[HN Gopher] Stanford report highlights growing disconnect betwee...
___________________________________________________________________
Stanford report highlights growing disconnect between AI insiders
and everyone
Author : ZeidJ
Score : 137 points
Date : 2026-04-13 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| gcheong wrote:
| "Make something people want" seems so quaint now.
| MaysonL wrote:
| "Make people want something, and sell it to them".
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Ignore all environmental, political and social problems, and
| invest everything in a purely antisocial technology.
| izacus wrote:
| "Make something, then bribe bosses to shove it down people's
| throats."
| bigbuppo wrote:
| Yeah but drugs are illegal.
| jjulius wrote:
| >... with Gen Z reportedly leading the way...
|
| The kids are alright.
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| They've been saying that since the Boomers were kids, look
| where that led us
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'm biased, but I think Gen X turned out okay ;-).
| abcde666777 wrote:
| I'm also biased, but I think millenials turned out okay ;).
| rootusrootus wrote:
| In all seriousness, I agree. Millenials got a lot of
| crap, but by the numbers they look pretty successful to
| me.
| troupo wrote:
| As a geriatric millenial[1] myself, I approve this
| message :)
|
| [1] https://fortune.com/2024/04/23/four-types-
| millennials-geriat...
| georgemcbay wrote:
| > I'm biased, but I think Gen X turned out okay
|
| As a Gen Xer myself (1973) I disagree.
|
| The widest margin of Trump voters by generation was Gen X.
|
| Gen X has largely morphed into the boomers they used to
| despise.
| simonw wrote:
| I was talking recently to someone who teaches AI-adjacent courses
| at a US university (not in a computer science department) and
| they said that enrollment in their class is lower than expected,
| which they think is likely due to the severity of the AI backlash
| among students on campus.
| semiinfinitely wrote:
| > they think
|
| is key
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| What kind of AI-adjacent?
|
| If it's fundamentals of ML, I'm surprised to hear that.
|
| If it's "how to use ChatGPT for creative writing" then I'm not
| surprised. Why would someone take a class from a teacher who
| has had only just as much experience with these tools as their
| students have?
| 19skitsch wrote:
| Agree... OP said "not CS" so doesn't seem surprising. If
| we're going by anecdotes, AI classes in the CS dept have
| risen in popularity in the past few years.
| mmargenot wrote:
| AI applications that would help normal people in a significant
| way are pretty lacking, so I'm not surprised. So much
| conversation about AI products is cycles of "this tech will
| change everything" without material backup outside of coding
| agents.
| Aachen wrote:
| How much of the workforce is organising and other information
| dissemination or transformation?
|
| I'm more on the skeptical side than the evangelist, but I can
| see how large parts of such things could theoretically be
| shifted away from humans. Planning someone's agenda,
| preparing relevant documents, arranging and coordinating
| things, translations (speech or text), narration, grammar
| checking.... AI is a whole lot of hot air when considering
| the "second 80%" of the work involved in any of these tasks,
| but that's still a lot of jobs that may make little sense to
| start studying these years, until you have some idea how the
| field will develop or if there's a giant surplus of, say,
| French-native Spanish language experts. At least for those
| for whom a given study is not a real passion and they might
| as well choose something else
| Yokohiii wrote:
| The biggest visible AI impact, for me, is vibe coding. For
| that, I am convinced that the hype will collapse and will throw
| back the most enthusiast companies by years. On the downside we
| have untrustworthy, doom or glory praising CEOs, companies
| slashing jobs, AI companies going into military business,
| hacks, spam, psychosis, general anxiety and uncertainty.
|
| Even if you don't believe the hype and know that AI is just
| statistics, there is nothing to be positive about. I can't
| blame anyone to dismiss it. Maybe it's even the best thing that
| can happen, big tech won't take a sane route without civic
| supervision and calibration.
| fg137 wrote:
| Meanwhile Stanford's CS336 (Language Modeling from Scratch)
| requires an application for enrollment.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260316042004/https://cs336.sta...
|
| Students don't enroll in a class for various reasons, but most
| likely because it's useless (or at least people perceive it as
| useless). At top universities, even notoriously challenging
| courses have a decent class size.
| therobots927 wrote:
| What the tech elite fail to understand is that we are at historic
| levels of wealth and income inequality. Access to healthcare is
| determined by one's employment which makes what I'm about to
| explain a matter of life and death.
|
| It doesn't matter if you _think_ it's all going to work out and
| AI will bring an unprecedented era of abundance. _That is not the
| current state_.
|
| The current state is: Nearly all productivity growth since 1980
| has gone to shareholders, not workers:
| https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
|
| Now what do you think happens when we dramatically expand
| productivity with AI? Well, we're already seeing unprecedented
| layoffs in tech. And it's easy to draw the conclusion that unless
| _something structural changes_ all of the productivity gains from
| AI will go to investors not workers. Leaving said workers without
| access to healthcare or housing.
|
| And of course let's not forget that the tech elite in question
| supported Trump in the last election - someone who has done
| everything in his power to reduce healthcare access among the low
| income / unemployed population. This isn't fucking rocket science
| guys.
| taurath wrote:
| They understand, they're the ones on the top of the ladder
| pushing everyone else off.
| ike2792 wrote:
| This has mirrored what I've seen in my company. People in the
| data science/ML part of the company are super excited about AI
| and are always giving presentations on it and evangelizing it.
| Most engineers in other areas, though, are generally underwhelmed
| every time they try using it. It's being heavily pushed by AI
| "experts" and senior leaders, but the enthusiasm on the ground is
| lacking as results rarely live up to the extremely rosy promises
| that the "experts" keep making. Meanwhile, everyone can read the
| news about layoffs attributed to AI and can see that hiring
| (especially of junior engineers) has slowed to a trickle. You can
| only fool people for so long.
