Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by simonw 56 days ago
What's "AI"?

(I'm going to guess you mean generative AI such as image/video/text generation used to create slop on Facebook, but I really wish posts like this would clarify.)

3 comments

Not trying to be snarky but it’s pretty obviously the one that’s been dominating the news/LinkedIn/This site/meetings in tech jobs yeah?
I think this post is vague enough for each one of us to think about the part we are sick of and relate. I'm sick of generative for sure.. but then again [0]:

> Everyone seems to have their own personal definition of acceptable AI use. If you Vibecode an entire app, it's because you are lazy and unskilled. But use AI for code review and writing tests? You are smart and efficient.

> You could use AI to remove photo backgrounds or clean up artifacts, that's just good editing. But generating an image for your blog post? You are stealing from hardworking artists. You are a fraud! You probably use AI as a writing assistant like a monster. But using it to generate documentation from your code is indispensable.

[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/ai-is-ok-just-not-yours

Use the ample context clues or have AI explain it to you, but either way we don't need useless comments like these.
This response is uncalled for, you’re making things unnecessarily hostile.
I literally guessed from the context clues in the (parentheses in my post).
Then why did you ask the question?
Because "I really wish posts like this would clarify".

I was making a point that saying "I hate AI" is intellectually lazy. The discourse here can be a whole lot better if people put more effort into clarity.

I want Hacker News to be a better place for technically sophisticated conversations than most of Reddit.

But you know exactly which form of AI is exhausting everyone through mediocre application. You know exactly which form of AI requires constant propaganda and astroturfing to get a thimble of adoption.

Fugazi as fuck

I’ve never heard this guy say anything negative about an AI product. Makes it impossible to trust him.
I think generative AI for slop posts and images on Facebook is a different issue from generative AI for coding agents, even when they share the same underlying models.

Or generative AI that was used to find 272 vulnerabilities that were fixed in Firefox 150 this week: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/ai-security-zer...