truth, if it is not to melt away into nothingness.” Cassirer Language and Myth
      • utyop22 1y ago
        This is beautiful. I also had a similar epiphany 3 days ago - once it hits you and you understand it, you can see clearly why LLMs are destined to crash and burn in their present form (good luck to those who will have to answer the questions regarding the money dumped into it). What will come out of the investment will not justify what has been invested (for anyone who thinks otherwise, PLEASE GO AHEAD AND DO A DCF VALUATION!) and it will have a depressing effect on future AI investment.
      • lo_zamoyski 1y ago
        > Aristotle: There are no contradictions. I still don't know what this is supposed to mean, and I am not unfamiliar with Aristotle.
• holbrad 1y ago
  >Critics have already written thoroughly about the environmental harms, the reinforcement of bias and generation of racist output, the cognitive harms and AI supported suicides, the problems with consent and copyright, I just can't take anything the author has to say seriously after the intro.
  • gjsman-1000 1y ago
    And that's why Trump won the election. I'm serious. This sentence perfectly captures what the coastal cities sound like to the rest of the US, and why they voted for the crazy uncle over something unintelligible.
    • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
      When I see how the voters vote and don't vote, I yearn for sortition
    • simianwords 1y ago
      Coastal city dwellers want the next thing to signal rebellion. Its just that AI serves as a way to do that plus also show some concern to the working class.
  • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
    Because they didn't explain it themselves, or because you disagree with the assessment?
  • miltonlost 1y ago
    After the intro and all the links to the statements he's saying? Because which of those aren't actually true
    • tensor 1y ago
      Very few of them, if any, are true. Firstly, the author doesn't even define the term AI. Do they just mean generative AI (likely), or all machine learning? Secondly, you can pick any of those and they would only be true of particular implementations of generative AI, or machine learning, it's not true of technology as a whole. For instance, small edge models don't use a lot of energy. Models that are not trained on racist material won't be racist. Models not trained to give advice on suicide, or trained NOT to do such things, won't do it. Do I even need to address the claim that it's at it's core rooted in "fascist" ideology? So all the people creating AI to help cure diseases, enable technologies assistive technologies for people with impairments, and other positive tasks, all these desires are fascist? It's ridiculous. AI is a technology that can be used positively or negatively. To be sure many of the generative AI systems today do have issues associated with them, but the authors position of extending these issues to the entirety of the AI and AI practitioners, it's immoral and shitty. I also don't care what the author has to say after the intro.
• StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  Amusingly things are going with AI like with any complex topics nowadays. It’s easier to hold a strong position than a nuanced one. So you see a lot of vapid articles either for or against, even - or especially actually - if you don’t really know for or against what exactly, and very few insightful ones. Plague of our ages I guess. Ironically AI might even make it worse.
  • codyb 1y ago
    I suspect we're in a bubble... and when it pops, the useful, profitable work will stay around. A bunch of things will also disappear. And then we'll wait till the next bubble. Gains seem to have leveled off tremendously. As far as I can tell folk were saying "Wow, look at this, I can get it to generate code... it does really well at tests, and small well defined tasks" And a year or a year and a half later we're at like... that + "it's slightly better than it was before!" lol. So, yea, I dunno, I suspect we'll see a fair amount fall away and some useful things to continue to be used.
    • utyop22 1y ago
      What profitable work? Please do post numbers in the form of free cash flows to the firm (or equity) ;). Also you seem to forget that irrespective of cash profits in the future, will this investment generate excess returns? Nope. That's what investors care about. Its not even profit actually.
      • codyb 1y ago
        I dunno, I barely use the stuff. But, I'm sure someone will find something to do with some part of it lol. People seem to like the ability to summarize things quickly, and quickly scaffold up presentations, reports, and flows I guess? Regardless, whatever it is that the masses decide is worth paying enough to keep the business afloat will probably survive. And the rest will... dissolve.
    • TeMPOraL 1y ago
      My personal view is that there are broadly two groups of people, and thus two perspectives, related to the AI hype. I call them the Beneficiaries, and the Investors. Beneficiaries are the ones who care about the actual tech and what it can do for them. Investors are the ones who care about making money off the tech. For the Beneficiaries, AI hype is about right where it should be, given the demonstrable power of the tech itself. For Investors, it may be a dangerous bubble - but then I myself am a Beneficiary, not an Investor, so I don't care. I don't care which companies get burned on this, which investors will lose everything - businesses come and gone, but foundational inventions remain. The bubble will burst, and then the second wave of companies will recycle what the first wave left; the tech will continue to be developed and become even more useful. Or put another way: I don't care which of the contestants wins a tunnel-digging race. I only care about the tunnels being dug. See e.g. history of rail lines, and arguably many more big infrastructure projects: people who fronted the initial capital did not see much of a return, but the actual infrastructure they left behind as they folded was taken over and built upon by subsequent waves of companies.