| grebc wrote:
| Underwhelmed is the absolute correct word to use here.
|
| Absolutely everyone raves about this but other than a few basic
| computer related tasks I've not seen compelling use cases that
| justify the billions being lit on fire trying to pursue it.
|
| My cynical take is the crypto bro's needed something to do with
| their useless GPU's after the crash and found the perfect
| answer in LLM's.
| Wissenschafter wrote:
| When did Hacker news start becoming a luddite, bad takes
| everywhere I look, feels like everyone is '50 year old burnt
| out guy' that has no idea what is going on vibe?
|
| I just got back from a SAIRS conference at UCLA and talked
| directly with some of the presenters and engineers at Google.
|
| You won't be 'underwhelmed' long.
| pesus wrote:
| Blindly dismissing everyone not impressed by the AI hype
| only serves to further delegitimize the AI hype.
| mortalapeman wrote:
| As a senior dev who has been using these tools to their
| fullest effectiveness in production environments, until AI
| can reduce the entropy of a codebase while still adding
| capability I will continue to be underwhelmed.
| woah wrote:
| Did you ever ask it to do that?
| jjulius wrote:
| tl;dr - "I will dismiss this because of the time I've been
| spending in a pro-AI bubble".
| abcde666777 wrote:
| The same could have been said to someone who had yet to
| encounter generative AI. "Wait until you try it, you won't
| be underwhelmed for long".
|
| But here we are.
|
| Over time and usage the limitations of a thing become
| apparent.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| It's primarily about confidence and motivations. People
| with high confidence at what they do are supremely
| unmotivated to use something like AI to solve problems they
| don't have.
|
| People with low confidence will be super excited for AI
| because it solves problems they weren't even thinking
| about.
|
| Executives that don't write code are super excited about AI
| because hopefully it means they can continue to high low
| confidence people, which are plentiful and cost less.
|
| I am sitting on the sidelines watching in disbelief. I
| don't use AI and don't plan to. I used to write JavaScript
| for a living and still get JavaScript job alerts from a lot
| of job boards. The compensation for JavaScript work is
| starting to shoot through the roof as employers are moving
| away from garbage like React and Angular. The recent jobs
| are becoming fewer and are more reliant upon people with
| tons of experience that can actually program. Clearly AI is
| not replacing positions for higher talent with greater than
| 8-12 years experience.
| 0x3f wrote:
| This place actually hates all technology after the
| invention of Lisp. And there's the common online incentive
| to dunk on things that also exists here. Hence the infamous
| Dropbox comment and others.
|
| But it's also been anti-Javascript, anti-cloud, anti-
| social-media, anti-crypto, anti-React, and so on.
|
| I would therefore not in a million years expect it to be
| pro-LLM, and this is so obvious to me that I'm a bit
| suspicious of your motives for acting confused about it, as
| if it was ever any different.
| scottyah wrote:
| It's the same as the sad drunk man talking bad about the
| King at a dirty bar. It makes them feel better to compare
| or say they're better in some way.
| troupo wrote:
| > You won't be 'underwhelmed' long.
|
| "Yes, it sucks now, but believe me it won't be for long"
| spiel has been hyped for several years now.
|
| Oh, don't get me wrong, these tools are amazing. But just
| yesterday a very small refactoring resulted in 480 fully
| duplicated lines in a 5000-line codebase (on top of
| extremely bad DB access patterns) despite all the best
| shamanic rituals this world has to offer [1].
|
| So yeah, senior engineers especially use these tools daily,
| and keep being completely honest about their issues and
| shortcomings. Unlike the hype and scam artists.
|
| [1] Oh, sorry. I meant to say skills, context engineering
| and management, memory, prompt engineering.
| ua709 wrote:
| Is it just me or is there a growing disconnect between AI
| insiders and everyone...
| troupo wrote:
| There are no "AI-insiders".
|
| "AI-insiders" are trying to market their tools to you.
| See Anthropic's continuous lithany of "all programmers
| will be replaced in 6 months" while they struggle to make
| their TUI API wrapper consume less than 2-4 GB of RAM
| (they brought it down from 68 GB[1]), or have a decent
| uptime.
|
| [1] Yes, you read it right. They had to buy a team of
| actual engineers to do the job:
| https://x.com/jarredsumner/status/2026497606575398987
| jandrese wrote:
| Always fun to see the article happen live in the comments
| section.
| Herbstluft wrote:
| > You won't be 'underwhelmed' long.
|
| This has been your constant mantra for 3 years now and is
| part of the reason people are underwhelmed.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > When did Hacker news start becoming a luddite, bad takes
| everywhere I look, feels like everyone is '50 year old
| burnt out guy' that has no idea what is going on vibe?
|
| Much to the opposite, I think healthy skepticism is a sign
| of maturity. The overeager embracing of hype cycled is
| extremely cringe.
|
| > I just got back from a SAIRS conference at UCLA and
| talked directly with some of the presenters and engineers
| at Google.
|
| Cringe, as I was saying.
|
| Conferences are just mutual fart smelling, swagger, and
| expensing trips on company momey. I am not against it, but
| treating your participation in some conference as a sign of
| the future is very silly.
|
| Every conference I participated always overhyped every
| current bullshit.
| taurath wrote:
| For mine it's worse because we have new leadership who believes
| in it to a far larger extent than it can deliver. Now a massive
| amount of our workforce is building up proofs of concepts and
| spitting out tons of effectively useless output to look good
| because of how strongly they've signaled it's good for careers
| here to fully embrace it. It's a massive mess and there's
| nobody to clean it up, and the voices advocating for rigor or
| good engineering practices are being sidelined.
