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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

I feel bad for people who reject LLMs on moral grounds. They'll likely fall behind, while also having to live in a world increasingly built around something they see as immoral.

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On the falling behind:

I strongly doubt that is going to be the case - picking up these tools is not rocket science, even if you want to be able to use them fairly effectively. In addition, there is so much churn in AI tooling these days that an early investment might not really be worth a lot in the longer run.

On the other hand, hands-on experience in programming and architecture is currently a must-have to use the tools effectively - and continuing without AI in the short term might just buy an inexperienced engineer some time to learn, and postpone skill atrophy for an experienced engineer.

Of course, who can know what the future looks like, but I doubt a "wait and see" approach is that dangerous to anyone's career.

Why would anybody who rejects them on moral grounds pick them up later? It isn't a discussion of lateness, it's a discussion of opting out.

Asking it to do something isn't exactly complicated. At the very least, it's way easier than actually coding so why would you expect people to struggle with writing? There's no skill required in using LLMs, that's kinda the point.

The point is that people who reject them on moral grounds won't be using them, irrespective of whether they are easy to use.

Someone might feel different about a (future) community owned and managed LLM than one controlled by Altman, Musk, and similar. It would be nice to feel like we're building something together instead of funding the oligarchy and accelerating the collapse of civilization.

I don't necessarily agree with the LLM moral objection, but this point of view is unconvincing. Change the topic to say, slavery, and the "I feel bad for those who reject slavery on moral grounds, they'll fall behind..." argument becomes fairly absurd.

You're essentially saying the very concept of a moral objection is to be pitied. Maybe you believe that's true but I'd say that reflects poorly on our values today.

No, he's saying this specific moral objection is to be pitied.

When I say "I feel bad for people who feel a need to own guns", I'm not saying I feel bad for people who feel a need to lock their doors at night.

LLMs are very easy to pick up, the point of them for their makers is to commoditize skill and knowledge, you can't be left behind in learning to use them, AI providers don't have economic incentives to make them into anything other than appliances.

The people more at risk of being left behind are the ones that don't learn when not to trust their output.

> The people more at risk of being left behind are the ones that don't learn when not to trust their output.

Or the ones who fall out of practice writing software themselves because they've been relying on AI to do all the work.

(Or the same, but with "long-form English text" instead of "software".)

They'll get left behind in the same sense that 1980s professionals who refused to touch computers got left behind.

Not using a computer eventually meant failing to use the basic medium of modern work. Not using an LLM does not yet imply the same thing.

> They'll likely fall behind

So far this doesn't seem to be the case, despite it being repeated endlessly over the last few years.

>while also having to live in a world increasingly built around something they see as immoral

Should people just decide that things they think are immoral are actually fine and get over it? Doesnt really seem coherent...

When the moral perspective isn't that sound and isn't that important, yeah, they usually do. Everyone gets tired of complaining.

> So far this doesn't seem to be the case, despite it being repeated endlessly over the last few years.

For most professional roles today, using LLMs is a must. It's probably as important as using Google, if not more.

> Should people just decide that things they think are immoral are actually fine and get over it? Doesnt really seem coherent...

No, hence why I feel bad for them.

> For most professional roles today, using LLMs is a must. It's probably as important as using Google, if not more.

That is not remotely true.

The point of those pushing AI at the top is precisely to leave all human devs "behind", as it were. Anyone who thinks otherwise is not paying attention. Whether or not they succeed in their endeavors, time will tell. In either case, if their towers of money fail to deliver on the promise or not (like the last 3 AI winters I've lived through) doesn't mean we won't have a bunch of new useful tools at our disposal in the end.

I feel bad for people who reject Windows 11 on moral grounds. They'll likely fall behind, while also having to live in a world increasingly built around something they see as immoral.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/03/im-ok-being-left-behind-tha...

This is just the typical FOMO nonsense pushed by AI fans.

It's the exact same as seen with many past hypes, and every time the result is a lot more nuanced than those fans claim. It wasn't that long ago that people were claiming MongoDB was going to revolutionize the world and make relational databases obsolete, or how cryptocurrencies were going to change the world, or NFTs, and the list goes on.

For every MongoDB and NFT, there is also the personal computer, the Internet, the web, the smartphone, etc. If you think LLMs are comparable to NFTs, well I really don't know what to say... It's genuinely shocking to me that there are smart people on HN who believe this.

I feel bad for people who reject lying/stealing/cheating/corruption/backstabbing on moral grounds. They'll likely fall behind, while also having to live in a world increasingly built around something they see as immoral.

People who reject those things don't get left behind... In fact, they tend to live more successful lives and spend less time in prison.

I would argue that leading AI companies have engaged in some or all of those :)

This is total FUD.

The goal that AI-Megacorp CEOs have been pushing lately is "super intelligence" and so if that's where you truly think we are rapidly heading, what's the risk for those of us not hyper-invested in AI? This "super intelligence" (by definition) will be able to understand us both equally well, so all these "prompting skills" people claim sets them apart from people who don't use AI that much will be utterly pointless.

We're not there yet and we don't know when that will happen.

Are the people who aren’t born or haven’t even entered a workforce also falling behind?

Yeah that's why you go to school, learn, get trained etc..

I feel bad for people who accept AI. They're going to wind up just as replaced by it as I will, but it will somehow come as a surprise to them despite the writing being on the wall for ages

I imagine there will be a lot of regrets in the future from people that were early adopters that eventually got pushed out by the AI they love so much

There must be plenty of people who "accept" it in a fatalistic manner, where the final result will not be a surprise.

Regret? Of what? The tech is here. You won't slow it down by not using it. People need to either adapt by moving to more and more niche areas, or become the person to be retained when the efficiency gains materialize. We still don't have the proper methodology figured out, but people are working on it.

That said, I'd agree that people who currently claim 20x speedups will indeed be replaced.

> You won't slow it down by not using it.

Then why is it forced into everywhere and everyone and everything?

Because they don't want you to realize that you have the power to reject garbage then have the government punish them for creating such waste.

It's because of simple FOMO of companies. If they don't "invest" in it they will be left behind. Which is true. However, the way they invest is equally (if not more) important. E.g. MS is a good example of how not to do it.

If enough people refuse to use it then we can absolutely slow it down

So I'm doing that. Even if I don't expect to "win" in the end, I'm doing what I think is right

Maybe one day I'll be vindicated

At the very least I can look my kids in the eye when they're working age that I didn't happily help bring in their bleak futures.

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