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Some people really do hate AI, it's not entirely about the layoffs. This is a well insulated bubble but you can find tons of anti-AI forums online.

by hexator 10mo ago

zubiaur 10mo ago
Some people take find their life meaning through craft and work. When that craft is suddenly less scarce, less special, so does that craft-tied meaning. I wonder if these feelings are what scribes and amanuenses felt when the printing press arrived. I do enjoy programming, I like my job and take pride on it, but I actively try for it not to be the life-mean giving activity. I'm a just mercenary of my trade.
- venturecruelty 10mo ago
  I mean, I would still hate to be replaced by some chat bot (without being fairly compensated because, societally, it's kind of a dick move for every company to just fire thousands of people and then nobody can find a job elsewhere), but I wouldn't be as mad if the damn tools actually worked. They don't. It's one thing to be laid off, it's another to be laid off, ostensibly, to be replaced by some tool that isn't even actually thinking or reasoning, just crapping out garbage. And I will not be replying to anyone who trots out their personal AI success story. I'm not interested.
  - DrSiemer 10mo ago
    The tech works well enough to function as an excuse for massive layoffs. When all that is over, companies can start hiring again. Probably with a preference for employees that can demonstrate affinity with the new tools.
- recursive 10mo ago
  The craft isn't any less scarce. If anything, only more. The craft of building wooden furniture is just as scarce as ever, despite the existence of Ikea.
  - pjmlp 10mo ago
    Which is the only woodworkers that survive are the ones with enough customers willing to pay premium prices for furniture, or lucky to live in countries where Ikea like shops aren't yet a thing.
- Antibabelic 10mo ago
  They are also the people who are able to see the most clearly how subpar generative-AI output is. When you can't find a single spot without AI slop to rest your eyes on and see it get so much praise, it's natural to take it as a direct insult to your work.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 10mo ago
    Yes, the general acceptance of generally mediocre AI output is quite frustrating. Cool, you "made" that image that looks like ass. Great, you "wrote" that blog post with terrible phrasing and far too many words. Congrats, I guess.
nateglims 10mo ago
Outside of tech, I think the opinion is generally negative. AI has lost a lot the narrative due to things like energy prices and layoffs.
- deaux 10mo ago
  Globally, the opinion isn't generally negative. It's localized.
  - ajkjk 10mo ago
    What does that mean?
  - nateglims 10mo ago
    Sure, I meant the anglosphere. But in most countries, the less people are aware of technology or use the internet the less they are enthusiastic about AI.
    - deaux 10mo ago
      I don't see the correlation between technology/internet use and man-on-the-street attitudes towards AI. Compare Sweden with Japan.
      - nateglims 10mo ago
        Its a weak proxy for people who are not in tech. In polling japan and sweden are very similar in terms of sentiment though: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-around-the-world-view-ai/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-aro...
        deaux 10mo ago
        I still don't see it. Look at some of the countries with the highest relatively high individual "personal tech usage" as well as "percentage of workers/economy connected to tech": South Korea, Israel, Japan, the US, UK, the Netherlands. The first three are on the positive end, the next two on the negative end, and the last one in the middle. "Region of the world" correlation looks a lot stronger than that.
jama211 10mo ago
Emphasis on ‘some’. Compare that to the article title!
abustamam 10mo ago
Yeah, as a gamer I get a lot of game news in my feeds. Apparently there's a niche of indie games that claim to be AI-free. [0] And I read a lot of articles about games that seem to love throwing a dig at AI even if it's not really relevant. Personally, I can see why people dislike Gen AI. It takes people's creations without permission. That being said, morality of the creation of AI tooling aside, there are still people who dislike AI-generated stuff. Like, they'd enjoy a song, or an image, or a book, and then suddenly when they find out it's AI suddenly they hate it. In my experience with playing with comfy ui to generate images, it's really easy to get something half decent, it's really hard to get something very high quality. It really is a skill in itself, but people who hate AI think it's just type a prompt and get image. I've seen workflows with 80+ nodes, multiple prompts, multiple masks, multiple loras, to generate one single image. It's a complex tool to learn, just like photoshop. Sure you can use Nano-Banana to get something but even then it can take dozens of generations and prompt iterations to get what you want. [0] https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/827650/indie-developers-gen-ai-nexon-arc-raiders https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/827650/indie-develope...