• r2_pilot 1y ago
  I feel like this level of opprobrium is disproportionate. At least Claude has enabled me to live a more full life, spending extra time with those I love more while being able to rubberducky my random thoughts(who are they to judge what fleeting thoughts I allow myself?). I've been burned by AI falsehoods and read the same slop, sure, but I also went through the same with search engines and even books before that. This tool would have unlocked so much more of my potential had it existed 30 years ago and I'm excited(maybe a lot of dread too) to see what the next 30 years will bring.
• laincide 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • miltonlost 1y ago
    Look up who the Luddites were and how they actually were right and instead had a centuries-long campaign against them and their real beliefs and concerns. (
    • Refreeze5224 1y ago
      I am 100% a Luddite, in the original use of the word. It is exactly the same situation with AI now as it was then, and I oppose it for the same reason.
    • frozenseven 1y ago
      I've looked up who the Luddites were. Terrorists, basically. Horrible people.
• Bedlow 1y ago
  This is great. I'm not going to make any argument. Because I am an AI hater.Genius.
• efitz 1y ago
  At least he’s honest.
• justlikereddit 1y ago
  [flagged]
• sarchertech 1y ago
  "Their dream is to invent new forms of life to enslave." That seems like a succinct way to describe the goal to create conscious AGI.
  • brabel 1y ago
    While some people support AGI because they yearn for "new forms of life to enslave", I think it's fair to say most people who look forward to AGI wants it because it means they may find solutions to very difficult issues we just can't with our own intelligence. It may be a pipe dream, but I can understand why people would want to believe that.
    • sarchertech 1y ago
      I doubt many slaveholders want slaves just to own slaves. They want the useful things the slaves can provide for them.
      • TeMPOraL 1y ago
        Right. But that's also why we invented robotics, automation, the entire field of software engineering, and - going in the other direction - specialization of labor.
  • NBJack 1y ago
    The TV show Pantheon did a really cool job of exploring super intelligence from a very personal perspective, disguised in part as a scifi about living forever. (Mild spoiler): It has a basic plot point about uploaded humans being used to tackle problems as unknowing slaves and resetting their memories to get them to endlessly repeat tasks.
    • robochat 1y ago
      "Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories" by Qntm has some good (harrowing) stories about human uploads too.
  • 1y ago
• andix 1y ago
  A lot of valid arguments. But the conclusion (hate) is not constructive. LLMs are here, and they are going to stay. Like cars, internet or smartphones.
  • monkaiju 1y ago
    Thats nonsense and just feeds the inevitability narrative.
    • brennyb 1y ago
      Realistically how would you imagine that we put AI back in the bottle?
• turtlebro 1y ago
  [flagged]
• pmdr 1y ago
  Is Ed Zitron's newsletter banned here? I haven't seen a single article of his on HN and he's been ranting about AI for years now.
  • footy 1y ago
    I think it just doesn't do very well and likely gets flagged often. If I type his domain name into the search bar there are only three articles.
    • pmdr 1y ago
      I mean, I get that the tone might not be liked by everyone, but his work does raise some IMO valid concerns about the economics LLMs, which I don't see discussed around here very often. Then again, I get that AI has AI-friendly owners.
      • footy 1y ago
        I agree with you, but until very recently it was super rare to see anything other than techno-optimism about LLMs on this site. I assume partially for the reason you bring up.
        • petralithic 1y ago
          That's definitely not true, read the initial threads about GitHub Copilot and Stable Diffusion on HN.
  • evanelias 1y ago
    His posts often make it to the front page and then get flagged. That even happened as recently as this morning. For reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wheresyoured.at https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wheresyoured.at
    • pmdr 1y ago
      Well they're obviously bad for the economy.
• raggi 1y ago
  Extremism and division aren’t a path to wisdom or to healthy cultures, but you do you.
  • jplusequalt 1y ago
    >or to healthy cultures Are the companies funding this push for LLMs contributing to healthy cultures? The same companies who ruined societal discourse with social media? The same people who designed their algorithms to be as addictive as possible to drive engagement?
• nkohari 1y ago
  I hate social media and what it's done to the internet, but I accept that it is now a part of the fabric of society. You can't unring the bell. (In fact, here I am, saying I hate social media on a social media site.) In the end, it doesn't matter what you or I think. You can hate AI, but it's not going away. The industry needs more skeptical, level-headed people to help figure out how best to leverage the technology in a responsible way.
  • yawnxyz 1y ago
    I 100% agree; this entire post seems like it was a product of social media and social signaling, and it feels weirdly lacking in nuance because it's supposed to rile a certain group of people up and ally itself with another — so in a way that's deeply hypocritical to me
  • utyop22 1y ago
    Ah you have no bias do you? Afterall, you are the founder of an AI startup.
    • nkohari 1y ago
      > The industry needs more skeptical, level-headed people to help figure out how best to leverage the technology in a responsible way. I'd like to think I'm in this category. I'm definitely not an AI zealot.
