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That lends some credence to the “AI is a tool” position I hear in some forums, though I do think there are real harms from the vast scale of AI deployment.
I'm also chatting with my logs and triaging things like 10x faster in multiple open terminal sessions while I post on HN right now. So I'm also certain there are some use cases where not using AI will soon be professional negligence!
Using computers created an unambiguous productivity boost. Same cannot be said for all types of software engineering with AI; that's why we keep having this debate. The results are mixed.
The deregulation since the 70s created oligarchs and encouraged lack of moral scruples. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49416055
It's a coincidence that it occurred with the rise of the Internet (computers existed before) and AI. These coincidences happened in the past with other technologies.
So the OP has a valid position to boycott AI, just like in 1870s they should have boycotted trains or in 1910s the oil industry.
Tsk. Maybe that’s what you were going for.
I came here to say "Yes, and my grandfather thinks the internet is the 'mark of the beast.'" I'm not really sure what makes this persons opinion more noteworthy (in the wikipedia sense) than my grandfathers.
I suppose it's popular here because a lot of people who will be forced to learn new skills if AI takes their job hang out here, but hearing that buggy-whip manufacturers hate those new-fangled automobiles isn't' really newsworthy.
No you can't. Here is a quick sample
It's very much nonsense.Computers have produced untold exabytes of spam. Hit pieces, security vulnerabilities and data leaks, creation and distribution of CSAM… Copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale, massive increase in water and electricity consumption. etc.
Then you must blame cars and airplanes as mass murdering tools as well.
I'm neither agreeing with or disagreeing with the author's stance. But this tension crosses the line of "I have an opinion" to "I have an opinion that impacts my livelihood".
And I'm witnessing a lot of it.
If it doesn't pan out, the thing evaporates in a bubble, your job goes back to normal. If it does, your job is toast no matter what (and seemingly many jobs). If software is primarily supply constrained, that will eventually change.
Lately I'm more inclined to believe the latter is true, but I think skeptics are often hedging like this.
It already is for quite a few. We have something that's very useful and gaining improvements as time goes on. Probably not fast/good enough for some companies with wild expectations, but there's no doubt that this thing is here to stay.
I was lucky enough to be thrust through this in 2023 by DALLE-2, but the body of the normal distribution is just starting to pass the rubicon, month by month, day by day... Lowkey agonizing watch so many people go through something so relatable, only to turn to primal, nationalistic urges and downright epistemic denialism.
The culture is robust already, too -- I have no illusion that the obvious arrival in ASI will change much of anything, just like evolution didn't end up killing the church like some feared. They'll simply fold that into the interwoven chitin of cherry-picked facts and party lines, accumulated over their years in the echo chamber. Any headline that seems like it should obviously pierce the veil instead gets used to reinforce it (e.g. "Oh they claim AI solved a math problem, now?? They must really be getting desparate to hide the hoax if they're willing to go that far!")
This forum bans politics and I really don't want to start a whole thing, but I guess I'll just float the anecdote that I learned about this theory of Echo Chambers in am baby epistemology course, where the example given was the MAGA movement. Take that as you will.
I don't think you need to be skeptical of the tech to think that. The question there is: given the moral character of the people in charge of big companies, what do you think will happen if they can replace all labor with cheap machines? If AI can do the thinking they had to pay humans for, and robots can do the menial tasks they had to pay humans for, they don't need the common man for anything. People like you and I are at very real risk of being in a permanent underclass if these AI dreams come to fruition.
Programmers now: "Oh no, holy shit, what am I going to do as the market forces us to be a bunch of fucking gremlins. Too bad I threw away the power of collective bargaining"
It seems people keep forgetting why unions formed in the first place. Given a chance a company of any size will fully optimize for its own profit regardless of how awful the side effects are to individuals, the environment, and society at large.
Instead, I think that doctors and lawyers have it right: they effectively have the authority to decide who's allowed to practice the profession, so ChatGPT can't write you prescriptions or defend you in court.
This is a side effect of capital accumulation. There's no one to buy the products (as low/middle class gets squeezed) so no reason to invest. Instead, oligarchs hold money in assets and compete over control, ultimately with violence.
I don't make as much money as others though. I should totally write python and join some fintech
If you must interact with it, then you must, but you shouldn't.
All of HN should take note.
Please don't propagate the "LLMs are artificial intelligence" PR bullsh*t.