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  >morality of the creation of AI tooling aside, That's a big aside >Like, they'd enjoy a song, or an image, or a book, and then suddenly when they find out it's AI suddenly they hate it. Yes, because for some people its about supporting human creation. Finding out it's part of a grift to take from said humans can be infuriating. People don't want to be a part of that.
  - code_for_monkey 10mo ago
    if I learn music had an AI involved it actually makes me feel awful. It totally just strips it of any appeal for me.
    - saulpw 10mo ago
      I agree, but out of curiosity, how does invisible autotuning make you feel?
isodev 10mo ago
I don’t think people hate models. They hate that techbros are putting LLMs in places they don’t belong … and then trying to anthropomorphize the thing finding what best rhymes with your prompt as “reasoning” and “intelligence” (which it isn’t).
utopiah 10mo ago
> Some people really do hate AI That's probably me for a lot of people. The reality is a bit finer than this namely : - I hate VC funded AI which is actually super shallow (basically OpenAI/Claude wrappers) - I hate VC funded genuine BigAI that sells itself as the literal opposite of what it is, e.g. OpenAI... being NOT open. - I hate AI that hides it's ecological cost. Generating text, videos, etc is actually fascinating, but not if making the shittiest video with the dumbest script is taking the same amount of energy I'd need to fly across the globe. - I hate AI that hides it's human cost, namely using cheap labor from "far away" where people have to label atrocities (murders, rape, child abuse, etc) without being provided proper psychological support. - I hate AI that embodies capitalist principles of exploitation. If somehow your entire AI business relies on an entire pyramid of everything listed above to capture a market then hike the price once dependency is entrenched you might be a brilliant business man but you suck as a human being. etc... I could go on but you get the idea. I do love open source public AI research though. Several of my very good friends are researchers in universities working on the topic. They are smart, kind and just great human beings. Not fucking ghouls riding the hype with 0 concern for our World. So... yes maybe AI haters have a slightly more refined perspective but of course when one summarize whatever text they see in 3 words via their favorite LLM, it's hard to see.
- pbmonster 10mo ago
  > making the shittiest video with the dumbest script is taking the same amount of energy I'd need to fly across the globe. I get your overall point, but the hyperbole is probably unhelpful. Flying a human across the globe takes several MWh. That's billions of tokens created (give or take an order of magnitude...).
  - utopiah 10mo ago
    Does your comparison include training, data center building, GPUs productions, etc or solely inference? (genuine question I don't know the total cost for e.g. Sora2, only inference which AFAIK is significant yet pale in comparison to everything upstream)
    - 10mo ago
thefz 10mo ago
> Some people really do hate AI AGI? No, although it's not there. LLMs? Yes, lots. The main benefit they can give is to sort-of-speed-up internet search, but I have to go and check the sources anyway so I'll revert back to 20+ years of experience of doing it myself. Any other application of machine learning such almost instant speech to text? No, it's useful.
skwirl 10mo ago
On this topic I think it’s pretty off base to call HN a “well insulated bubble” - AI skepticism and outright hate is pretty common here and AI negative comments often get a lot of support. This thread itself offers plenty of examples.
crote 10mo ago
I'd extend that to "very few people love AI". In real life, I don't know anyone who genuinely wants to use AI. Most of them think it's "meh", but don't have any strong feelings about using it if it's more convenient - like Google shoving it in their face during a search. But would they pay for it, or miss it if it's gone? Nope, not a chance.

