[shepardrtc]

Ok so a few thoughts as a former Seattleite:

1. You were a therapy session for her. Her negativity was about the layoffs.

2. FAANG companies dramatically overhired for years and are using AI as an excuse for layoffs.

3. AI scene in Seattle is pretty good, but as with everywhere else was/is a victim of the AI hype. I see estimates of the hype being dead in a year. AI won't be dead, but throwing money at the whatever Uber-for-pets-AI-ly idea pops up won't happen.

4. I don't think people hate AI, they hate the hype.

Anyways, your app actually does sound interesting so I signed up for it.

[hexator]

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.

[abustamam]

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-develope...

[nateglims]

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.

[zubiaur]

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.

[utopiah]

> 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.

[thefz]

> 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.

[jama211]

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

[isodev]

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).

[crote]

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.

[skwirl]

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.

[didibus]

> You were a therapy session for her. Her negativity was about the layoffs.

I think there is no "her", the article ends with saying:

> My former coworker—the composite of three people for anonymity—now believes she's [...]

I think it's just 3 different people and they made up a "she" single coworker as a kind of example person.

I don't know, that's my reading at least, maybe I got it wrong.

[mips_avatar]

I hate to be cagey here but I just really don’t want to make anyone’s life harder than it needs to be by revealing their identity. Microsoft is a really tough place to be an employee right now.

[iamkonstantin]

The hate starts with the name. LLMs don't have the I in AI. It's like marketing a car as self-driving while all it can do is lane assist.

[wongarsu]

That's because there are at least 5 different definitions of AI.

- At it's inception in 1955 it was "learning or any other feature of intelligence" simulated by a machine [1] (fun fact: both neural networks and computers using natural language were on the agenda back then)

- Following from that we have the "all machine learning is AI" which was the prevalent definition about a decade ago

- Then there's the academic definition that is roughly "computers acting in real or simulated environments" and includes such mundane and algorithmic things as path finding

- Then there's obviously AGI, or the closely related Hollywood/SciFi definition of AI

- Then there's just "things that the general public doesn't expect computers to be able to do". Back when chess computers used to be called AI this was probably the closest definition that fits. Clever sales people also used to love to call prediction via simple linear regression AI

Notably four out of five of them don't involve computers actually being intelligent. And just a couple years ago we still sold simple face detection as AI

1: https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmo...

[KptMarchewa]

It's the opposite. It is doing the driving but you really have to provide lane assist, otherwise you hit the tree, or start driving in the opposite direction.

Many people claim it's doing great because they have driven hundreds of kilometers, but don't particularly care whether they arrived at the exact place, and are happy with the approximate destination.

[ACCount37]

Then what do they have?

Is the siren song of "AI effect" so strong in your mind that you look at a system that writes short stories, solves advanced math problems and writes working code, and then immediately pronounce it "not intelligent"?

[dekoidal]

See also hoverboards

[mips_avatar]

I think these companies would benefit from honesty, if they're right and their new AI capabilities are really powerful then poisoning their workforce against AI is the worst thing they could do right now. Like a generous severance approach and compassionate layoffs would go a long way right now.

[ozfive]

The layoffs are due to tax incentives in the tax cut bills that financially incentivize offshoring work.

[shepardrtc]

That makes sense. And its even worse of a reason. At least for people living in the US.

[Karrot_Kream]

I was an early employee at a unicorn and I saw this culture take hold once we started hiring from Big Tech talent pools and offering Big Tech comp packages, though before AI hype took off. There's a crazy lack of agency that kicks in for Big Tech folks that's really hard to explain. This feeling that each engineer is this mercenary trying really hard to not get screwed by the internal system.

Most of it is because there's little that ties actual output to organizational outcomes. AI mandates after all are just a way to bluntly for e engineers to use AI, where if you were at a startup or smaller company you would probably organically find how much an LLM helps you where. It may not even help your actual work even if it helps your coworkers. That market feedback is sorely missing from the Big Techs and so hamfisted engineering mandates have to do in order to for e engineers to become more efficient.

In these cases I always try to remind friends that you can always leave a Big Tech. The thing is, from what I can tell, a lot of these folks have developed lifestyle inflation from working in Big Tech and some of their anger comes from feeling trapped in their Big Tech role due to this. While I understand, I'm not particularly sympathetic to this viewpoint. At the end of the day your lifestyle is in your hands.

[mips_avatar]

Thanks for signing up. I’m going to try really hard to open up some beta slots next week so more people can try it. There’s some embarrassingly bad bugs in prod right now…

[johnnyanmac]

>FAANG companies dramatically overhired for years and are using AI as an excuse for layoffs.

Close. We're in a recession and they are using AI as an excuse for another wave of outsourcing.

>I don't think people hate AI, they hate the hype.

I hate the grift. I hate having it forced on me after refusing multiple times. That's pretty much 90% of AI right now.

[nektro]

> 4. I don't think people hate AI, they hate the hype.

except a lot of people really do hate AI

[pier25]

It’s not only the hype though.

What about the complete lack of morality some (most?) AI companies exhibit?

What about the consequences in the environment?

What about the enshitification of products?

What about the usage of water and energy?

Etc.

[abustamam]

Not to diminish your overall point, but enshittification has been happening well before AI, AI just made it much easier and faster to enshittify everything.

[parineum]

Is your "etc." keep repeating the same two points you did in your list of four?

[conartist6]

Why would you not hate AI. What is there to like.

It's the closing trash compactor of soullessness and hate of the human, described vividly as having affected Microsoft culture as thoroughly as intergranular corrosion can turn a solid block of aluminum to dust.

Fuck Microsoft for both hating me and hating their own people. Fuck. That. Shit.

[NoGravitas]

> It's the closing trash compactor of soullessness and hate of the human, described vividly as having affected Microsoft culture as thoroughly as intergranular corrosion can turn a solid block of aluminum to dust.

That's a great way to describe it. There's a good article that points out AI is the new aesthetic of fascism. And, of course, in Miyazaki's words, "I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."