frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Ask HN: Notification Overload

37•fractal618•3d ago•69 comments

Ask HN: Junior getting lost

36•TheRegularOne•19h ago•30 comments

The preposterous notion of AI automating "repetitive" work

6•cadabrabra•8h ago•4 comments

Ask HN: How do you reset an AppleID?

5•OhMeadhbh•13h ago•21 comments

Ask HN: Books to learn 6502 ASM and the Apple II

101•abkt•3d ago•69 comments

Ask HN: Who do you follow via RSS feed?

67•znpy•3d ago•52 comments

Ask HN: How are devtool founders getting their paying users in 2026?

7•yasu_c•13h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is archive.is currently broken for WSJ links?

6•bigwheels•20h ago•3 comments

Ask HN: DDD was a great debugger – what would a modern equivalent look like?

56•manux81•4d ago•60 comments

Ask HN: How far has "vibe coding" come?

11•pigon1002•1d ago•25 comments

Tell HN: Beeper deletes inactive accounts without notice

3•kldx•21h ago•0 comments

Designing programming languages beyond AI comprehension

6•mr_bob_sacamano•1d ago•9 comments

Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

62•fnoef•3d ago•79 comments

Ask HN: What recent UX changes make no sense to you?

31•superasn•2d ago•35 comments

How much recurring income do you generate in 2026 and from what?

12•djshah•2d ago•5 comments

Ask HN: Vibe Researching" with AI – Anyone Using It for Real?

8•spenceXu•2d ago•5 comments

Where can I find startups looking for fractional product leads?

7•stulogy•2d ago•3 comments

Ask HN: How to prevent Claude/GPT/Gemini from reinforcing your biases?

29•akshay326•3d ago•22 comments

Ask HN: European alternative to Vercel/Cloudflare for hosting

12•vldszn•2d ago•17 comments

Tell HN: I cut Claude API costs from $70/month to pennies

40•ok_orco•4d ago•25 comments

Ask HN: Has Show HN become LLM-prompt-centric?

8•piratesAndSons•1d ago•3 comments

Ask HN: How much emphasis to put on unit testing and when?

9•theturtlemoves•3d ago•18 comments

Ask HN: Where to find cool companies to work for?

6•truetaurus•1d ago•9 comments

I built a C++ runtime with immutable objects and no GIL

6•gamarino•3d ago•3 comments

How to DeGoogle Myself?

12•neuralkoi•2d ago•1 comments

Frigate NVR Critical RCE Vulnerability Severity

2•shadybraden•1d ago•2 comments

Ask HN: If Everyone Can "Build" a SaaS, What Becomes Valuable?

12•spenceXu•2d ago•11 comments

Ask HN: Is there a good open-source alternative to Adobe Acrobat?

9•sebastian_z•4d ago•9 comments

The Anti-Pomodoro Technique: Focus on Taking Breaks, Not Watching the Timer

6•kentich•1d ago•7 comments

You've reached the end!

Open in hackernews

The preposterous notion of AI automating "repetitive" work

6•cadabrabra•8h ago
This is just one of those narratives that people latch onto because it has a nice ring to it. Or maybe it’s because it makes AI sound less threatening and perhaps even palatable. “Don’t worry. AI is going to replace only the repetitive parts of your job.” But if you spend even a minute examining this narrative, then you will realize just how preposterous it is.

Humans have already figured out how to automate repetitive physical and digital labor, and we’ve been doing it for decades and even centuries by using machines and computing. Simply put: If it’s repetitive, then you don’t need AI to automate it.

In fact, the kinds of task we want AI to automate are precisely those that AREN’T repetitive. That was the whole god damn point of AI.

How did we go from the original purpose of AI to claiming that it will do what we’ve already been doing for decades? Where do these narratives come from, and why do people fall for them?

Comments

tjr•8h ago
Seeing a lot of claims about using AI to write "boilerplate" and other repetitive bits of code, I was somewhat surprised, as I have historically written my own code generation tools to spit out repetitive, formulaic code. I didn't need AI; I just needed to understand what I wanted and write a script for it.

I suppose that generative AI was seen as such a boon to writing boilerplate because it could do so without you having to specifically program anything; it was trained on enough sufficiently-close examples that it could pull it off without a thorough description.

nicbou•3h ago
I am generally skeptical about AI but I do see the benefit here.

I write a bunch of widgets for my website. They're little calculators that use common components and apply simple logic. Think unit conversion or date arithmetic.

These currently take a few hours to write, and most of the work is just wiring things together in a predictable way: template, tests, common form controls.

I think that this would be a very good case for AI.

gtsteve•3h ago
Perhaps your supposedly unique work is more repetitive than you thought: it just has a decision tree that's difficult to model with a regular algorithm, and annoyingly, it turns out you can just brute force that decision tree if you have enough electricity.

Unless your job is cutting-edge research where you are truly making new scientific discoveries and methods, you're just combining other peoples' ideas into a new unique package and selling it.

The truly valuable work is to notice that there is an underserved market and figure out how to meet their needs.

paulcole•1h ago
Use the AI to make the “machine” that does the repetitive work?

I’m not a programmer but that’s what I’ve done. In the past I would’ve needed either to learn how to code or hire someone.