• Refreeze5224 1y ago
  This is wonderful. It captures so many of the issues of AI, and without apology.
• Scrapemist 1y ago
  Nothing more human than a hater.
• simianwords 1y ago
  Cynicism is the new virtue to signal for the tech elite class. New technology is the ideal way for those people to signal their cynicism. > Critics have already written thoroughly about the environmental harms, the reinforcement of bias and generation of racist output, the cognitive harms and AI supported suicides, the problems with consent and copyright, the way AI tech companies further the patterns of empire, how it’s a con that enables fraud and disinformation and harassment and surveillance, the exploitation of workers, as an excuse to fire workers and de-skill work, how they don’t actually reason and probability and association are inadequate to the goal of intelligence, how people think it makes them faster when it makes them slower, how it is inherently mediocre and fundamentally conservative, how it is at its core a fascist technology rooted in the ideology of supremacy, defined not by its technical features but by its political ones. This word salad proves that the author out to stack leftist jabs. I want to be respectful but this paragraph proves that the author does not think for themselves but just uses this as an opportunity to signal that they are the "in group" amongst the tech-cynics. Post is probably going to get flagged for what its worth
  • phyzome 1y ago
    Do you also rail against the "word salad" coming out of the AI marketing blogs that are also posted to this site?
    • simianwords 1y ago
      Examples? I do think some of them are pure hype but overall AI is here to stay. People like using it and get value from it.
    • petralithic 1y ago
      Yes, of course. You also see those flagged to just as this one has been now. Turns out people don't like word salad of any kind.
• tanvach 1y ago
  I've noticed that the younger you are, the most likely you're in love with AI. So the tide will turn eventually, for better or worse. I talked to someone recently who claims with no irony that 'AI has zero downside'. I don't hate AI. I hate the people who're in love with it. The culture of people who build and worship this technology is toxic.
  • iLoveOncall 1y ago
    It's not about age, it's about experience.
    • monkaiju 1y ago
      Couldnt agree more, aligns with my observations much more than just age
      • tanvach 1y ago
        Age is observable
  • racl101 1y ago
    Not surprising. From the point of view of a typical, not very curious kid or teen AI seems like a godsend. Now you don't have to put much effort in a lot of things you don't want to do to begin with.
  • petralithic 1y ago
    Isn't that the nature of all technologies? I'm sure people 50 years ago thought the internet wasn't going to be a big deal, like Krugman.
    • tanvach 1y ago
      Nothing before it is worshipped and hated at this proportion
      • 1y ago
• Group_B 1y ago
  Maybe if he keeps hating it more and more it'll go away. Or maybe we just have to combine all our AI hate together and AI itself will cease to exist.
• hudon 1y ago
  The environmental problem is enough for us to pump the brakes. By the end of this year, AI systems will be responsible for half of global data center power demand… 23 gigawatts. For what? A more useful search engine, a better autocomplete, and a shit code generator. Is it worth it? Are we even asking that question? When does it become not worth it? Who’s even running the calculus? The free market certainly isn’t.
• MisterTea 1y ago
  I have so far used AI a total of 4 or 5 times to ask it programming questions that I really didn't need answers to, only curious. I can see it being useful as a teaching aide but to use it to write my emails, letters or whatever is something I would never consider as it removes the human element which I enjoy. Sure writing sometimes sucks but its supposed to - work is hard and finishing work is rewarding. Very soon we will see blog posts about AI burnout where mindless copy-pasting of output and boring prompt fiddling sucks so much joy out of life people will begin to loose their sanity. If I want "AI" I want a model I have full control over, ran locally, to e.g. query my picture collection for "all pictures of grey cats in a window" or whatever. Or point a webcam out of my window and have it tell me when the squirrels are fucking with my bird feeder and maybe squirt water at them but leave the birds alone. That would be cool. But turning programmers into copy pasters, emails into soulless monologues, media with minimal/no human input and so on is something that can die in a fire. It's all low effort which I have no respect for.
• iLoveOncall 1y ago
  I don't think the author hates AI, but rather the people developing AI, and in particular the CEOs and others of those companies. This is particularly clear in this paragraph: > And to what end? In a kind of nihilistic symmetry, their dream of the perfect slave machine drains the life of those who use it as well as those who turn the gears. What is life but what we choose, who we know, what we experience? Incoherent empty men want to sell me the chance to stop reading and writing and thinking, to stop caring for my kids or talking to my parents, to stop choosing what I do or knowing why I do it. Blissful ignorance and total isolation, warm in the womb of the algorithm, nourished by hungry machines. There are legitimate uses for which AI (or any other technology to be clear) would relieve everyone. Chores that people HAVE to do but nobody WANTS to do. If GenAI allows you to build automations for those tasks, by all means it will make you life more meaningful because you will have more time to spend on meaningful things. Think of opening the tap to get water instead of having to carry a bucket home from the well. It's fine to hate the people who build AI, it's fine to hate the people who push for AI use, it's fine to hate the people who release garbage built with AI, etc. But hating "AI" is nonsensical. It's akin to hating hammers or shoes, it's just a tool that may or may not fit a job (and personally, like the author, I don't think it fits any job at the moment).
