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Comment by gortok | Hacker News Reader

They got duped into it partly because of the enthusiasm and demoware shown by folks like the ones that topped HN with their exhortations about the wonders of AI for coding.

We’re not innocent bystanders here, and it’s important to recognize that. Our hype added to the hype. Our optimism added to the optimism. After layoffs due to Section 172 and interest rates going up, technologists were looking for a reason to be in-demand again, and generative AI as a platform specialization provided that.

We can’t now criticize CEOs for being taken in by the same enthusiasm we pushed for our own purposes.

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I don’t claim responsibility for any of that. I’m not part of that “we”. Time and time again I’ve been sceptical of AI on places like Hacker News and I’m hardly alone. As a community I think there is a great variation in opinion.

CEOs are very well compensated for the things they do. If they were led astray by snake oil salesman that does not make Hacker News as a community complicit. They were fooled when they shouldn’t have been and it’s their own fault.

I'm not criticizing CEOs, only mentioning them because they're at the helm and the ones calling the shots at companies. But the psychosis has hit pretty much everyone, of all intelligence ranges.

Also, I'm genuinely excited about AI. It's absolutely incredible. Even with all the problems, I'm more invigorated about being a programmer than at almost any point in my career. You have to embrace the chaos.

I don’t know who you’re including in “we”, but since most CEOs are being paid more for their judgment than HN commenters are, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to hold them to higher standards.

While it's true that HN, as a collective, was participating in that hype, you need to be very careful about trying to extend that to mean that every poster on HN is complicit in it.

Many of us were skeptical from the start, and have done nothing to hype up LLMs.

What about the large contingent of resident wet rags? Can we still shit on the CEOs for not seeing through the BS and guiding their companies effectively?

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