Your problem is thinking that "artificial intelligence" has to be whatever you think "intelligence" is. This is as true as "artificial grass" needing to be a type of grass. It's a constructed imitation that solves some of the problems that we normally use grass for. It can be green and spiky, soft to play sports on and pleasant in appearance, but it still is in no way grass, and has no relationship to grass. It is something that fits its category as a tool in some circumstances. An artificial leg is not a leg, it is a piece of metal or plastic with a hinge in it. An artificial heart is not a heart, it is a pump. They are both limited replacements for another thing in some useful circumstances.
Artificial grass, legs, or hearts don't become actual grass, legs or hearts even if they perform better in all use cases that we have for the actual item. They only become "grass," "legs," and "hearts" once we find the distinction to be largely useless and begin to omit it.
January 2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743095
1. AI models produce consistent output, so it looks the same everywhere, which makes you look like a hustler if you use it for copywriting or design.
2. Customers who are fine with this can use Lovable for $20/month, so it's loser's game to chase those customers.
Guy thinks this is his niche. Everyone will go "that's neat" and move on with life.
There was another post on here recently by a translator, whose profession is translating documents, declaring that they won't use AI in their work and anyone who does is a noob and it is no threat to what they do...and it just was amazing stuff. Of course HN pandered to it with lots of "oh yeah that's right you show 'em", but surely we all realize how fantastically silly that was. A web developer / designer who refuses to use AI is rapidly going to be very unemployed, though they might try the purist "no AI here!" angle niche for a tiny delay of that inevitable.
Obviously I relate to the anxiety that made this man put up at least 3 mentions of how much he hates AI per page site-wide and to finish this draft before the actual site, but I can't help but see it as an unhealthy coping mechanism.
It's a shame cause this is an origami-themed freelance web developer who believes strongly in labeling natural vs. artificial prose, which couldn't be more up my alley if he tried! Shame the world is like this.
Just for clarity, in case anyone else doesn't see it -- I'll just take one paragraph:
Perceived support of AI has led to molotovs and bullet-riddled doors. Computers have been used to publish hit pieces. Ditto, just with a much more serious crime. This one is actually a lot easier now and we need new laws for sure, but plugging your ears to the future will not speed those laws up in any way, no matter how indirect. Again, a serious, new twist on existing problems with suicide prevention. But A) it's far from a foregone conclusion that it's a net negative on suicide rates given that there's tons of positive anecdotes too, B) refusing to use claude code is not going to help devise legal, social, and technological solutions to that problem, and C) this is so clearly post-hoc reasoning.For example: where's the "Social Policy", given that social media is a proven threat in this sense?
*EDIT:* And it's the guy who tried to make his own text editor after lamenting that Zed wasn't enough like Sublime?? Well, I guess it's nice to know I have an inverse doppleganger out there...
We do, but craft workers in the industrial revolution did lose their jobs, and at the pace AI is developing I don't see any reason to believe that professional workers will not eventually have their jobs threatened.
> Why is there this presupposition with LLMs? Are we just taking the "ai" leaders for their word?
No, I don't think we are. And let me be clear: I was very skeptical about this until recently. I think the models are objectively capable of doing a lot of the job of software engineers now, and increasingly engineers are being pressured to not only use them, but to take themselves out of the loop. There is a reason the conversation of "should we read the code" has been raised in public discourse and engineering talks now. That should concern everyone.
> From what I can see, the tech we have today is not up to to the task of replacement and capability improvements (not benchmark) seem to be decelerating.
I am not seeing that: https://metr.org/time-horizons/
And I think if things continue as they have, we are eventually going to see the price of software decline and widespread layoffs soon to follow.
The best example of this is security in open source software which maintainers have no choice but to use AI to protect themselves before an attacker can use AI to find and build exploits for security vulnerabilities faster than they can patch it.
In some sectors such as banking, crypto, defense and government, this is extremely critical. It will soon be the same with AI companies who have the AI model and someone could use AI to breach them with the goal of leaking the proprietary model.
So to them, policies like this, are actually a downgrade that they cannot afford to do.
The criticality of a web designer is quite vanishingly low with not that much money on the line. That's why his former customers are going for a $20 Lovable subscription instead of his web designer services.
It is fair to say he has been disrupted.
> You think there's no competition in that space and no incentive to churn things out fast with AI?
There is little to no money in being a human web designer (without AI) in 2026. He is taking a stance in never using AI which he is being out-competed by ultra-low cost AI subscriptions like Lovable, Bolt.new, and the others.
He has no choice but to adapt.