  • visarga 1y ago
    > their dream of the perfect slave machine I don't get if AI is supposed to be a slave or a machine. Is it sentient or a toaster?
  • utyop22 1y ago
    "There are legitimate uses for which AI (or any other technology to be clear) would relieve everyone. Chores that people HAVE to do but nobody WANTS to do." Ok but what are these? People keep saying right now they are trying to figure out where LLM's fit. Someone, somwhere would've figured it out by now - the world is more interconnected than ever before. I think the approach with all that is going on is all entirely wrong - you cannot start with the technology and figure out where to put it. You have got to start with the experience - Steve Jobs famously quipped this and his track record speaks for itself. All I'm seeing is experimentation with the first approach which is costly in explicit and implicit form. Nobody from what I see seems to have a visionary approach.
• siliconsorcerer 1y ago
  I really appreciate the tone of this article, and honestly I was an "AI hater" as well. I honestly just don't think it makes sense any more. Almost everything in this article is making a valid point, AI is being pushed by the powers that be that have absolutely no regard for the masses and how this is going to affect society. But I fail to see how that is different than any other time or any other technology in history. People that are declaring that "AI is harmful to society" are ignoring the fundamental brokenness of society that is the underlying reason why AI development is moving forward with reckless abandon. AI is a problem because our society doesn't have a solid moral compass.
  • utyop22 1y ago
    I don't think people themselves can be trusted to collectively have a moral compass. You need institutions and other mechanisms to bring and fix this within society.
    • siliconsorcerer 1y ago
      I agree, and actually I should have clarified that the government and our elected officials are responsible for that and they’re failing.
      • utyop22 1y ago
        Im working on something in the UK (pray for me). Can't say too much but I'm trying to build a mechanism fundamental to the inner workings of the economy.
• mrandish 1y ago
  > "the makers of AI aren’t damned by their failures, they’re damned by their goals." Good observation.
• yawnxyz 1y ago
  I think this is similar to how some people hated electricity when it first came out, and today, it's very hard to find someone who absolutely hates and avoids electricity. Many of same concerns and objections people raised about electricity can be applied to AI (everything under the sun back in the day became "electrified" just like AI today; most of those use cases were ridiculous and deserved to be made fun of) But I think more concerningly though, people like this don't sound like they're a "real" hater- they're positioning themselves in some kind of social signaling kind of way. I was (and still is) a social media hater, and this person is clearly a child of the social justice / social signaling days of social media, and their entire personality seems to have been shaped by that era, and that's something I'm happy to blame on the tech industry.
• narrator 1y ago
  Some recent takes I've heard: "AI makes me feel stupid" - economically struggling millennial "This waymo stuff the money goes to big corporations instead of me a hard working American that contributes to the economy" - Uber driver Meanwhile, all the wealthy business owners are fascinated with it cause they can get things done without having to hire.
  • Proofread0592 1y ago
    > Meanwhile, all the wealthy business owners are fascinated with it cause they can get things done without having to hire. I think you need to add the word potentially in front of "get things done". The venn diagram of what current LLMs can do, and what wealthy business owners think LLMs can do, has the smallest of overlaps.
• dpoloncsak 1y ago
  > Critics have already written thoroughly about the environmental harms, the reinforcement of bias and generation of racist output, the cognitive harms and AI supported suicides, the problems with consent and copyright... This paragraph really pisses me off and I'm not sure why. > Critics have already written thoroughly about the environmental harms Didn't google just prove there is little to no environmental harm, INCLUDING if you account for training? > the reinforcement of bias and generation of racist output Im uneducated here, honestly. I don't ask a lot of race-based questions to my LLMS I guess >the cognitive harms and AI supported suicides There is constant active rhetoric around the sycophancy, and ways to reduce this, right? OpenAI just made a new benchmark specifically for this. I won't deny it's an issue but to act like it's being ignored by the industry is a miss completely. >the problems with consent and copyright This is the best argument on the page imo, and even that is highly debated. I agree with "AI is performing copyright infringement" and see constant "AI ignores my robots.txt". I also grew up being told that ANYTHING on the internet was for the public, and copyright never stopped *me* from saving images or pirating movies. Then the rest touches on ways people will feel about or use AI, which is obviously just as much conjecture as anything else on the topic. I can't speak for everyone else, and neither can anyone else.
