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Comment by lpcvoid | Hacker News Reader

Devs also shouldn't be using GenAI, it's inherently anti-worker and IMHO also anti-human. But I guess that's an unpopular opinion around here.

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If a "C+++" was created that was so efficient that it would allow teams to be smaller and achieve the same work faster, would that be anti-worker?

If an IDE had powerful, effective hotkeys and shortcuts and refactoring tools that allowed devs to be faster and more efficient, would that be anti-worker?

What part of c++ is inefficient? I can write that pretty quickly without having some cloud service hallucinate stuff.

And no, a faster way to write or refactor code is not anti-worker. Corporations gobbling up tax payer money to build power hungry datacenters so billionaires can replace workers is.

I never said C++ was inefficient, you don't have to prove anything. It's a hypothetical, try use your imagination.

> Corporations gobbling up tax payer money to build power hungry datacenters so billionaires can replace workers is.

Which part of this is important? If there was no taxpayer funding, would it be okay? If it was low power-consumption, would it be okay?

I just want to understand what the precise issue is.

Was C+++ built by extensively mining other people's work, possibly creating an economic bubble, putting thousands out of work, creating spikes in energy demand, raising the price of electronic components and inflating the price of downstream products, abusing people's privacy,… hmm. Was it?

Yes (especially drawing from the invention of the numbers 0 and 1), yes (i.e. dotcom bubble), yes (probably people who were writing COBOL up until then), yes (please shut down all your devices), yes, yes.

Who could've predicted that the alarmist luddite viewpoint would be unpopular on the technology forum?

technology forum? the last hacker left this dump for lobsters 5 years ago

now it's full of SBF and scam altman wannabes

I don't know why people say this. I look on the front page and it's just interesting articles and blog posts on a variety of differing subjects. You must be either actively seeking out stuff you don't like and wasting your time actively hating it or just imagining it.

You shouldn't be using a wheel, it's inherently anti-worker.

what about cars? they are anti-horses… can we use cars/buses/trains… or nah?

Yes, it is an unpopular opinion around here, but pretty much in the tech world.

I think this is because most of the users/praisers of GenAI can only see it as a tool to improve productivity (see sibling comment). And yes, end of 2025, it's becoming harder to argue that GenAI is not a productivity booster across many industries.

The vast majority of people in tech are totally missing the question of morality. Missing it, or ignoring it, or hiding it.

I agree. The goal of AI is to reduce payroll costs. It has nothing to do with IDEs or writing code or making "art". It's meant to allow the owning class to pay the working class less, nothing more. What it *can* do is irrelevant in the face of what it is for.

If workers (i.e. me) choose to use it without it being imposed on them, is that a morally bad thing in your worldview?

I was trying to use an obscure CLI tool the other day. Almost no documentation and one wrong argument and I would brick an expensive embedded device.

Somehow Google gave me the right arguments in its AI generated answer to my search, and it worked.

I first tried every forum post I could find, but nobody seemed to be doing exactly what I was attempting to do.

I think this is a clear and moral win for AI. I am not in a position to hire embedded development consultants for personal DIY projects.

You've pretty much described the "what it is for" for a large percentage of industrial inventions. Clearly, however, the world would be worse off without many of them.

would the world be worse off if facebook and google had never existed?

I doubt it

would the world be worse off if instead of google it had been blooglie or hooli that succeeded?

i don't know

The fact that there exist things created in the pursuit of money that are of questionable benefit to society... does not, in ANY way, negate the fact that there are MANY things created via the same motivation that are a benefit to society.

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