Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tavoe 1 day ago
How do I know if comments like this come from a real person or a bot?

Your suggestion that "anything popular cannot be morally wrong" is proposterous. It feels like you're trying to bait people into arguing with you in a way I associate with bot spam.

But on the off change you're a real person - I will politely say - just because something is useful and popular doesn't meant it doesn't have negative externalities and doesn't mean people shouldn't fight to make it better.

Improving emissions standards is important even though lots of people drive cars. The same can absolutely be true of AI.

4 comments

> Your suggestion that "anything popular cannot be morally wrong" is proposterous.

It’s not about being popular, it’s about facing a new economic reality. Once machines were invented there was no going back to human labor, no matter how bad it was for the displaced workers or the environment.

Technology has always been a relentless economic force. And this is largely because despite the myriad externalities, it’s blindingly obvious that we as a species are, on average, much better off with technology than without.

if you suspect someone is a bot, email the mods.

if you're just saying it as an ad hominem, that is pretty lame, and you can make a stronger argument without it.

So, instead of getting upset at the people taking a joyride on the gas guzzling Lamborghini or generating shitty slop memes on TikTok, you're upset the ambulance drivers are racing to help the world out.
> How do I know if comments like this come from a real person or a bot?

Presumably, I'm a bot because you disagree with me.

> Your suggestion that "anything popular cannot be morally wrong" is proposterous. > just because something is useful and popular doesn't meant it doesn't have negative externalities and doesn't mean people shouldn't fight to make it better.

PREposterous. And I said nothing of the sort. It feels like you're hallucinating things nobody said in a way I strongly associate with bot spam.

> Improving emissions standards is important even though lots of people drive cars. The same can absolutely be true of AI.

The article did not at any point suggest that we need to improve and optimize AI. There is no magic wand that Linus can wave to measure how much water the incoming AI-assisted contributions are using. The guy should just go protest at a data center construction site or something; the article is pointless and completely fails to diagnose the actual problems with AI or propose viable solutions.