  • mrsilencedogood 1y ago
    "This is the best argument on the page imo, and even that is highly debated. I agree with "AI is performing copyright infringement" and see constant "AI ignores my robots.txt". I also grew up being told that ANYTHING on the internet was for the public, and copyright never stopped me from saving images or pirating movies." I think the main problem for me is that these companies benefit from copyright - by beating anyone they can reach with the DMCA stick - and are now also showing they don't actually care about it at all and when they do it, it's ok. Go ahead, AI companies. End copyright law. Do it. Start lobbying now. (They won't, they'll just continue to eat their cake and have it too).
    • dpoloncsak 1y ago
      Yeah, it's a fair point. We have seen a clear abuse of our copyright system.
• whitehexagon 1y ago
  I'm also 'agAInst' this trend. Mainly because it feels like a dangerous step further along the path towards conscious GAI. But there is too much money and greed involved to stop this now. The only thing I can do is avoid any product or service that mentions AI, chatGPT, .ai domain, smart, agent etc. etc. It feels like we are on a cliff edge, just before every government builds in a dependency on this nightmare technology. Billions more will be wasted whilst the planet burns.
  • deleted 1y ago
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• huqedato 1y ago
  I love you, AI Hater!
• qustrolabe 1y ago
  As all AI haters do this one also uses false interpretation of Miyazaki quote
• satisfice 1y ago
  A refreshing post to place next to the endless nihilistic gaspings of the AI fanboys.
• nahuel0x 1y ago
  This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need for anything to drink. "Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince. "Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week." "And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?" "Anything you like..." "As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
  • ls-a 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • freehorse 1y ago
      And I prefer looking at stuff that 3yos draw over looking at AI-generated "art".
    • jacquesm 1y ago
      The door is there ----->
      • ls-a 1y ago
        [flagged]
  • jay_kyburz 1y ago
    I think the little prince is being a contrary little shit. I'm sure sometimes he would prefer to play in the park, jump-rope with friends, or draw a picture than just walk an hour whether he wanted to or not.
    • TeMPOraL 1y ago
      I do agree with your view of the Little Prince. Still, the irony is, the validity of the merchant's argument is irrelevant. 53 person-minutes per week is a tiny benefit compared to eliminating logistics around manufacturing and shipping beverages. For better or worse, in real world, conditions like these end up with the market forcing adoption of the solution, whether the people on the receiving end like it or not.
• egamirorrim 1y ago
  Someone get this man a Claude Max subscription already.
  • rsoto2 1y ago
    thanks but no thanks. Would rather not support a company involved in the mass slaughter of children.
    • brennyb 1y ago
      Are there any large companies that are not in some way involved in the mass slaughter of children?
• didibus 1y ago
  I love this article, I'm not an AI hater personally, but I doubt an AI could have written it. And in a way, that's as compelling of an argument as the content of the article itself. Honestly, the first paragraph is packed full with good talking points, there's definitely a lot of ignoring of the cons of AI happening, I try to remember how I felt when social media first appeared, but I recall loving it, being part of all the hype, finding it amazing, using it all the time...
• nancyminusone 1y ago
  My personal AI dichotomy: - When I use AI, it is typically useful. - When other people build and do things with AI, it's slop that I didn't ask for which is waste of resources and a threat to humanity. This entirely sums up my thoughts on the technology. I suppose it's rather like the personal benefits vs greater harm of using coal for electricity.
  • bonoboTP 1y ago
    This is an interesting point that I can agree with without having consciously realized. It's easy to use lazily and for use cases that are annoying. But used in the right contexts with the limitations in mind it's personally quite useful indeed.
  • npteljes 1y ago
    Heh, I feel this in me as well. When I like driving but hate the traffic. Although, much of the slop problem is due to lack of consent. Same as how my youtube video to me is entertainment, and noise for the rest of the passengers.
• LeicaLatte 1y ago
  I just hate arrays.
  • lll-o-lll 1y ago
    I love arrays! How can you array hate? Uiua is my favourite language for fun.
• stego-tech 1y ago
  Well said. No notes.
• deleted 1y ago
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• indoordin0saur 1y ago
  I'm certainly on the "AI is over-hyped" bus, so was excited to read this but the links to very fringe political websites at the beginning makes me question the judgement of the author.
  • yahoozoo 1y ago
    You mean the New Socialist isn’t a credible, unbiased authority on why on AI is fascist?
    • rsoto2 1y ago
      Palantir, AWS, Anthropic are being used to mass slaughter children and surveille/target journalists. The entire industry is infected with fascism and moral decay.
• phoenixhaber 1y ago
  Many of the comments presupposes that human free will isn't mechanic or deterministic at some level of introspection. How would we know a sufficiently complicated AI were incapable of love or hate and how would this differ from ourselves saving in one is made of silicon and one of neurobiology? This isn't an easy question.
  • diamond559 1y ago
    Because when a GPU isn't receiving and computing orders from human instructions it does not draw power and therefore is an inert hunk of various metals and materials.
• yahoozoo 1y ago
  > how it is at its core a fascist technology rooted in the ideology of supremacy These people are insufferable.