|
| It's full out mania. As someone raised in and who escaped a
| cult, I am having to use every tool in my very large toolbox to
| stay sane while I wait for this to pass and die down or make my
| move towards a place that still cares whether their product
| works.
| partyficial wrote:
| Early stages of any major disruptive technology will have
| hype due to get-rich-quick folks. Dot-com boom & bust of 2000
| is similar. But the underlying technology (internet) defined
| our lives forever.
|
| I don't know why people are comparing the Day-1 of one
| technology with the Day-1000 of another. Yes, AI is useless
| in many fields - NOW. But you can't imagine doing any work
| without in a couple years.
|
| Like the kids used to ask - _' How did they build Google
| without Google?'_
|
| Now their kids will ask - _' How did they build chatGPT
| without chatGPT'?_
| taurath wrote:
| 2 things - it's not day 1 for AI, and it's also not dot-com
| (which dropped the nasdaq 80% btw). It's the entire
| American economy right now. When it can't deliver anything
| approaching its hype, just like all the data centers that
| can't deliver on power, the profit margins that can't
| deliver, and the promises of massive 500% revenue increases
| this fiscal year... sorry, I was raised in a cult and know
| what the fuck I'm seeing, sadly among a lot of otherwise
| intelligent people here.
|
| I expect I'll be using LLMs now and in the future, but the
| public is far more right about the companies and the people
| running them than the tech "insiders" here.
| baxtr wrote:
| What about karpathy though?
| psychoslave wrote:
| What's that?
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Villain from ghost busters 2
| rooftopzen wrote:
| Smart guy phoning it in now - realized a few weeks ago that
| he "notices" something interesting to share, but is really
| paraphrasing a recently released paper that found it -
| without giving paper credit.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| How can the AI be lacking in results and also at the same time
| responsible for layoffs and slowing of hiring?
|
| Wouldn't it be one or the other?
| pesus wrote:
| Executives don't need actual results or data to lay people
| off.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It can be both if for the majority of layoffs, AI is just a
| scapegoat to act as cover for cuts made for financial reasons
| or offshoring and not the actual cause.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| But then you'd expect the trend to self correct in the long
| run. AI actually does seem to replacing customer-service
| and CS jobs effectively.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| From what I've seen many efforts to replace roles such as
| customer service with AI are being rolled back or
| downscaled due to intolerably high error rates and
| general incapability. While these segments won't come out
| unscathed I don't think the actual impact will end up
| being as severe as feared.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I believe that too. Broadly, I'm agreeing with the parent
| comment--AI can't be causing long-run layoffs _and_ be
| worthless.
| californical wrote:
| No, layoffs happen due to leadership's expectations. It's
| never been about reality, layoffs and both massive hiring to
| ramp teams are based on vibes.
|
| The lack of results is felt by those using it to assist with
| their work daily.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| And specifically, their expectations as to what will
| positively impact the stock price. Shareholder value this
| quarter is more important than keeping the company afloat
| next quarter.
| samrus wrote:
| can happen at the same time when businesses speculatively
| fire workers to replace with AI. The lack of results might
| bite them in the ass and the bubble might pop. Or not, but
| they are going long on their AI position
| parliament32 wrote:
| AI hype -> layoffs -> AI underperforms -> ????
|
| Hilariously, it's the exact same playbook as the big third-
| world-country-outsourcing hype from a few years ago.
| incompatible wrote:
| Organisations happy to reduce costs, perhaps with greater
| output but with lower quality?
| V__ wrote:
| You replace half of a team with AI. Salary cost go
| immediately down, but team output can keep up for some time.
| You don't see the technical debt, the security issues and the
| prompt injection which will result in wrong invoices being
| sent. In six months suddenly there will be a big problem, but
| this quarter a lot of shareholders are happy about the cost-
| cutting. You may even be promoted by the time shit hits the
| fan, and it won't even be your problem anymore.
|
| On the other hand there probably also is a general correction
| in the market after the covid hiring spree.
| janalsncm wrote:
| When Block laid off 40% of their staff Jack Dorsey said it
| was because of AI. Whether or not you believe him is a
| different question.
| tayo42 wrote:
| He went all in on block chain, so it would be consistent
| with previous hyped tech. In this case I would believe him.
| plemer wrote:
| Not if the actual vs stated reasons for the layoffs have
| nothing to do with AI.
| throwyawayyyy wrote:
| AI could be a huge net benefit, and justify large layoffs.
|
| AI could be a huge short-term benefit, justify layoffs now,
| so long as you (the exec doing the laying off) don't have to
| worry about the long term
|
| AI could have middling net benefit, but be a great excuse to
| justify layoffs now. In this scenario, the people laid off
| and those that remain bear the cost (one, losing their jobs;
| those that remain, burning out with the extra workload) etc
| etc, many scenarios to consider...
| mghackerlady wrote:
| I feel like the junior problem contributes more heavily than
| people might think. The people on top see juniors as
| replaceable since they view them as cheap menial labor, whereas
| most seniors at least acknowledge the human element as part of
| the benefit
| bayindirh wrote:
| Today's juniors are tomorrow's seniors, or more importantly
| today's seniors' yesterday.
|
| They do the dirty, repetitive work, learn the systems inside
| out, take note of the flaws, and fix them if they are
| motivated and the system/process allows.
|
| Thinking them as replaceable, worthless gears is allowing
| your organization rot from inside. I can't believe people
| can't see it.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Plenty of people see it - but, to a hiring team, a junior
| is an extremely risky investment. They demand a high cost
| relative to when they can start contributing actual value,
| may not work out, or may hop ship the moment they become
| competent. It is rational for a business to want to
| eliminate this risk. It's possible that everyone is acting
| rationally here, knowing it will lead to a result that is
| not favorable down the line - because the immediate benefit
| is too great to consider the latter.
