Crazy how divided AI is here on HN…

We’re almost to the point where the average non-technical person uses AI daily (just like phones and the internet were once only used by the technocrats) without blinking, it will be ubiquitous and universal in adoption, yet comments here on HN from people that have the vantage point of seeing AND understanding how AI works, and who can also predict the inevitable integration of AI in society, have got their collective heads in the sand to the point they’re soon going to sound like conspiracy theorists.

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NateEag an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Every non-technical person I know hates genAI and goes far out of their way to avoid it.

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rcxdude an hour ago | parent [-]

I suspect your sample is a bit skewed, then. I see a fair bit more diversity of genAI use amongst technical and non-technical people I know.

	▲	NateEag an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It may be. The fact remains that it's what I see around me, and even if I'm in an inverse bubble, it shows that "the average non-technical person uses AI daily without blinking" is probably a huge overstatement.

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lproven an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> it will be ubiquitous and universal in adoption

[[citation needed]]

Which is gonna be tricky as I am confident you don't have a time machine.

I think generative AI as a whole is a total scam. It has uses, but not many, and outside of translation, not good ones... and yet, it is running at truly epic financial losses. Multiple trillions of dollars are being pumped into this.

I think the next AI Winter, the 3rd big one, is coming very soon.

There's going to be a market crash to dwarf the dot-com crash and 20087 financial crisis (both of which I worked through as an employed adult), and a lot of the current tech industry will be wiped out.

I've watched that happen before as well.

I am quite looking forward to it. I have no stocks or shares in anything anywhere, few savings, no loans, no debt... but all my immediate family own their own homes outright, and I am close to retirement age.

Let it all burn.

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jve an hour ago | parent [-]

I know few CEOs/Business owners who are non programmers (well one was exposed to it/learning, but didn't go down that path) and they do use AI for various work and non work related things. One told me how at manufacturing plant someone solved some unpleasant process to input specs into machine for manufacturing by having AI creating the automation.

His comment to me was: People who don't embrace AI will eventually be outcompeted by the ones who do.

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lproven an hour ago | parent [-]

Uhuh.

And what happens when the price goes up by an extra zero on the end?

And then another one?

And then the cloud stuff goes away because all the vendors go broke, despite the price rises, and you have to switch to using local models?

That is, models that are hugely slower, unless you have a computer with hardware tensor-math acceleration, which costs 10x more because of the chip famine?

And then, suddenly, those local models cost an absolute bomb to license, because the companies that bought up the wreckage of the original model creators are trying to recoup their spend?

Meanwhile the company is being hit by nuisance litigation from people whose code the bots plagiarised, or customers who are annoyed it doesn't work?

There are so many ways all this stuff can just go away.

	▲	someaccount1234 2 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> And then another one? But what when salaries would increase by factor 100-1000? This would make AI use even cheaper. (About as realistic...) > And then the cloud stuff goes away because all the vendors go broke, despite the price rises, and you have to switch to using local models? In this case there will be cheap inference hardware on the market as someone will sell all those assets. They don't disappear when a company goes broke (object permanence). We could also speculate what would happen if all hyperscalers (AWS, GCP, Azure, Alibaba, ...) would suddenly be broke. Again, about as realistic a scenario.
	▲	revolvingthrow 26 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>And what happens when the price goes up by an extra zero on the end? >And then another one? Well so far the price trends towards going down by the zero at the end. Inference isn’t expensive, there’s a whole laundry list of providers to choose from. It’s training (for everybody) and salaries (for US labs) that are expensive. >and you have to switch to using local models? Many companies are interested in that, if for no other reason than to avoid uploading secret sauce to we-totally-dont-train-on-your-chats-pinky-promise API endpoints. A mid sized company can cough up $500k for dxg b200 which will be useful for years and years and the only ongoing cost is electricity. Put glm 5.3 on it and it’ll zip along for a number of employees at the same time. >And then, suddenly, those local models cost an absolute bomb to license, because the companies that bought up the wreckage of the original model creators are trying to recoup their spend? How are they recouping anything on a mit licensed model released into the wild? There are plenty of models released by "who?" companies and the cost to download those is zero. >Meanwhile the company is being hit by nuisance litigation from people whose code the bots plagiarised Any day now The doom scenario makes no sense in the race to the bottom that’s happening now. China being the other big entity that’s invested in AI makes all the what-ifs about litigation and plagiarism moot; they will gladly offer everybody inference for dirt cheap, if for no other reason that they’d like it if you gifted them your IP that they will then use to outcompete you with their manufacturing prowess. The genie’s out of the bag. AI is never going away, and we all need to adapt whether we like it or not.

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VCFundedGenYer an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> the average non-technical person uses AI daily

Citation needed.

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pessimizer an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Having one's head in the sand" means being unaware of something; everybody is aware of it. "Conspiracy theorists" is just a slur.

If you have anything substantive to say about it that other people haven't heard, we're listening.

	▲	rcxdude an hour ago \| parent [-]
		There do seem to be pretty wildly varying views on how heavily it is used and what value it is providing. I see a lot of people getting a lot of value from it, and some people avoiding it like the plague. I think it's getting to be a more divisive topic over time, as well. It also seems to be fast moving and emotionally charged enough that there is often disagreement on what should be fairly objective facts. E.g. whether there is any value to generative AI tools at all, and the magnitude of their impact on the environment.

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dangggggg an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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