It's simply divided. With every such division A vs. B, the A team thinks HN is anti-A and the B team thinks it's anti-B. This is an invariant.

You can see from this megathread, currently on the front page, that HN is by no means anti-AI:

Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406174.

Sometimes it just takes the right initial condition (e.g. title) to bring out one side or other.

As for why the community is divided, there's always a temptation to come up with HN-specific explanations, but society as a whole is divided about AI. Surely that is the only explanation one needs. As I've been saying for years, HN can't be immune from macro trends: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

▲ dang 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As an aside, the variety of examples in that other thread is impressive. Here are some that I noticed:

Fixing my furnace: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417845

New software for a retro keyboard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48418158

Customizing my camper van: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417379

Porting my astronomy app from an old Nokia phone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48419242

Fixing my kid’s science fair project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48419364

Unborking the family printer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48419480

Learning to draw anatomy (!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48418716

Lowering my electrical bill: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417949

Making classic guitar pedals programmable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48418006

Avocado armchair guy victory lap: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417658 (<-- oops, wrong: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48418274)

Putting an overlay on enemies in a video game: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48420635

It just goes on and on. I was a little nervous when I saw that post originally, but it's amazing what happens when a title is somehow just right.

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rycomb 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Oh dang, we all know –based on observation of your throughput and availability– that you're AI, you just can't "be nervous".

Jokes aside, thanks for your selection. I had read some, but missed others until your comment.

If it matters, I think there's some people that hasn't decided yet what tribe (pro-AI/anti-AI) they belong to. There's probably dozens of us!

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jimmygrapes 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I haven't had the patience or mentality to really absorb "ok but how is this useful" until that thread and your highlighted references. Thank you for the curated highlights, however brief it may be, because it's very hard to find such diamonds without dedicating far too much time wading through the abstract gatekept comments on the topic, in most cases. Real world examples give me much hope!

	▲	TylerE 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Lemme give another. I was formerly quite anti-AI but bought a cheap Claude plan just to play around with it a bit. First thing I built with it was this - https://github.com/tylereaves/onscreen-piano, in about an hour and maybe 10 prompt cycles. It replaced, for my specific use case, the 10% of the functionality of an increasingly-unreliable commercial app. That's including building the website, setting up actions for mac and windows builds... My next project was a 2d game with random terrain, physics, sound, music, multiple levels, a day/night cycle with transitions high score tracking... (not uploaded anywhere, but it works, and I refined it a good bit.). That was more like 8 hours and maybe a 100 prompts. Here are a few screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/vhUXBu3 One thing that I have found to make a pretty big difference is using both the latest models and higher thinking levels. Opus 4.8 with thinking on Extra or even Max is genuinely mind blowing. The thing I hadn't really appreciated, having a sort of naive impression formed mainly from using free early versions of stuff like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion was sort of that "Type a big ass prompt and it craps out a result" experience. But Claude is really great at refining from feedback, and it's way more flexible and responsive than I would have ever expected. I can do something like take a screenshot of a small portion of the running app or website or whatever and just say "This button needs to be bigger" or "make this red" or something like that, or even sometimes just "fix this", and Claude both correctly identifies what I'm talking about, and actually does the thing. here I've found it really, incredibly game changing is my health. I have a pretty, to put it mildly, complex medical profile at this point. I haven't worked in over a year and pretty much every sign is pointing towards permanent disability at this point. Tons of symptoms, long med list, and I live in a smaller town with not great access to care. I'm also autistic and have not the greatest verbal communication, especially under stress or time pressure. I dumped all my info at it, in bits and bobs over several days (Side note... it's memory is pretty limited, but it will quite happily right out everything it knows from a session into a markdown file it can later re-read. I've found it very good for things like screening for drug interactions, or talking through and logging symptoms (and it can log those into human readable markdown files too). Biggest win (other than having unlimited time and interactions) is that it thinks across specilaties, versus the "real world" where the gastro only wants to deal with gastro stuff, neurology only wants to do neuro. I certainly don't (and wouldn't) use it as a replacement for a doctor, but as an adjunct it's phenomenal. For instance, it flagged a possible drug interaction with a symptom I was having, and then offered to draft a portal message to my GP about it. I have poor executive function so lowering the friction from "type up a message and send it" to "copy and paste" is actually a pretty big deal. Turns something (I probably won't do) later into something I will do now. It wouldn't surprise me if my very direct, literal, autistic communication style is particularly well suited to interacting with AI. I actually find talking to it rather refreshing as, while of course it's not perfect, it tends to actually respond to what I say rather than the all the assumed subtext NTs tend to expect/react to.

