Witness any HN comment thread with "pro-AI" vibes (which is almost all of them). It's almost as though AI has become a religion.
More re hype as the product: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44737346
Being impressed with the capabilities of an emerging technology doesn't make the person a religious zealot, and dismissing every proponent of LLMs and AI generally that way is weak and tribal.
I really don't understand how this topic has become such a badge of identity.
There's a their group of people who see these things as tools, and want to learn about them. How to use them well; their shortcomings, but as usual, the reasonable voices get drowned out by loud rants and diatribes.
I feel like we’re reading two different versions of HN. Any thread about AI gets filled up with so many useless anti-AI comments from people who haven’t read the article that it’s hard to even discuss the topic here. I don’t even bother trying to get good AI or LLM related information out of HN right now because it’s such an openly hostile forum where cheap anti-AI comments will get upvoted more than actual discussion about articles.
Obviously, claiming that "hype" is _the_ product of AI is categorically inane. No, "hype" is instead obviously a _byproduct_ of our current era. The "true product" will only be clear in hindsight, but at the moment the two contenders are: a) A buoyant and burgeoning industry of AI companies that only accelerates in growth -- unlikely, just like the theory of dark energy, or b) a bubbling industry which creates a the grounding framework and infrastructure for the next wave(s) of AI progress.
Whichever one of those it is, it won't be "just hype". That sort of thing is reserved for NFT markets.
Lots of people were very happy to pay for 3D TVs / VR headsets.
Lots of people were very happy to pay for "full self-driving[0]".
[0] you need to have your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times
Also, OpenAI is not cash-flow-positive and is not expected to be until 2029 (!). Which means tthat, like AirBnB, like Uber, at their beginnings, you are not paying the real cost yet, it is heavily subsidized by investors - who expect double-digits returns on investment one day.
Now, in many places, AirBnB prices are close to hotels and Uber to taxis - if not higher.
As an example the United States has a cap on the number of doctors to keep doctors' salarys high... In many cases nurses are in a great position to provide more real care. If tools can help nurses do so isn't that a good thing? I don't view that as replacing doctors so much as delivering more personalized medicine and human care.
While I find the interviewee's personal story, particularly their upbringing in Kolkata (one of my favorite cities -- terracota cha, collegee street) humanizing I'm not sure how relevant it is to the discussion. However it does remind you that there's so much more than simply shaping text. Absolutely.
Our real physical lives are the core of our meaning and AI has no real impact on most of that. Don't we all know that though?
Big Tech simply sees business models around search and ads in Search and AI -- at least for consumers -- is the new search and hence opportunity for ads in search... We can criticize that all we want but this guy was getting that salary for 20 years.
Anyway, to blame Kolkata's challenges on colonialism when it's got some of the best sidewalks in India.. when its very existence in many ways is related to colonialism.. is a myopic perspective in my view. Compare and contrast with Kerala (the other Communist state in India). Kerala has some of the highest economic and quality of life output in the country. Kolkata can and should too. Blaming colonialism and bringing up Gaza strike me as simply trying to make sure that this is relevant to a particular Community to get clicks... aka sell ads. Sigh.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/30/microsoft...
https://people.com/bill-gates-ai-will-replace-doctors-teache...
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/goo...
Artificial Intelligence still can't beat natural idiocy...
I guess I see hype all the time and have something of a filter to recognize that our roles will evolve not be replaced that's always how things go. Maybe decades hence the roles are so different that they're named differently.
Yes!
apples_oranges•6mo ago