• visarga 1y ago
  Our society would break down without language. Without math there would be much fewer people because we would not be able to have large cities and commerce. Without technology we can't manage anymore. The moral? It's always been an unbalanced society tumbling into the future. Even if AI has both downsides and upsides we will still make it a part of us. Consider the scale - 1B people chatting for the likes of 1T tokens/day. That amount of AI-language has got to influence human language and abilities as well. Point by point rebuttals: - environmental harms - so does any use of electricity, fuel or construction - reinforcement of bias - all ours, reflected back, and it depends on prompting as well - generation of racist output - depends on who's prompting what - cognitive harms and AI supported suicides - we are the consequence sink for all things AI, good and bad - problems with consent and copyright - only if you think abstractions should be owned - enables fraud and disinformation and harassment and surveillance - all existed before 2020 - exploitation of workers, excuse to fire workers and de-skill work - that is AI being used as excuse, can't be AI's fault - they don’t actually reason and probability and association are inadequate to the goal of intelligence - apparently you don't need reasoning to win gold at IMO - people think it makes them faster when it makes them slower - and advanced LLMs are just 2.5 years old, give people time to learn to use it - it is inherently mediocre - all of us have been at some point - it is at its core a fascist technology rooted in the ideology of supremacy - LOL, generalizing Grok to all LLMs? The author mixes hate of AI with hate of people behind AI and hate of how other people excuse their actions blaming AI.
  • ch4s3 1y ago
    > - it is at its core a fascist technology rooted in the ideology of supremacy - LOL, generalizing Grok to all LLMs? Yeah, "statistics is fascism" - Umberto Eco (probably)
• 123sereusername 1y ago
  [dead]
• turzmo 1y ago
  I too am an AI hater, and I generally agree with the sentiment, but that Miyazaki quote was taken far out of context.
  • bonoboTP 1y ago
    To those missing the context: his comment was not about generative AI art at all, but some creepy zombie-like walking motion that was learned by some reinforcement learning agent.
• runjake 1y ago
  You know an argument is going to be strong when it starts off by citing a Teen Vogue article and uses phrases like: "[AI] is at its core a fascist technology rooted in the ideology of supremacy" and "The people who build it are vapid shit-eating cannibals glorifying ignorance." tl;dr: This person professes to hate AI. They repeat the same arguments as others who hate AI, ignoring that it is an emerging technology with lots of work to do. Regardless of AI's existence, power infrastructure needs to improve and become more environmentally friendly. Finally, AI is not going away, and we cannot make it away. That cat is out of the bag.
  • rsoto2 1y ago
    The article is "I'm an AI hater" it's about hating AI and why. Whats wrong with "at its core a fascist technology" do you not understand the statement? Companies like Palantir are using shitty targeting AI to literally mass murder children. Yes this technology you used was funded and created in partnership with apartheid governments. AWS and Microsucks are happy to lend a hand. The industry has fascist leadership, yes.
    • frozenseven 1y ago
      If I were to make a list of companies and organizations that are the most "influential" in the space of AI, Palantir would not make the top 100. And I don't subscribe to your views about them either.
    • npteljes 1y ago
      >Whats wrong with "at its core a fascist technology" The problem is that this statement is false. There is nothing particularly fascist about the core AI technologies. The tech itself is being created simultaneously by multiple large independent entities worldwide, as is no more fascist than all the other components used in the weapons and processes and infrastructure that was involved in the horrible atrocity you cited.
• aaroninsf 1y ago
  Genuine response: it is hard for me to read this sort of screed, and not wonder, are the authors genuinely or merely performatively ignorant? Ignorant, to be precise, of the often comical extent to which they very obviously construct—to their own specification and for their purposes—the object of their hostility...? While dismissing—in a fashion that renders their reasoning vacuous—the wearying complexity of the actually-observable complex reality they think they are attacking? One of the most obvious "tells" in this sort of thing is the breezy ease with which abstract _theys_ are compounded and then attacked. I'm sorry, Anthony; there is no they. There is a bewildering and yes, I get it, frightening and all but inconceivable number of actors, each pursuing their own aims, sometimes in explicit or implicit collusion, sometimes competitively or adversarially... ...and that is but the most banal of the dimensions within which one might attempt to reason about "AI." Frustration is warranted; hostility towards the engines of surveillance capital and its pleasure with advancing fascism is more than warranted; applications of AI within this domain and services rendered by its corporate builders—all ripe and just targets. But it is a mistake that renders the critique and position dismisable to slip from specifics to generalities and scarecrows.