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daljasdfasdf 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲ p4bl0 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks for putting it this way. I have to admit I was really astonished by the question as I feel like HN is very much pro-AI at least in the sense that there is more AI promotion on HN than there is AI acceptance among people in the real world. It's been months if not years since most of the posts are about genAI, and in a largely favorable way. It's actually quite fascinating that for some people it feels like the opposite.

	▲	swat535 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think generally, extremist views tend to echo further than nuanced ones. This goes for any major topic really: whether it's politics, religion, arts, etc. The AI discussion on HN is exhilarated by the fact that it can have a tangible impact on people's lives on this forum. You add to this the possibility of a minority extracting an unfathomable amount of wealth from the hype train and we lose all hope for a moderate discussion. My own views on this are rather boring. After having tried various models, I've reached the conclusion that it adds minor benefits to my workflows, but I don't have to lose sleep from Claude reaching singularity anytime soon..

▲ datsci_est_2015 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s not even a dichotomy, A vs B, especially when you consider “AI” is incredibly poorly defined. There are many new technologies available, and I have nuanced opinions about all of them.

I’m happy that my friend who works in plastics manufacturing can move his monstrosity of an Excel spreadsheet to something more predictable and maintainable. I’m deeply annoyed by my coworker who’s trying to put a chatbot in our UI.

▲ johnfn 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While I agree that it's "divided", I wouldn't say "simply". Mentioning AI brings out a sharply negative side of HN that I had not seen before 2023. It is the only subject where, when I have shared that I built something with it, I have gotten derogatory comments claiming I am inexperienced, unintelligent, and that the thing I built (a hobby project) is unimpressive or embarrassing. This has never happened in the decade+ I have previously been on HN, happily sharing other things I built with other interesting technology -- and many of those things were much worse than what I built with AI!

I did see your thread earlier today and I admit was pleasantly surprised. Maybe HN is turning over a new leaf? I hope so. I honestly considered switching to X it was getting so bad :P

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arjie 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is just a few people. Any time people are unpleasant to others or post in an uninteresting way I add them to a personal list that filters out their comments. Rapidly the site becomes more usable. The negativity is from a few highly polarized individuals.

I know others also do this - though often they are kind enough to auto-fold.

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mook 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think there's definitely groups on both sides, and I feel like it's similar to cryptocurrency a few years back. There's people really into it, and in response there's people really against it. On a smaller scale, see for example rust. In contrast there isn't as much vitriol against, say, world hunger because there isn't people very obviously pro-that to push against.

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rpcope1 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's probably a lot to say about it's merits or problems, but given the demographics (or my perception of them) is largely "software people" can you really be that surprised or angry given that this could snuff out a _lot_ of people's livelihoods like nothing we've probably seen in our lifetimes?

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ThrowawayR2 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would say that HN was at least as sharply negative during the cryptocurrency craze. I recall various submissions asking "Why is HN so anti-crypto?" as well.

	▲	peteforde an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The false equivalency in this explanation is off the scale. It wasn't just that crypto was an obvious grift; it was that you didn't need to be an experienced developer to confirm that 99% of the "web 3.0" nonsense that what was being thrown around literally made no technical sense. You might reject LLMs on principle, or find that they don't work for you. But I think we're well past any debate of whether they do anything at all, which is exactly where crypto was sitting at peak hype.

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YZF 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Same experience. But that's simply because you think you're experienced but the OP knows that you're just deluding yourself. Just kidding.

More seriously, I think this is a true reflection of a cultural phenomena. All discussions have become more polarized. There is a more of a generational divide in perception and discussion. I would also say there is a loss of nuance.

To complicate this even further there is a real diversity of experiences depending on many factors.

I mean we had flame wars on USENET but somehow it feels to me that most discourse even on controversial topics was civil. When we had tabs vs. spaces flamewars (or whatever the fun topic of the day was) everyone knew they were in a flame war (and often acknowledged that). Or maybe I'm just being nostalgic/biased.

I see the anti-AI sentiments in my work place. I think people are genuinely worried/concerned and don't know how this is going to change our world or even where we are exactly. This is also spilling into adjacent areas where people have strong emotional responses to (the rich, the economy, job market, politics, environment etc.).

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foxes 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Its divided because its the first time the previously more class unaware techbros have been critically challenged by the consequences of their actions - oh shit we might lose our jobs.

10 years ago "Disrupting X" was seen as a good thing. Now its come for them its a different story.

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scarab92 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I suspect there is a lot of selection bias going on as well.