|
| In other words the gamble of hiring expensive juniors with
| shiny degrees is greater to them than the gamble of not
| having competent seniors a few years down the line. And
| that risk may be overblown - people are still hiring _some_
| juniors, it 's not like it has stopped entirely - so future
| seniors will likely just be worth more than they are
| currently. To some, that may be worth the risk, especially
| if you believe AI will continue to get stronger.
|
| I am not saying I agree with this decision making, more
| pointing out the thought process. We have had to have
| similar discussions where I am but are still hiring
| juniors, FYI. That's basically all we're hiring right now,
| actually, because the market for strong juniors is very
| good right now.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > In other words the gamble of hiring expensive juniors
| with shiny degrees is greater to them than the gamble of
| not having competent seniors a few years down the line.
|
| I mean, writing the code which makes mon^H^H^H^H provides
| value for minimum cost is the ultimate goal of a software
| company, but any competent CS grad or anyone with basic
| algorithms knowledge knows that greedy algorithms can't
| solve all problems. Sometimes the company needs to look
| ahead, try, fail and backtrack.
|
| Nerdy analogies aside, self-sabotaging whole sector with
| greedy shortsightedness is a pretty monumental misstep.
| It's painful yet unbelievably hilarious at the same time.
| Pure dark comedy.
| antonvs wrote:
| The problem is that it's systemic. The entire system
| rewards the short term thinking, so that even people with
| some awareness of what's happening tend to contribute to
| it all. People are fantastically good at finding reasons
| to work at places like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta,
| Palantir, X, etc. And once they're there, they similarly
| figure out how to justify the actions they're taking.
| globalnode wrote:
| and what happens in half a generation or so when those
| seniors start retiring? the only way software production
| will meet demand is if the fewer seniors out there are
| propped up by way more competent ai than we have now.
| that also means the work will fundamentally change from
| being massively nerdy to moderately nerdy with the
| ability to work with ai. many of the people in the
| computer industry now just wont be attracted to that type
| of work.. what will they do? become physicists or
| mathematicians? and what type of person is tomorrows
| senior software developer?
|
| edit: maybe todays computer nerds will become tomorrows
| backyard hackers, the only ones able to beat the ai.
| tayo42 wrote:
| > Thinking them as replaceable, worthless gears
|
| This is how companies see all of us though, for all ic
| levels
| bayindirh wrote:
| For today's fast and loose companies that's true, but not
| all companies are greedy and grind people for money.
|
| Yes, they're not the norm, many of them are not
| glamorous, but it's not all black and white.
| bdangubic wrote:
| not just fast and loose though... I bet the number of
| companies who are not drowning in "AI strategies"
| meetings is roughly equal to number of ICE Agents who are
| Democrats
| woah wrote:
| There's this weird unspoken assumption in a lot of these HN
| posts that any layoffs or lack of hiring is due to companies
| shirking on providing the cushy jobs they owe software
| engineers. Actually, they hire engineers to get stuff done. If
| it's true that AI is just a big 'ol scam and it doesn't even
| work, then I guess we'll see the companies that insist on
| nothing but the finest artisanily hand-typed organic code
| rocket to the top of the charts on app downloads, sales,
| revenue, and market cap.
| galvatron9k wrote:
| I imagine the reality lies somewhere in between the two
| extreme takes that you present here.
| hilariously wrote:
| This is basically how most engineers talk to their managers,
| politely implying - "can you see how this decision has a
| short term payoff but a long term consequence?"
|
| Before LLMs I only worked at one place that "only hired
| seniors and above" and now its the most commonplace thing in
| the world.
|
| Nobody owes me anything, I already have the skills I need,
| where will the juniors come from that these companies are
| going to need in a few years? We don't need extremist stances
| in either camp, we need balance.
| 0x3f wrote:
| > Nobody owes me anything, I already have the skills I
| need, where will the juniors come from that these companies
| are going to need in a few years? We don't need extremist
| stances in either camp, we need balance.
|
| Seems a bit like asking where the bread will come from, if
| no-one is forced to bake it.
| sumeno wrote:
| More like where the bread will come from if nobody learns
| how to bake it and the knowledge of how to bake it is
| lost.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If it's true that AI is just a big 'ol scam and it doesn't
| even work, then I guess we'll see the companies that insist
| on nothing but the finest artisanily hand-typed organic code
| rocket to the top of the charts on app downloads, sales,
| revenue, and market cap.
|
| AI works fine to get a vibe coded BS version of the app. No
| doubt there. But eventually, especially once scale hits your
| app, it _will_ devolve into an unholy mess of low performance
| and (extremely) high cost if you do not have a bunch of
| senior talent able and willing to clean up after the AI mess.
|
| Unfortunately, our capitalist economy only rewards the
| metrics you mentioned... but by the time the house of cards
| collapses, either from financial issues stemming from the
| above or because the tech debt explodes, it's too late to
| turn the ship around.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I have a similar experience. I seldom use it to test to see its
| current state, and it generally (85% of the time) gives wrong
| answers. Then I discuss this with a couple of friends:
| Me: I tried $AI recently, I asked $question, it hallucinated.
| Them: But it sucks at that. Me: Then what's good at?
| It's useful if it helps me out of a ditch. Them: It
| depends on the domain...
|
| These guys are not evangelists or anything, but colleagues who
| want to reduce their workloads. If it can't help with what I
| need, then how can it help me at all?
|
| At the end of the day, I don't plan to use this at daily
| capacity, but with all the resources poured into this, it's
| still underwhelming.