• mrandish 1y ago
  Although I agree with most of the article's points, I'm not an AI hater. But that's only because AI doesn't incite enough emotion in me to be "hate". It's more apathy or antipathy at worst. I concede that AI can occasionally be useful and, as a technologist, I admit early on there were some 'gee whiz' moments but the constant hype has grown annoying. Frankly, it's gotten kind of boring and more recently it's to where I don't even like talking about it anymore. Of course, the non-technical general public is split between those who mistakenly think it's much 'smarter' or more capable than it is and those who dismiss it entirely but often for the wrong reasons. The disappointing part is how deeply polarized many of my more experienced technical friends are between one of those two extremes. On the positive side there's endless over-the-top raving about how incredible AI is and on the negative side overwhelming angst over how unspeakably evil and destructive AI is. These are people who've generally been around long enough to see long-term trends evolve, hype cycles fade, bubbles burst and certain world-ending doom eventually arrive as just everyday annoyance. Yet both extremes are so highly energized on the topic they tend to leap to some fairly ungrounded, and occasionally even irrational, conclusions. Engaging with either type for very long gets kind of exhausting. I just don't think AI is quite as unspeakably amazing as the ravers insist OR nearly as apocalyptic as the doomers fear - but both groups are so into their viewpoint it borders on evangelical obsession - which makes hard for anyone with an informed but dispassionate, measured and nuanced perspective to engage with them.
• modeless 1y ago
  Real crab bucket mentality here. We live in an age of wonders, literally the best time in human history to be alive, sci-fi turning to reality as we are on the brink of huge advances in space exploration, computation, robotics, biology, you name it. No matter how good things get there will always be people filled with this sort of rage, but what bothers me is how badly this site wants to upvote this stuff. HN is supposed to gratify intellectual curiosity. HN is explicitly not for political or ideological battle. Fulmination is explicitly discouraged in the guidelines. This article is about as far as I can imagine from appropriate content for HN. I strongly wish that everyone who wants this on the front page would find another site to be miserable on together, and stop ruining this one.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • AlexeyBrin 1y ago
    Have you considered that some of the people that are against AI are worried about a potential loss in the human experience like AI replacing writers, painters and thinkers or at least diluting the human output with a sea of mediocre AI output ? I'm not saying that they are right or wrong, but you should at least respect their right to have their own opinions and fears instead of pointing to an illusory appropriate content for HN.
    • modeless 1y ago
      I didn't make up that stuff about what HN is for. It's straight from the official HN guidelines. They're linked at the bottom of every page. There is nothing illusory about the lack of appropriateness of this content. An interesting discussion about issues like that could be had. This ain't it.
  • magicalist 1y ago
    Eh, it's not a great article, but I prefer the balance of it being present. FWIW I feel seemingly the opposite, that there are way too many posts here filled with comments by AI startup CEOs or comments copied from r/singularity circa February. It seems equally boring and nontechnical as what you describe.
• tzumaoli 1y ago
  It's interesting to see the trend of the attitude towards GenAI in Hacker News through out the years. This is totally vibe based and I don't have numbers to back it up, but back in 2022-2023, the site was dominantly people who mostly treat GenAI as a curious technology without too much attachment, and some non-trivial amount of folks who are very skeptical of the tech. More recently I see a lot more people who see themselves as evangelists and try very hard to boost/advocate the technology (see all the "LLM coding changes my life" posts). It seems that the tide has turned back a little bit again since we now see this kind of posts surfacing. For me, I kind of wish this site to go back to the good old days where people just share their nerdy niche hacker things and not filling the first page with the same arguments we see on the other parts of the internet over and over again. ; ) But granted I was attracted by the clickbait title too, so I can't blame others.
  • petralithic 1y ago
    Curious technology? People were foaming at the mouth about "license concerns" when GitHub Copilot was first announced, saying they're going to boycott Microsoft. But just like all things, over time people realize they're not as good or bad as initially thought. I noticed this too with media generation, people on Twitter were very mad about it and now many of them use Photoshop's AI features.
    • AlecSchueler 1y ago
      Are you sure they're the same people?
      • petralithic 1y ago
        They asked about general trends so it doesn't matter if it's the same people or not as long as the average sentiment has changed.
        • AlecSchueler 1y ago
          How have you measured the average?
• the_arun 1y ago
  Prompt: Write an article on how much you hate AI assuming you are an AI hater. Repeat "I Am an AI Hater" a few times through out the article.
• frozenseven 1y ago
  >The people who build it are vapid shit-eating cannibals glorifying ignorance >at its core a fascist technology rooted in the ideology of supremacy >inherently mediocre and fundamentally conservative >The machine is disgusting and we should break it Jesus. Unclear why anyone would endorse this blogpost, much less post it on a website focused on computer science and entrepreneurship.
  • int_19h 1y ago
    It accurately expresses the feeling a lot of people (including many regulars here) have about AI. And, conversely, for those who don't share that premise, this article is a good reminder why debating the subject matter is usually pointless. There's no objective argument that you could possibly make to the author and other people like him to convince them otherwise.
