Comment by bdangubic 11 hours ago
the disconnect is quite simple, there are people that are professionals and are willing to put the time in to learn and then there’s vast majority of others who don’t and will bitch and moan how it is shit etc. if you can’t get these tools to make your job easier and more productive you ought to be looking for a different career…
> labeling people who disagree with you undereducated or uninformed
I did neither of these two things... :) I personally could not care about
- (over)hype
- 12/13/14/15 ... digit USD investment
- exponential vs. sigmoid
There are basically two groups of industry folk:
1. those that see technology as absolutely transformational and are already doing amazeballs shit with it
2. those that argue how it is bad/not-exponential/ROI/...
If I was a professional (I am) I would do everything in my power to learn everything there is to learn (and then more) and join the Group #1. But it is easier to be in Group #2 as being in Group #1 requires time and effort and frustrations and throwing laptop out the window and ... :)
> I would guess that at least in the cloud flare instance some of the responsible code was ai generated
Your whole point isn't supported by anything but ... a guess?
If given the chance to work with an AI who hallucinates sometimes or a human who makes logical leaps like this
I think I know what I'd pick.
Seriously, just what even? "I can imagine a scenario where AI was involved, therefore I will treat my imagination as evidence."
A mutually exclusive group 1 & group 2 are a false dichotomy. One can have a grasp on the field and keep up to date with recent papers, have an active Claude subscription, use agents and still have a net-negative view of "AI" as a whole, considering the false promises, hucksters, charlatans and an impending economic reckoning.
tl;dr version: having negative view of the industry is decoupled from one's familiarity with, and usage of the tools, or the willingness to learn.
> considering the false promises, hucksters, charlatans and an impending economic reckoning.
I hack for a living. I could hardly give two hoots about “false promises” or “hucksters” or some “impeding economic reckoning…” I made a general comment that a whole lot of people simple discount technology on technical grounds (favorite here on HN)…
They're not logistic, this is a species of nonsense claim that irks me even more than claiming "capabilities gains are exponential, singularity 2026!"; it actually includes the exponential-gains claim and then tries to tack on epicycles to preempt the lack of singularities.
Remember, a logistic curve is an exponential (so, roughly, a process whose outputs feed its growth, the classic example being population growth, where more population makes more population) with a carrying capacity (the classic example is again population, where you need to eat to be able to reproduce).
Singularity 2026 is open and honest, wearing its heart on its sleeve. It's a much more respectable wrong position.
It's disheartening. I got a colleague, very senior, who dislikes AI for a myriad of reasons and doesn't want to adapt if not forced by mgmt. I feel from 2022-2024 the majority of my colleagues were in this camp - either afraid from AI or because they looked at it as not something a "real" developer would ever use. 2025 it seemed to change a bit. American HN seemed to adapt more quickly while EU companies are still lacking the foresight to see what is happening on the grand scale.
I'm pretty senior and I just don't find it very useful. It is useful for certain things (deep code search, writing non-production helper scripts, etc.) and I'm happy to use it for those things, but it still seems like a long way off for it to be able to really change things. I don't foresee any of my coworkers being left behind if they don't adopt it.
You're not doing yourself any favors by labeling people who disagree with you undereducated or uninformed. There is enough over-hyped products/techniques/models/magical-thinking to warrant skepticism. At the root of this thread is an argument to (paraphrasing) encouraging people to just wait until someone solves major problems instead of tackling it themselves. This is a broad statement of faith, if I've ever seen one, in a very religious sense: "Worry not, the researchers and foundation models will provide."
My skepticism and intuition that AI innovations are not exponential, but sigmoid are not because I don't understand what gradient-descent, transformers, RAG, CoT, or multi-head attention are. My statement of faith is: the ROI economics are going to catch up with the exuberance way before AGI/ASI is achieved; sure, you're getting improving agents for now, but that's not going to justify the 12- or 13-digit USD investments. The music will stop, and improvements slow to a drip
Edit: I think at it's root, the argument is between folk who think AI will follow the same curve as past technological trends, and those who believe "It's different this time".