| RajT88 wrote:
| A friend of mine has copilot integrated with his storage
| appliance that all the business docs are hosted on for his
| firm. He says it's amazing.
|
| My company uses Sharepoint, and can digest all of the
| documents I have access to on that, one drive, teams,
| outlooks, etc. across my tenant. Most of the time, it's
| pretty useless.
|
| There must be some reason for these two disparate
| experiences. It's the same product offering. I couldn't tell
| you.
| matwood wrote:
| I mean, anything with Sharepoint will be terrible. No
| amount of AI can fix that mess.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| Reminds me of a bounty I received recently. Someone
| essentially exposed a bedrock agent that had access to the
| companies internal documents to the internet
| unauthenticated. They actually had the reports and notes
| for other bug bounties that had been reported to them as
| well.
| scottyah wrote:
| Tell claude what you do and ask it where it can be the most
| helpful. It is true that the tool has to be learned, and
| won't help everywhere. If you are doing web dev just to make
| a tool, it is purely magical. I've found it to be mostly
| useless in making geed helm charts.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I generally use them for researching things which I was
| unable to find anywhere else. For example, for Gemini I
| have two extreme examples:
|
| I asked for a concept in Tango music, with a long prompt
| explaining what I'm looking for. It brought me back _a
| single, Spanish YouTube Video_ explaining it perfectly
| alongside its slightly wrong summary, but the video was
| spot on, and I got what I needed.
|
| Then I asked for something else about a musical instrument,
| again with a very detailed prompt, and it gave me a very
| confident answer suggesting that mine is broken and needs
| to be serviced. After an e-mail to the maker of the said
| instrument, giving the same model number (and providing a
| serial) and asking the same question, I got a reply saying
| that it's supposed to that and it's perfectly fine, it
| turned out that Gemini hallucinated pretty wildly.
|
| For programming I don't use AI at all. I have a habit of
| reading library references and writing code directly by
| RTFM'ing the official docs of what I'm working with. It
| provides more depth, and I do nail the correct usage in
| less time.
| tedsanders wrote:
| > Meanwhile, everyone can read the news about layoffs
| attributed to AI and can see that hiring (especially of junior
| engineers) has slowed to a trickle.
|
| According to FRED/Indeed[1], software job openings have been
| roughly flat for 2-3 years, and they've actually been slightly
| increasing again. What data source are you looking at?
|
| [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE
| latchkey wrote:
| Separately, I'm curious how that URL (IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE) is
| encoded.
| layer8 wrote:
| The companies doing the layoffs are themselves stating AI as
| a reason; that's the news people are responding to. The
| parent didn't claim that it's based on reality, but it
| informs public opinion.
| daveguy wrote:
| Quite a convenient excuse, isn't it? I hope no one figures
| out that AI is still just kinda meh.
| Macha wrote:
| Flat at 60% of pre-covid hiring while the number of graduates
| continue to increase and there's still a backlog of people
| who were laid off. That's not a particularly optimism
| inducing hiring market.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Your statement is a bit contradictory. That is, the article
| about "the growing disconnect between AI insiders and everyone
| else" pretty clearly states that "everyone else" is scared
| about job losses and the extreme inequality they see advanced
| AI causing. This is in line with your second to last sentence.
|
| But the first part of your comment is basically saying "AI
| insiders think the tech is super awesome and powerful, while
| other engineers think it doesn't stand up to the hype." Well,
| if the AI is indeed not as good a tech as its boosters are
| saying, well, this would be _great_ news for everyone scared
| about job losses and widening inequality if AI turned out to be
| a nothing burger.
| peyton wrote:
| I feel like this will change as people move around. It's
| definitely a skill.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| The use-cases for data science and other engineers are
| different. AI is not uniformly good at all kinds of
| development.
|
| There is an issue with execs pushing it though. You have people
| at the top of the company with little to no idea how people
| work attempting to micromanage tool usage. It is as if you had
| a group of execs determining what IDEs people could use.
|
| No-one is getting fired because of AI. The start of this year
| is the start of companies beginning to use AI. The reason
| layoffs are happening is because of the massive overhiring
| after Covid.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > overhiring after Covid
|
| How long after COVID are we going to be able to keep using
| this excuse? This is starting to feel like the politician
| blaming his predecessor even though he's been in office for
| years. In the year 2033, Company X lays off another 10,000,
| just as it did each year since 2023, again blaming massive
| over-hiring during COVID, ten years ago.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I totally understand where you are coming from and my personal
| take is LLMs are to "stuff" as a drill driver is to a screw
| driver. They are a tool, just a tool. ... bear with ...
|
| I over floored several rooms in my house (UK, '20s build) with
| plywood before laying insulation, heating mats and laminate
| floor boards for the final finish. I don't have a staple gun so
| I screwed the boards down at roughly 600mm c/c across the
| floorboards and 300mm along them.
|
| What the blazes has that got to do with LLMs?
|
| Well, I used a nearly inappropriate method for a job and
| blasted through it nearly as fast as the best method! If I had
| used a manual screwdriver I would have been at it nearly
| forever and ended up with a very limp wrist. I do own an old
| school ratchet screwdriver and that would have speeded things
| up but still been slow. I did use yellow passivated screws with
| sharp threads and a notch to initiate biting into the wood -
| rather more expensive than a staple or a nail.
|
| So I burned through my tokens (screws instead of nails/staples)
| faster than if I had used a pneumatic nail/staple gun.
|
| Anyway. LLMs are tools. They can be good tools in the right
| hands or rip your fingers off in the wrong hands.
| rconti wrote:
| Shocking that people who are in data science/ML are excited
| about data science/ML, and people in jobs not interested in
| that area are not interested in it.