• gloosx 1y ago
  Impressive writing, I enjoyed it, yet I feel it needs to go deeper and acknowledge that AI is nothing more but a product of modern society which dictates what is to be done: an algorithm which generates infinite profits; This algorithm was just invented, it can respond pseudo-emotionally and mimic the individual, so it has potential to build dependence and empty said individual's pocket indefinitely. Thats peak capitalism
• JoeAltmaier 1y ago
  An amusing diatribe. Criticisms that can well be leveled at a large fraction of humanity.
• throw7 1y ago
  Just now, I just watched a France24 news presenter ask Grok about crime in DC. Shake. My. Head. I kind of feel like we're headed for something... not good.
• drweevil 1y ago
  This is spot on. Life is what you make of it. You, your people, your community. Otherwise it has no real meaning. What do you matter, after all, to someone who isn't even aware of your existence? But to score their latest riches the would-be AI billionaires would disrupt this, destroying our reliance on each other within our communities. Because AI can do it better! Without understanding that "it" at all. All this while consuming more electricity that ever before, during an emerging global climate crisis. And destroying our water supplies to boot. There is no good in any of this. Miyazaki was absolutely right. Though I'll paraphrase him just a little: Capitalism is an insult to life itself.
• tasuki 1y ago
  Hard disagree and an upvote - beautifully written!
• tbugrara 1y ago
  AI democratizes knowledge better than wikipedia ever could. It makes knowledge accessible to those who can't find good teachers (a good teacher is ridiculously rare). It makes knowledge accessible to those who've been let down by our capitalist society. I don't care that you hate it. It's the best thing to happen to us in a long time and anyone who disagrees does so on a mountain of privilege. I'm happy for you to have learned everything you know, but to desire to take it away from everyone else is abhorrent to me.
• deleted 1y ago
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• sodapopcan 1y ago
  Post was flagged, huh.
  • taormina 1y ago
    This shouldn't be flagged....
• Dumblydorr 1y ago
  Calling yourself a hater is nice, you can then straw man the other side all you want. Hilarious take, but wouldn’t stand up to a real inspection.
• nunez 1y ago
  This is art. This is gold. This is me.
• Martin_Silenus 1y ago
  Whatever their positive or negative view, these posts about AI only make me sad here. Because AI relies on brute force. And at its roots, hacking is DEFINITELY NOT about it.
• tperdos 1y ago
  Me too mate. I hate that shit as much as I admire human originality. Respect yourselves, don't spend time interacting with or consuming ai generated crap.
• calf 1y ago
  The problem with this argument is that the science is still out. Hinton and other actual CS experts are terrified of AI and the risk of an AI/AGI technological singularity. Instead what this article focuses on is the status quo technology, while those scientists (who don't care that much about Altman and his ilk) thinking about the storm to come now that the Pandora's box has been opened.
• jstgunderscore 1y ago
  This discussion always seems to revolve around art requiring one or more of the following factors: - Intention to create - Effort in creation - Transformation of the medium/canvas - Originality - Meaning as interpreted by the artist - Meaning/influence to the consumer - Cultural influence of the art Without an extensive discussion to define all of these terms, I think its fair to say that there are many human-created works with little-to-no amount of many of these factors, yet a lot of people would still classify them as art. Yet if a AI creates something that satisfies just as many or more of these factors, people seem far more hesitant to call it art. I'm neither Pro or Anti "AI can create art," as defining what qualifies as art has been a futile exercise since forever. I feel similarly about the AI intelligence and consciousness questions; if we can't define it for ourselves, how can we hope to define it for another entity? I think the discussions can be productive in fleshing out your viewpoint, but otherwise are fruitless. Ultimately I think humans are highly functional biological machines that have created something that can mimic us convincingly, and we should just come to terms with that without getting bogged down in debates over definitions.
  • calf 1y ago
    Yes but I actually (tend to) believe Hinton and the other CS scientists, so the terms aren't even the main issue, whereas this author's typical mainstream revolving terms consists of anthrocentric worries about what is really a scientific crisis--it smacks of rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic is about to hit the iceberg that is the AI/AGI technological revolution/singularity.
  • GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
    at times, we must accept the inherent humanity in others' creations when humanity is, in fact, involved. we must not accept the charade of humanity in machine-generated regurgitations of the utmost average.
• brennyb 1y ago
  Being an 'AI' hater is like being a 'motor' hater or an 'electricity' hater. You can hate the impact you assume it will have on society, but hating it will not change that it is so radically useful that it will never again not be used unless we overthrow all global value around doing things efficiently. Why not look at the broader context instead of flail out against the machine? What is it about society that makes the automation of labor a bad thing? As for art, it has always been about how you use the materials and resources you have. Photographs didn't make painting obsolete, but they rendered the pursuit of pure realism painting obsolete. 'AI' generated art does not make any other artform obsolete, but it will make the mechanical regurgitation of derivative works obsolete. If you want to do this on your own, like if you want to paint photorealistic paintings, you are still free to.