[Xenoamorphous]

It’s tiring. Same thing happened to the GPT-4o announcement yesterday. Apparently because there’s no unquestionable AGI 14 months after GPT-4 then everything sucks.

I always found HN contrarian but as I say it’s really tiring. I’ve no idea what the negative commenters are working on on a daily basis to be so dismissive of everybody else’s work, including work that leaves 90% of the population in a combination of awe and fear. Also people sometimes forget that behind big corp names there are actual people. People who might be reading this thread.

[mupuff1234]

What's also tiring is that no one is allowed to have any critical thoughts because "it's tiring".

From my own perspective the critique is usually a counter balance to extreme hype, so maybe let's just agree it's ok to have both types of comments, you know "checks and balances".

[piloto_ciego]

Being cynical is not a counterbalance though, it’s just as low effort as the hype people.

[Workaccount2]

AI is a pretty direct threat to software engineering. It's no surprise people are hostile towards it. Come 2030, how do you justify a paying someone $175k/yr when a $20/mo app is 95% as good, and the other 5% can be done by someone making $40k/yr?

[astrange]

Productivity improvements are good for workers; you should ask yourself why the invention of the compiler didn't cause this to happen already.

Or why the existence of the UK hasn't, since they have a lot of English speaking programmers paid in peanuts.

[motoxpro]

Yeah it's pretty unfortunate. Saying something sucks is such a lack of understanding that things are not static. I guess it's a sure way to be right, because there will always be progress and you can look back and say "See I told you!"

[IggleSniggle]

Psh. Things are not static. Progress sucks now. Haven't you heard of enshitification? You can always look back and say, "see? I told you it would suck in the future!"

...why am I feeling to urge to point out that I am only making a joke here and not trying to make an actual counter point, even if one can be made...?

[piloto_ciego]

I commented on this elsewhere, but being a negative Nancy is really a winning strategy.

If you’re negative and you get it wrong, nobody cares, get it and right you look like a damn genius. Conversely, if you’re positive and get it wrong, you look like an idiot and if you’re right you’re praised for a good call once. The rational “game theory” choice is to predict calamity.

[motoxpro]

Yeah it’s funny that optimism in the long term is optimal and pessimism in the short term is optimal.

[piloto_ciego]

Right, but I think people sometimes get the “what constitutes long term” factor a little bit wrong.

I am still talking to a lot of people who say, “what can any of this AI stuff even do?” It’s like, robots you could hold a conversation with effectively didn’t exist 3 years ago and you’re already upset that it’s not a money tree?

I think that peoples expectation horizon narrowing down may be the clearest evidence that we’re in the singularity.