Comment by nyarlathotep_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nyarlathotep_ | Hacker News Reader

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> AI as it stands in 2025 is an amazing technology, but it is not a product at all.

Here I'm assuming "AI" to mean what's broadly called Generative AI (LLMs, photo, video generation)

I genuinely am struggling to see what the product is too.

The code assistant use cases are really impressive across the board (and I'm someone who was vocally against them less than a year ago), and I pay for Github CoPilot (for now) but I can't think of any offering otherwise to dispute your claim.

It seems like companies are desperate to find a market fit, and shoving the words "agentic" everywhere doesn't inspire confidence.

Here's the thing: I remember people lining up around the block for iPhone releases, XBox launches, hell even Grand Theft Auto midnight releases.

Is there a market of people clamoring to use/get anything GenAI related?

If any/all LLM services went down tonight, what's the impact? Kids do their own homework?

JavaScript programmers have to remember how to write React components?

Compare that with Google Maps disappearing, or similar.

LLMs are in a position where they're forced onto people and most frankly aren't that interested. Did anyone ASK for Microsoft throwing some Copilot things all over their operating system? Does anyone want Apple Intelligence, really?

> I genuinely am struggling to see what the product is too.

They're nice for summarizing and categorizing text. We've had good solutions for that before, too (BERT, et al), but LLM's are marginally nicer.

> Is there a market of people clamoring to use/get anything GenAI related?

No. LLM's are lame and uncool. Kids especially dislike them a lot on that basis alone.

> LLM's are lame and uncool. Kids especially dislike them a lot on that basis alone.

Not just kids.

> LLM's are lame and uncool. Kids especially dislike them a lot on that basis alone.

That's interesting and the first time I hear of this. Could you provide any links that might elucidate this?

I think search and chat are decent products as well. I am a Google subscriber and I just use Gemini as a replacement for search without ads. To me, this movement accelerated paid search in an unexpected way. I know the detractors will cry "hallucinations" and the ilk. I would counter with an argument about the state of the current web besieged by ads and misinformation. If people carry a reasonable amount of skepticism in all things, this is a fine use case. Trust but verify.

I do worry about model poisoning with fake truths but dont feel we are there yet.

> I do worry about model poisoning with fake truths but don't feel we are there yet.

In my use, hallucinations will need to be a lot lower before we get there, because I already can't trust anything an LLM says so I don't think I could even distinguish a poisoned fake truth from a "regular" hallucination.

I just asked ChatGPT 4o to explain irreducible control flow graphs to me, something I've known in the past but couldn't remember. It gave me a couple of great definitions, with illustrative examples and counterexamples. I puzzled through one of the irreducible examples, and eventually realized it wasn't irreducible. I pointed out the error, and it gave a more complex example, also incorrect. It finally got it on the 3rd try. If I had been trying to learn something for the first time rather than remind myself of what I had once known, I would have been hopelessly lost. Skepticism about any response is still crucial.

speaking of search without ads, I wholeheartedly recommend https://kagi.com

I'll second this. Kagi is really impressive and ad-free is a nice change.

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