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Comment by NoraCodes | Hacker News Reader

I don't care that AI development is more fun for the author. I wouldn't care if all the evidence pointed toward AI development being easier, faster, and less perilous. The externalities, at present, are unacceptable. We are restructuring our society in a way that makes individuals even less free and a few large companies even more powerful and wealthy, just to save time writing code, and I don't understand why people think that's okay.

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>hat makes individuals even less free and a few large companies even more powerful and wealthy

You're what, 250 years behind at this point?

Since the dawn of the industrial revolution there is a general trend that fewer can make more with less. And really even bigger than AI were fast fuel based transportation and then global networks. Long before we started worrying about genAI, businesses have been consolidating down to a few corporations that make enough to supply the world from a singular large factories.

We fought the war against companies. Companies won.

Now you're just at the point where the fabric makers were, where the man with the pick axe was, where the telephone switch operator was, where the punch card operator was.

Saying "well the world sucks so what's new" isn't a perspective a lot of folks are going to resonate with. Just because we can recognize troubling patterns from the past in the present doesn't mean we just volunteer to lie down and take a boot to the neck. Positive change is always possible. Always.

Good news: the evidence points to it being slower than non-ai workflows. So we're destroying our economy, society, and planet to make worse software, more slowly! :)

we are also making all software much worse at the same time. I dont think every app needs AI but apparently they do. Notion used to be a Zen writing app back in the day, canva used to an app where you can do simple graphics without a complicated tools panel.

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> Disgusting work

Please don't do this here. Thoughtful criticism is fine on this site but snark and name-calling are not.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: on closer look, you've been breaking the HN guidelines so badly and so consistently that I've banned the account. Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed here in any case.

I think Pete's article last year made a good case for regarding this as the "horseless carriage" stage, i.e. growing pains around how to use a new technology effectively.

AI Horseless Carriages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43773813 - April 2025 (478 comments)

Or maybe it's analogous to the skeuomorphic phase of desktop software. Clumsy application of previous paradigm to new one; new wine in old bottles; etc.

We, as SW engineers, have been doing that to many industries for the last 40+ years. It's silly and selfish to draw the line now that we're in the crosshairs.

I've spent my 20 year career working largely in medical software. The only jobs I've been replacing are pancreas that stop functioning correctly.

Maybe don't speak for all of us.

Computers themselves replaced computers (yeah, a job title). Your medical software certainly automatizes someone else's job, otherwise no one will pay you to write them. You just don't care about them.

Or you do, but you believe it's worth it because your software helped more patients, or improved the overall efficiency and therefore created more demand and jobs - a belief many pro-AI people hold as well.

The job used to be the patients'. Manually managing type 1 diabetes isn't a fun job. Try reading Think like a pancreas for the fun details.

Patient outcomes are significantly better with modern technology.

> You just don't care about them.

Yeah, okay.

My comment wasn't about you in particular but the industry as a whole.

Much of the software written historically is to automate stuff people used to do manually.

I'd wager you use email, editors, search engines, navigation tools and much more. All of these involved replacing real jobs that existed. When was the last time you consulted a city map?

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