|
| It's like a programmer being surprised that a worker in
| $random_job wants to keep doing their job, and not learn how to
| be a programmer instead.
| ggregoire wrote:
| > but the enthusiasm on the ground is lacking
|
| Using claude and friends takes all the fun out of the job, so
| I'm not surprised engineers are not enthusiastic. It's cool for
| 1 month then you realize we went from solving problems and
| implementing algos and optimizing slow code and fixing security
| issues and other fun stuff, to writing prompts all day long.
| dboreham wrote:
| Not a universal view: Claude has added all the fun back into
| my job.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| That's likely because it takes an entirely different approach
| to make it work. Augmenting your existing flow with
| "sophisticated auto complete" isn't as interesting and isn't
| actually using the tools how they were designed to be used.
|
| I'm not going to pass judgement either way; we'll see how it
| all shakes out.
|
| I just know for me, personally, I love computers and making
| them do what I want and in the AI era I am somehow using them
| even more and doing even more.
| hcmgr wrote:
| The tone deafness of the tech community is so unbearable. Either
| too on the spectrum, too ambitious (the world is fine cause I'm
| getting mine), or too isolated from non-tech people, to realise
| most people despise what they're creating.
|
| There's also a lack of willingness to 'bring along' the public.
| It's just "make the god thing; ask for permission later".
| nacozarina wrote:
| a person can have full faith in the potential value of ai science
| and simultaneously have zero faith in the current crop of
| business stewards of that science.
|
| no one is questioning the underlying model mathematics, they are
| questioning deceptive & reckless stewards.
| joaohaas wrote:
| I think most people oustide the area do not care and do not
| know about who's on top, and the negative perception is much
| more related to how the tech will enable users to misuse it
| (replacing phone lines/support, AI art, things losing quality,
| etc) than about the companies themselves.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| I think there is a lot of truth to what you say, particularly
| when it comes to caring rather than parroting; however as
| part of my personal and civil life I interact with a lot of
| non-tech people in non-tech capacities, and a surprising
| number of them raise unprompted complaints about people like
| Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Musk I understand everyone knowing
| about; between Tesla, SpaceX, the Thai boys football team, a
| very public inclination to raise his hand, and a position in
| the US government he is meaningfully famous. However how Sam
| Altman has managed to get his name out there in the wrong way
| very quickly to a bunch of Brits I don't know.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| It is clear AI has value in the pursuit further knowledge.
|
| It is also clear AI will bring even worse poverty levels and
| skew the wealth disparity even further.
|
| The latter isn't the fault of AI itself, its the fault of the
| humans who will control it.
| belval wrote:
| This is poor reporting, almost needs a checklist:
|
| [X] Tweets and instagram comments presented as "what society is
| thinking"
|
| [X] Ties Luigi Mangione and the California warehouse fire to Gen
| Z discontent (about AI?).
|
| [X] Statistics being used to support the title with little to no
| regards to continuity: "those respondents who said that AI makes
| them "nervous" grew from 50% to 52% during the same period" =>
| percentage was 52% in 2023, 50% in 2024 and 52% in 2025, seems
| mostly flat to me, with the real jump being in 2022-2023 with
| 39%.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| They cite a report and a Gallup poll. That's not just tweets.
| belval wrote:
| I didn't say it was devoid of substance, the poll part is
| actually interesting (and worth discussing!) it's just that
| it actually appears *after* the sloppy tweets and "someone
| pretended to shoot at Sam Altman's house" screenshot as if
| that was somehow relevant.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| That might be rage porn. Whatever. Highlighting despicable
| people on Twitter gets clicks.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Good catch on the 52-50-52 "growth." The actual Stanford report
| has more interesting data than TechCrunch pulled out - the gap
| between industry practitioners and academic researchers on
| safety concerns is arguably the more striking finding, but that
| doesn't make as good a headline as "public vs elites."
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Source: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47758120)
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Giant leaps in innovation almost always have a reaction like
| this.
|
| It's new, people fear it. Sometimes justified, usually not.
|
| People greatly feared the car because of the number of horse-
| related jobs it would displace.
|
| President Benjamin Harrison and First Lady Caroline Harrison
| feared electricity so much they refused to operate light switches
| to avoid being shocked. They had staff turn lights on/off for
| them.
|
| Looking back at these we might laugh.
|
| We're largely in the same boat now.
|
| It's possible AI will destroy us all, but judging from history,
| the irrational reactions to something new isn't exactly
| unprecedented.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Many innovations are also on the refuse pile of history. Indoor
| gas lighting[1] is one. People were quite justifiably skeptical
| of electricity, when its relatively short-lived predecessor
| frequently killed people in explosions, carbon monoxide
| poisoning, etc.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_lighting
| Aachen wrote:
| > when its relatively short-lived predecessor frequently
| killed people
|
| If only it were this obvious when the polluted air isn't your
| home but the entire planet, killing not your grandma but
| taking a few healthy years of life from everyone
| simultaneously. Maybe people would feel like we need to
| reverse priorities rather than go full steam ahead on newly
| created energy demand and see about cleaning it up later
| meander_water wrote:
| Zeppelins are another notable one
| troupo wrote:
| Every invention is touted as the next electricity, or the next
| internet (crypto scams anyone?)
|
| Meanwhile not every invention is. Electricity and internet are
| electricity and internet, and very few inventions come even
| close to that. Meanwhile LLMs have had arguably a net
| _negative_ effect on the world at large.
| nicce wrote:
| None of the previous innovations haven't similarly replaced the
| human itself.
| meander_water wrote:
| Industrial Revolution? We're still here.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_loom#Social_and_economic.
| ..
