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Comment by mmooss | Hacker News Reader

The reactionary response against the new technology, even on HN, is pretty strong. If I ran an AI developer, I'd take it as a signal that I'm doing something right - people see how powerful our product is, and they care about it. Hate and love aren't too different; we'll have many dedicated users who will have forgotten.

  First they laugh at you
  Then they tell you it violates the orthodoxy
  Then they think they knew it all along

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“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

  -- Carl Sagan

Right, but I think AI is undeniably powerful and useful. It has good uses and bad uses, of course, but looking to block all AI will someday seem like blocking all JavaScript.

You are free to think whatever you like. That doesn't make you right (or wrong).

Nobody is looking to block "all AI". Some of us are opposed to either specific cases or the broad deployment of LLMs.

I think the OP is blocking 'all AI' in a broad context, which I think is a knee-jerk response to new technology.

> Some of us are opposed to either specific cases

I definitely support that.

> or the broad deployment of LLMs.

I'm not sure what that means, but I support regulation of LLMs in general. For example, an LLM should not be allowed to represent itself as human.

As PG would say, the best startups are for ideas which are hated, because you'll have no competition.

>the best startups are for ideas which are hated

yes and so are the worst, and the problem is 95% of ideas that sound stupid aren't stupid and genius, but just stupid. As Peter Thiel used to say, it's not enough to be a contrarian, that's easy, you need to be contrarian and correct.

Right, and let’s not forget that the VC game that YC plays in assumes that the vast majority of their ventures will fail.

It’s way more exploitative than it gets credit for, even those who criticize VC firms aren’t verbalizing the vastness of the scope of the issue:

Startup incubators prey on young and ambitious people’s willingness to have zero life outside of work in order to set 90% of them up to fail and make huge profits off of the 10% Airbnb-type success stories.

These VC firms have money but no talent or time of their own so they basically steal it from founders in exchange for a Hollywood or pro sports-style superstar pipe dream where most are statistically guaranteed to fail, and even those who succeed don’t keep the majority of the fruits of their labor.

These failed startup founders end up with skills that are supposedly transferable to future ventures or what have you, but I bet if someone actually tracked down a lot of these people they might find a lot of sob stories of early stage founders who ended up burning out of their early career and having the whole startup founder experience representing a net negative in their lives.

But that's plainly wrong. Anything you try to do with AI right now will have a ton of competition.

Or it’s inauthentic and people don’t want AI slop that anyone can generate.

If it can be generated with a prompt, it has infinite supply and finite demand. It’s literally worthless in all senses of the term.

What worries me is that it’s reducing the value of actual engineering work (or good quality art). It’s like car lemons. Their existence also reduces the value of the good quality work

It’s worth it though my manager said I was an extra good little worker in my last review. (/s)

> It’s literally worthless in all senses of the term.

I think that misunderstands the economics:

For a long time we've been able to generate mathematical solutions at a prompt, and yet those still have value - I still gain by having them. Email is free and ubiquitous, but still has value. Clean water, for example, is generally free and ubiquitous, but has enormous value; I'd die without it.

In the market, things are priced by their marginal value - the added value of the last one sold; your 10,000th glass of water is not as valuable as your 1st (if you have only 1). But price != value: 'price is what you pay, value is what you get'.

Clean water isn’t free? Utility bills increase year on year.

It's very cheap. If buying the next glass of water was life-and-death, how much would you pay? The current price reflects its abundance.

> it’s inauthentic

I have a hard time believing that a population deeply into social media, an ocean of inauthenticity - disinformation, influencers, bots, trolling, etc. - and who actively support people who advertise their inauthenticity with pride (such as certain politicians), suddenly care about authenticity.

They don't want AI messing up the 'authenticity' of their social media? lol

I mean a line was gonna show up at some point. Maybe for a lot of people AI was that line. Or AI pushed too hard too quickly making the line too apparent.

I think it's just fear of change and new things, and authenticity is one rationalization of it.

That said, I care very much about both authenticity and regulating AI.

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