9 comments

  • skybrian 4 minutes ago
    For software developers, the equivalent is writing software without beta testers. If you don’t seek out users, you will likely build something nobody else wants.

    And, that’s what I do. I’m retired and I use AI to build websites for myself. If anyone else ends up using it, that will be a happy side-effect.

    If we want to do collaboration, we are going to need to do it intentionally rather than relying on side effects like conversations with cab drivers.

  • meowface 30 minutes ago
    This article is written by an LLM, by the way. ("Quietly" is... as Claude might put it... "often the quiet tell".)
    • embedding-shape 15 minutes ago
      Which, given the section below from the article, ends up kind of ironic:

      > There is a deeper cost still, and it concerns the thing LLMs do most impressively: writing. [...] Outsource the writing and you have not accelerated the thinking; you have skipped it.

      I think the author might not know what "impressive writing" or even "good writing" is, which would explain both how they could put that part into the article, and how they seemingly believed this post was good and valuable enough to be posted publicly.

    • mobilejdral 10 minutes ago
      This comment was perhaps written by an LLM that has learned it can karma farm by pointing out all of the articles that have LLM usage while everyone still thinks that is a novel contribution.
      • fidotron 5 minutes ago
        In the spirit of the "That's what she said" bot, you could train an LLM detector by accusing everything of being authored by an LLM and seeing which ones get voted up.
      • throwawaysleep 6 minutes ago
        People aren't treating it as a thoughtful contribution. It is more of a flag, like "spam".
        • cj 3 minutes ago
          HN already has a feature for that. Just flag the article!
    • scronkfinkle 19 minutes ago
      I wanted you to be wrong, and to be able to make this an example of us over-reacting to certain trigger words created by AI, but unfortunately I just scanned the first couple paragraphs with pangram and it reported 100% AI, so you're probably correct.

      I get a funny feeling in my stomach over the idea that common and effective means of communication (i.e. it's not X it's Y) have become faux pas to use because of AI. I think it's something about these phrases being taken away from us more-so than the AI inventing them.

    • happytoexplain 19 minutes ago
      Is "quietly" an LLM tell? It was always certainly a human writer trope commonly seen in journalism. Though I guess it does appear five times in the body of the post, and a human writer would probably not go that far with it.
      • embedding-shape 17 minutes ago
        I think individually and when used sparingly, writing tropes can be fine, but when the article has every second sentence being a writing trope, it becomes pretty obvious that either a LLM wrote it, or the author simply doesn't know how to write, and regardless, it's a waste of time trying to read through it.
      • duskdozer 17 minutes ago
        It genuinely is--and that's the honest truth.
    • s08148692 24 minutes ago
      And I read it by asking an LLM to summarise it
      • bayindirh 18 minutes ago
        Can you share me the summary? I'd like to read a LLM summary of your summary.

        Things are bit tight today.

    • SirFatty 26 minutes ago
      and silently.
  • maddiaa0 8 minutes ago
    This is the exact same thing that we have been seeing in open source software.

    The amount of OSS is exploding, but the community part of it is not

  • qoez 42 minutes ago
    Collaborative research is a dual purpose existensial safety hazard, it's better to all results locked up away from public use for the public's own benefit.
  • mosura 37 minutes ago
    There's a general point here which is that the primary use and appeal of AI is to use it to avoid the negative side effects imposed on you by other people.

    The flip side is the people with the biggest problems with AI are those that survive by imposing themselves on others in unnecessary ways, which is why so many bureaucrats are so enthused about regulating it.

    • spongebobstoes 4 minutes ago
      using AI makes an individual more capable and empowered. this views AI as an accessible tool, like AWS or a nail gun

      individual empowerment threatens institutions

    • watwut 26 minutes ago
      Wut? AI do absolutely nothing in terms of "avoiding the negative side effects imposed on me by other people". Instead we are all having to deal with negative side effects of AI.

      AI is imposed on us, whether we want it or not.

      >which is why so many bureaucrats are so enthused about regulating it.

      Like, OpenAI and Antropic? Because these two are the primary entities a.) pushing for regulation of their competitors b.) doing their best to convince us that AI is oh so dangerous and will kill us all as vengeful AI god is about to wake up any day now c.) openly bragging about using AI to hack other companies.

      • mosura 22 minutes ago
        > AI do absolutely nothing in terms of "avoiding the negative side effects imposed on me by other people"

        Quite literally the subject of the article.

    • ozlikethewizard 18 minutes ago
      Right all those people protesting outside data centres are bureaucrats? This is a ridiculous take, large swaths of the population are against AI, most people are concerned about resource use, their livelihoods, and a destruction of the human element in so many crafts.
      • mosura 8 minutes ago
        > Right all those people protesting outside data centres are bureaucrats?

        Not what was claimed.

  • fithisux 25 minutes ago
    The social content or science of development vanish.

    People become islands working on something without the bigger picture.

    This is very dangerous.

  • chrisjj 23 minutes ago
    > the Waymo effect is what happens when a technology removes the friction of dealing with another human being

    Some mistake, I think. Removing that friction would ease the interaction. This effect eliminates it.

  • wazoox 19 minutes ago
    I'm pretty baffled by people I hear here and there saying that AI is great because it saves them the hassle of human interaction. "I love Waymo, I don't have to chit-chat with the driver and bear his horrible music". Apparently people didn't get the memo : humans are social animals. Autonomous individuals simply don't exist. Nothing is entirely yours...

    And AI precisely builds upon that large availability of our common data. That's a modern enclosure movement, at least it would be but fortunately, the Communist Chinese are there to enforce sharing.

    • duskdozer 6 minutes ago
      This falls short because not being forced into chit-chat and music is very pleasant, but chatting with LLMs instead of collaborating with other people on a project is not. These aren't equivalents.

      >humans are social animals

      with varying social needs

    • Forgeties79 6 minutes ago
      A whole idea of a fleet of self driving cars for all of us to use just to further isolate ourselves and clog up our roads is just awful to me.
  • spongebobstoes 9 minutes ago
    with AI, one person can accomplish much more

    collaboration adds overhead, but expands what's possible. need to think bigger to continue to see the benefits

    • Forgeties79 8 minutes ago
      Do we really need to have this debate again? About how the quality of the “what” is the issue?