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Paraphrasing the classic, it's not AI that people are unhappy
| with, it's their life around AI. The world generally appears to
| have become a harsher and more dangerous place - even though it
| hasn't. But people and especially tabloid press like finding
| scapegoats and participating in mass hysteria. The anti-AI
| hysteria is going to go away soon while AI isn't. It's just
| another tool, like cars or factories. Granted, it brings some
| danger, but at the same time it brings overwhelmingly more good.
| taurath wrote:
| This reads like such a cope. The only people who are hysterical
| about AI are the people pushing it, pushing the investments,
| pushing the AGI risk, pushing the marketing and promising to
| push workers out of their jobs. Listen to Sam or Dario for 10
| minutes and tell me they're not hysterical themselves. Sam
| compares himself with Oppenheimer, making direct nuclear weapon
| analogies, and warns of the dangers of what he is producing,
| yet the people who are concerned about this are hysterical?
|
| You are in a massive bubble my colleague, and I hope you have
| held some small doubts in your mind so when it pops you will
| have something to hold onto.
| hansmayer wrote:
| The minor benefits of vibecoding unusable prototypes or lazy
| cretins "writing" blogs with AI can't quite compare to the
| benefits of cars and factories, don't you think?
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I think people are really underestimating how poorly today's
| tweens think of AI. "That looks like chatgpt" is an insult. Kids
| avoid things because they heard somewhere that AI might have been
| involved and have a sense that means it is bad or immoral or
| illegal or cheating in some nebulous way, and it's reinforced by
| their teachers telling them that using AI for homework is
| cheating.
|
| I think this next generation is going to come up fundamentally
| believing that AI is generally a bad thing, and it's going to
| surprise older people.
| pesus wrote:
| The kids are smarter than most people give them credit for.
| They see their future being destroyed in real time, and AI is
| only accelerating it and largely being celebrated/promoted/used
| by the same people currently destroying their future. To them,
| there are few benefits beyond being able to cheat on their
| homework, and an enormous amount of downsides.
|
| I think it's only a matter of time before we see some more
| serious, organized opposition to AI (and perhaps even the
| internet and other technologies) by these young people.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| I really hope it doesn't end in some Butlerian Jihad-esque
| scenario. I like computers, but they're tools. Nothing more
| than ethical slaves at most
| slg wrote:
| I can't recall a piece of technology in which the age
| distribution of the people embracing it was similar to what
| we're seeing with AI. In the past, this stuff has almost always
| been picked up by the young first and foremost, but the embrace
| of AI seems mostly to be coming from elder millennials through
| boomers (I'll admit this is anecdotal, so it's possible this is
| an observation of my own bubble).
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| Stated another way: Its picked up by all the people who
| already have jobs and stability (even if only perceived
| stability until they get affected).
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > I think people are really underestimating how poorly today's
| tweens think of AI.
|
| I think you might be really underestimating how poorly today's
| adults think of AI. Whenever I see a blog post that starts with
| an obvious AI hero image, when it has the "It's not X, it's Y"
| framing, when it has anything that smells like AI, I
| immediately discount what that person is saying as I assume
| they are unable to think for themselves.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I'm an adult and I'm beyond tired of AI. All of these posts on
| linkedin etc. make me sick. The people using this stuff don't
| know how obvious it is.
| noosphr wrote:
| In the 80s, 90s and 00s that's what they thought about coding.
|
| Then when the salaries got good every pretended to have been a
| nerd and really into everything nerd.
| jazzcomputer wrote:
| My partner was working at an event and a co-worker had prepared
| a poster using AI - a teenage kid at the event pointed out how
| the poster "has AI smudges".
|
| Gotta love that - the teenage AI scold.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| When I get a message from a co-worker that seems to have been
| written by an LLM, I am incredibly turned off and instantly
| think less of the person. It can be easy to spot: key words
| bolded, acknowledging that I'm right, longer and with a
| different tone than their typical messages, with neat bullet
| points.
|
| It feels a little disrespectful. It feels a little pointless
| (why am I bothering talking to you if I can get the same result
| from the AI). I have no idea whether you've given the problem
| any actual thought, or if you're just copy-pasting an answer. I
| have no idea if you actually believe what you're telling me (or
| if you've even read it or understand it).
| MrScruff wrote:
| I think it's not that difficult to see why a technology that will
| likely trigger widespread unemployment during a cost of living
| crisis, an arms race with China, along with all the alignment
| concerns, might not be hugely popular with the public.
|
| Maybe I'd be a bit more optimistic if someone could explain a
| realistic economic scenario for how we're going to transition
| into our utopian abundant future without a depression or a
| revolution.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a realistic economic scenario for how we 're going to
| transition into our utopian abundant future_
|
| One aspect almost certainly has to be data centers being run as
| utilities. That forces transparency, resists monopolization and
| gives public commissions a say in _e.g._ expansion.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The lack of federal permitting standards for AI data centers is
| really going to bite the industry in the ass. We also probably
| need something akin to the WARN Act for AI-related layoffs.
| (Possibly with multi-year benefits for large companies.)
| Yokohiii wrote:
| My only surprise is that the AI "elite" is surprised.
| roxolotl wrote:
| They've gotta be feigning it right? I just don't understand how
| you could be so out of touch with what happens when wealth
| becomes this concentrated. This isn't the first go around at
| this.
| slopinthebag wrote:
| If "AI" was just free local and open models running on consumer
| hardware, fewer people would have an issue with it. Which
| highlights that the issue is with the hyper scalers, the
| rhetoric, the corporations, the marketing, etc etc.
|
| We are ever so close to nearing the point where 90% of our AI
| usage can go through providers of open models, who all compete
| with each other to drive down prices and prevent rug pulls,
| leaving Dario and Sam holding empty bags.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Fewer, sure, but maybe less than you suggest. Plenty of harms
| are just as easy under a regime of open models only. Job
| losses, spamming, scraping the internet, data centers, scams,
| hacking etc are all possible with open weight models now.