Some people really do hate AI, it's not entirely about the layoffs. This is a well insulated bubble but you can find tons of anti-AI forums online.

by hexator 10mo ago

Some people really do hate AI, it's not entirely about the layoffs. This is a well insulated bubble but you can find tons of anti-AI forums online.

zubiaur 10mo ago

Some people take find their life meaning through craft and work. When that craft is suddenly less scarce, less special, so does that craft-tied meaning. I wonder if these feelings are what scribes and amanuenses felt when the printing press arrived. I do enjoy programming, I like my job and take pride on it, but I actively try for it not to be the life-mean giving activity. I'm a just mercenary of my trade.

venturecruelty 10mo ago
I mean, I would still hate to be replaced by some chat bot (without being fairly compensated because, societally, it's kind of a dick move for every company to just fire thousands of people and then nobody can find a job elsewhere), but I wouldn't be as mad if the damn tools actually worked. They don't. It's one thing to be laid off, it's another to be laid off, ostensibly, to be replaced by some tool that isn't even actually thinking or reasoning, just crapping out garbage. And I will not be replying to anyone who trots out their personal AI success story. I'm not interested.
- DrSiemer 10mo ago
  The tech works well enough to function as an excuse for massive layoffs. When all that is over, companies can start hiring again. Probably with a preference for employees that can demonstrate affinity with the new tools.
recursive 10mo ago
The craft isn't any less scarce. If anything, only more. The craft of building wooden furniture is just as scarce as ever, despite the existence of Ikea.
- pjmlp 10mo ago
  Which is the only woodworkers that survive are the ones with enough customers willing to pay premium prices for furniture, or lucky to live in countries where Ikea like shops aren't yet a thing.
Antibabelic 10mo ago
They are also the people who are able to see the most clearly how subpar generative-AI output is. When you can't find a single spot without AI slop to rest your eyes on and see it get so much praise, it's natural to take it as a direct insult to your work.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 10mo ago
  Yes, the general acceptance of generally mediocre AI output is quite frustrating. Cool, you "made" that image that looks like ass. Great, you "wrote" that blog post with terrible phrasing and far too many words. Congrats, I guess.

nateglims 10mo ago

Outside of tech, I think the opinion is generally negative. AI has lost a lot the narrative due to things like energy prices and layoffs.

deaux 10mo ago
Globally, the opinion isn't generally negative. It's localized.
- ajkjk 10mo ago
  What does that mean?
- nateglims 10mo ago
  Sure, I meant the anglosphere. But in most countries, the less people are aware of technology or use the internet the less they are enthusiastic about AI.
  - deaux 10mo ago
    I don't see the correlation between technology/internet use and man-on-the-street attitudes towards AI. Compare Sweden with Japan.
    - nateglims 10mo ago
      Its a weak proxy for people who are not in tech. In polling japan and sweden are very similar in terms of sentiment though: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-around-the-world-view-ai/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-aro...
      - deaux 10mo ago
        I still don't see it. Look at some of the countries with the highest relatively high individual "personal tech usage" as well as "percentage of workers/economy connected to tech": South Korea, Israel, Japan, the US, UK, the Netherlands. The first three are on the positive end, the next two on the negative end, and the last one in the middle. "Region of the world" correlation looks a lot stronger than that.

jama211 10mo ago

Emphasis on ‘some’. Compare that to the article title!

abustamam 10mo ago

Yeah, as a gamer I get a lot of game news in my feeds. Apparently there's a niche of indie games that claim to be AI-free. [0] And I read a lot of articles about games that seem to love throwing a dig at AI even if it's not really relevant. Personally, I can see why people dislike Gen AI. It takes people's creations without permission. That being said, morality of the creation of AI tooling aside, there are still people who dislike AI-generated stuff. Like, they'd enjoy a song, or an image, or a book, and then suddenly when they find out it's AI suddenly they hate it. In my experience with playing with comfy ui to generate images, it's really easy to get something half decent, it's really hard to get something very high quality. It really is a skill in itself, but people who hate AI think it's just type a prompt and get image. I've seen workflows with 80+ nodes, multiple prompts, multiple masks, multiple loras, to generate one single image. It's a complex tool to learn, just like photoshop. Sure you can use Nano-Banana to get something but even then it can take dozens of generations and prompt iterations to get what you want. [0] https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/827650/indie-developers-gen-ai-nexon-arc-raiders https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/827650/indie-develope...

