Ask HN: Why is not using AI considered a form of arrogance? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why is not using AI considered a form of arrogance?

6 pointsamichail16 comments

You would expect only people who have a very high opinion of themselves to not feel the need to use AI.

I rarely use AI and avoid at all costs unless forced to use it by my job.

Every time I do use it, it's usually incorrect and just adds time to the task. I nearly always end up having to refer to a physical book or previously written notes to get the answer I need.

I have no ill will towards anybody who does use it nor do I care who uses it – It's their choice if they would rather defer to a machine to make simple decisions.

> You would expect only people who have a very high opinion of themselves to not feel the need to use AI.

Please explain why my 82 year-old mother-in-law needs to use AI. Is it just so you won't consider her arrogant?

She lived long enough to see this miracle come to fruition and yet she doesn't want to check it out?

Lol, no. We discourage her from using the computer because she's been scammed* so many times. Generally speaking AI is not uniformly perceived as this awe inspiring boon to those of her generation. Often it invokes fear - fear of instability, fear of discrimination, a simple fear of the unknown. These people lived through a lot of scary technological advancements in their day. The last thing they want is another thing they can't understand.

People who don't get this display a lot of ageism.

*- "Microsoft" telling her her computer's been infected and she needs to call this number asap! Luckily a bank teller stopped her before she completed the transaction.

We all have to do what we have to do. I don't consider the fact that people refuse to use AI necessarily arrogant, they merely have the choice at this stage.

There are some who exhibit arrogance/aggression and like to virtue signalling to us other mere mortals, which is annoying.

Nonetheless, I preferred life before LLMs. Now I'm making the best of a bad situation, and going with the flow. Too old to fight a losing battle.

I don't code as such any more, but the obvious two reasons I see is that coders would avoid it is for copyright issues as well as, since one doesn't know what the llm was trained on, for not unwittingly [1] introducing a crafty not yet known to the public exploit.

[1] Assuming that if LLMs were that good, all code would presently be double checked and exploits and back doors will shortly coming to an end - unless the reason it hasn't is a marketing issue.

What if someone has evaluated the pros and cons, maybe even tried using AI, and decided it's not worth it?

Trying out AI is a fun and sometimes useful thing to do.

But you should never trust it completely. A lot of people have already died because they trusted it with their lives. "Full self driving" isn't.

I don’t consider it arrogant but people are free to choose what they utilize

Not on Hacker News though.

> Not on Hacker News though.

You're not the boss of Hacker News, don't try and tell people what they can and cannot do. You pose a question about arrogance and then display a grand example of it here.

Your question is a form of arrogance, care to explain why?

Thinking, thesis and synthesis, syllogism, poesy or prose: in all these things I am far better than an LLM.

But even were I not, I would still insist on doing them myself. An abnegation, an abdication of yourself, to do otherwise. A little suicide. If I speak to you yet you act a mere frontend for Claude, what’s the point of you?

But for coding? Sure, if the tool works. But I expect its ideas will never be new.

Refusing AI can look arrogant when it’s less about principle and more about assuming your old workflow is already smarter than everyone else’s new leverage.

Its wild hallucinations and overconfident falsehoods rub me the wrong way.

I am cautiously optimistic about AI, but not only does it cheapen the dev experience and suck all my enjoyment out of coding, but it also is far too unreliable at this point. It’s a swarm of ADHD juniors with goldfish memories and hopped up on acid and magic mushrooms. It takes more energy and effort for me to get it to produce minimally acceptable output than the energy and effort I need to produce superior output entirely on my own. And my objective is not slop at high speed. It’s quality work at lower effort. That’s something that is beyond the capabilities of AI at this point.

It's less often arrogance and more often ideological. Some programmers, especially those in creative industries, feel the negative externalities of AI don't justify its use.

However, some programmers believe that "AI can't program" with their last time using an LLM was years ago, which is more ignorant of current trends than arrogant.

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