Forums like this, reddit, X, readers of news sites etc tend to be filled with people that don’t have much going on in their lives, have a lot of free time to comment, are less likely to exploit the benefits of AI, and more likely to have simpler skills sets that are replaceable with AI.

Talking to people in real world, I would say the overwhelming majority are excited by AI and interesting in using it more rather than less.

	▲	foxes 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Probably not the best way to reduce complicated feelings. Do those people not deserve to be able to live and survive or are they all just replaceable?

▲ jonas21 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, it looks this post has already been flagged down onto page 7.

And IIRC, the same thing happened to the "oh shit" moment thread you linked to. Did the mods have to intervene to get it back on the front page?

HN might not be anti-AI, but I feel like the way flags are weighted by the ranking allows some users that are extremely anti-AI to create the impression that it is.

EDIT: And now it's back.

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dang 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Not flagged. It set off the flamewar detector. We monitor those and eventually reverse the false positives. Mostly.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

	▲	jonas21 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, thanks for the clarification. :)

▲ oceanplexian 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Saying that society is divided on AI therefore HN, being society, should also be divided is an absurd take.

I expect the people in here to be domain experts, understand simple concepts like closed loop water cooling, deterministic vs non-deterministic systems, maybe some basic concept of how a GPU and vector math works and most notably the exponential pace that it’s becoming both more capable and more efficient.

Unfortunately, like OP that’s not the case and it’s the same talking points I could read in my local paper. Then everyone’s talking points change in unison like they are waiting on the latest instructions from headquarters.

	▲	enaaem an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I find that the more you know about a subject the worst impression you will have of AI. What it knows is kinda shallow and basic, and if you have a more difficult question the answers are confidently random.

▲ lenkite 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

HN crowd is quite pro-AI. Many reddit forums like r/programming have simply banned AI topics.

  "Content about AI and LLMs are considered off-topic with the sole exclusion of deeply technical content about implementation."

Frankly, your opinion on HN being "anti-AI" is eye-rolling - it means you are living in a pro-AI bubble and have never seen anti-AI. There are many on HN who will defend AI to the death.

▲ torben-friis 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Also, "AI good" and "AI bad" are very silly camps to describe a topic.

You might have seen some comments by me receiving votes lately that some might classify as anti-AI. I'm not for banning it, I use it at work and at home, I learn about it.

Here a few positions I hold, for example:

- There is a fundamental deviation between what we should be seeing if we were surrounded by 100x enabled engineers and reality. We're not seeing previously untackable, complete open source projects pop up everywhere like someone coding an open-source, iphone-compatible OS in a year, or companies providing 10x more. Just POCs and small apps. LLMs have been around enough that this is pointing towards inflated claims of success, even if they are actually useful, which I'm not denying.

- LLMs provide users with a strong psychological reward (making mental workload disappear). They do so only sometimes, in a chance-based outcome. Anyone with a passing interest in psychology should realize how similar that is to the mechanics of gambling, and thus how risky it is that a user misjudges when it is reasonable to use them. Mind that I'm not saying that the tool isn't worth it, just pointing at a source of major deviation between perceived and actual outcomes that few people consider.

- There are a lot of signals that humans rely on that are broken by LLMs. "Well formatted text -> text written with careful consideration" no longer works. "Large document -> significant effort" does not hold. "Good grammar -> educated speaker" is broken as well. "decent code practices -> the PR is safeish to approve" no longer true. Some of these barriers being broken can be enablers for people, but on the whole this is going to disrupt society in fundamental and unpredictable ways.

- I think the industry is drawing unreasonable and dangerous conclusions from the advent of AI. As some commenters pointed out, if code generation is now cheap we should be seeing engineers freed to deal with non coding tasks like automated QA, user research, architecture or design, and being more able to handle bug resolution for example. We are instead seeing a push for _creating code faster_, and proposing ignoring tasks like review and quality control in pursue of speed, which is fundamentally inconsistent with speed being less of a problem. To use a flawed analogy, if your car is now 10x as fast you should be putting way more attention to how you steer, rather than asking everyone to go pedal to the metal.

- LLMs products have the potential to be extremely user hostile if enshittified. We could have probabilistic insertion of promoted material. We could have subtle political steering of people. We could have a model's performance reduced without much SLA recourse. We are not tackling those issues before they appear when it is obvious that they will appeare, and society will pay the price.

If you read with attention you'll see that no point of mine is arguing against AI usage. I don't want to bury my head in the sand and pretend LLM's don't exist or are useless. I don't want to ban them. I'm just not willing to fully allign with marketing speech and turn my brain off.