johnnyanmac 10mo ago
>morality of the creation of AI tooling aside, That's a big aside >Like, they'd enjoy a song, or an image, or a book, and then suddenly when they find out it's AI suddenly they hate it. Yes, because for some people its about supporting human creation. Finding out it's part of a grift to take from said humans can be infuriating. People don't want to be a part of that.
- code_for_monkey 10mo ago
  if I learn music had an AI involved it actually makes me feel awful. It totally just strips it of any appeal for me.
  - saulpw 10mo ago
    I agree, but out of curiosity, how does invisible autotuning make you feel?

isodev 10mo ago

I don’t think people hate models. They hate that techbros are putting LLMs in places they don’t belong … and then trying to anthropomorphize the thing finding what best rhymes with your prompt as “reasoning” and “intelligence” (which it isn’t).

utopiah 10mo ago

> Some people really do hate AI That's probably me for a lot of people. The reality is a bit finer than this namely : - I hate VC funded AI which is actually super shallow (basically OpenAI/Claude wrappers) - I hate VC funded genuine BigAI that sells itself as the literal opposite of what it is, e.g. OpenAI... being NOT open. - I hate AI that hides it's ecological cost. Generating text, videos, etc is actually fascinating, but not if making the shittiest video with the dumbest script is taking the same amount of energy I'd need to fly across the globe. - I hate AI that hides it's human cost, namely using cheap labor from "far away" where people have to label atrocities (murders, rape, child abuse, etc) without being provided proper psychological support. - I hate AI that embodies capitalist principles of exploitation. If somehow your entire AI business relies on an entire pyramid of everything listed above to capture a market then hike the price once dependency is entrenched you might be a brilliant business man but you suck as a human being. etc... I could go on but you get the idea. I do love open source public AI research though. Several of my very good friends are researchers in universities working on the topic. They are smart, kind and just great human beings. Not fucking ghouls riding the hype with 0 concern for our World. So... yes maybe AI haters have a slightly more refined perspective but of course when one summarize whatever text they see in 3 words via their favorite LLM, it's hard to see.

pbmonster 10mo ago
> making the shittiest video with the dumbest script is taking the same amount of energy I'd need to fly across the globe. I get your overall point, but the hyperbole is probably unhelpful. Flying a human across the globe takes several MWh. That's billions of tokens created (give or take an order of magnitude...).
- utopiah 10mo ago
  Does your comparison include training, data center building, GPUs productions, etc or solely inference? (genuine question I don't know the total cost for e.g. Sora2, only inference which AFAIK is significant yet pale in comparison to everything upstream)
  - 10mo ago

thefz 10mo ago

> Some people really do hate AI AGI? No, although it's not there. LLMs? Yes, lots. The main benefit they can give is to sort-of-speed-up internet search, but I have to go and check the sources anyway so I'll revert back to 20+ years of experience of doing it myself. Any other application of machine learning such almost instant speech to text? No, it's useful.

skwirl 10mo ago

On this topic I think it’s pretty off base to call HN a “well insulated bubble” - AI skepticism and outright hate is pretty common here and AI negative comments often get a lot of support. This thread itself offers plenty of examples.

crote 10mo ago

I'd extend that to "very few people love AI". In real life, I don't know anyone who genuinely wants to use AI. Most of them think it's "meh", but don't have any strong feelings about using it if it's more convenient - like Google shoving it in their face during a search. But would they pay for it, or miss it if it's gone? Nope, not a chance.