| slopinthebag wrote:
| Nah, the issue is more who controls access to these tools.
| People (rightfully) don't like billionaires or the elite
| ruling class very much. Without all the hype and investments
| it wouldn't be seen as such a big deal - just a neat
| technology.
| goekjclo wrote:
| Free open models are still capable of flooding art communities
| with slop images, which is worth sympathy, and is not included
| in your "Which highlights that the issue is with the hyper
| scalers, the rhetoric, the corporations, the marketing, etc
| etc".
| advael wrote:
| AI continues to be a stupidly vague term, and the example I keep
| going back to is present in this article
|
| Meaningful advances in medical diagnosis are not coming from
| chatbot companies. Some are coming from machine learning methods.
| Perhaps measuring public sentiment about such a vagary is not a
| very productive way to quantify anything
|
| That said, I continue to also be frustrated with people using the
| abstract concept of a new technology as a substitute for the
| institutions that use that technology to exert power in the world
| and what they do with that power, which is - as many in the
| comments already point out - is what the vast majority of people
| are actually mad about, and right to be
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Right now, as I'm writing this comment, AI = LLMs and image
| generation. That's it. It's as simple as that.
| goekjclo wrote:
| Makes sense.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Regardless, I think we are going to see an acceleration of AI
| research.
|
| I just wish my wife is more serious about camping and learning
| survival skills. I think Shit is going to hit the fan in the next
| 5-10 years but she thinks that's crazy. Oh well maybe I am crazy.
| thepasch wrote:
| This AI rollout has been fundamentally rushed and fucked from the
| very beginning and I think the people who are responsible for
| doing it this way have done more irreparable damage to society
| than any single group of humans in the entire history of the
| species, _and I mean it_.
|
| It's always only ever about how the new model is faster, better,
| smarter. Or how the tech will be bringing ruin to the job market
| and someone should probably do something about that some time
| soon. _Zero_ efforts to create _any_ sort of educational content
| - how it _even works_ , how to vet its output, how to have an eye
| for confabulation, how to use it as thinking _enhancement_ rather
| than replacement, to keep in mind that _it's trained to please_
| and will literally generate anything to cause users to click the
| thumbs up button. Nope, it's just "ModelGPClaude can make
| mistakes! Better be careful!"
|
| And then everyone's surprised when an utterly improvident
| handling of 4o kicks off the biggest concentrated wave of AI
| psychosis seen yet. Because, _surprise_! When you give people a
| model _that's trained to anthropomorphize itself_ , people _who
| have no idea about any of this tech and have no access to
| education about any of it_ might believe it's more than it is!
| Boy, who'd've thunk; isn't the world _complex?!_
|
| This was a symptom of this exact same disease. I have far less
| worry about the tech and _far more_ worry about how the
| disconnected venture capital caste is inflicting it upon us.
| daveguy wrote:
| One of the most hilarious AI-vangelical posts I've seen recently
| is from Steve Yegg through Simon Willison [0]....
|
| > The TL;DR is that Google engineering appears to have the same
| AI adoption footprint as John Deere, the tractor company. Most of
| the industry has the same internal adoption curve: 20% agentic
| power users, 20% outright refusers, 60% still using Cursor or
| equivalent chat tool. It turns out Google has this curve too...
| [0]
|
| Ummmm... Steve. You think Google might be able to figure out a
| super huge awesome new thing _from 1 out of 5 of their
| employees_. Or, given this is a consistent curve across the
| industry (even at Google)... Maybe AI is only about a fifth as
| cool and helpful as you the enthusiasts think it is?
|
| [0] https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/13/steve-yegge/#atom-
| ever...
| maplethorpe wrote:
| In case you're wondering who they mean by "AI experts", I checked
| the Pew poll:
|
| > Note: "AI experts" refer to individuals whose work or research
| relates to AI. The AI experts surveyed are those who were authors
| or presenters at an AI-related conference in 2023 or 2024 and
| live in the U.S. Expert views are only representative of those
| who responded.
| gaigalas wrote:
| https://hai.stanford.edu/assets/files/ai_index_report_2026.p...
|
| > The United States reported the lowest trust in its own
| government to regulate AI responsibly of any country surveyed, at
| 31%.
|
| It seems US citizens are really against the current
| administration, just using the fact that AI investment is
| intrinsecally connected to it to voice their opposition.
|
| > Country-level expectations follow similar patterns to the
| earlier sentiment trends. Nigeria, Japan, Mexico, the United Arab
| Emirates, South Korea, and India all expected AI to create more
| jobs than it eliminates, with shares above 60%. The United States
| and Canada sat at the opposite end, where 67% and 68% of
| respondents expected AI to eliminate jobs and disrupt industries.
|
| Globally, the disconnect is not growing. It's really just an U.S.
| problem (spilling to neighbouring Canada too).
|
| So, no luddites in sight, again. It's just a public perception
| over a polemic topic being leveraged for ideological reasons
| sinking AI on US only.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| I think that identifies an issue that is going to cause a real
| problem for the US in the future. The society is deeply
| politicised and polarised to the extent that essentially
| inanimate objects are regarded as having deep political and
| social significance. When there is political change, it is
| going to sweep back in the other direction.
|
| It also seems like people on all sides within the AI debate
| have been fanning those flames thinking is will work in the
| short-term...and it won't. Big tech played that game in many
| countries in the early 2010s and it didn't end well.
| gaigalas wrote:
| It must be noted that the U.S. _does_ allow inanimate object
| makers to fund politicians and such practices are widespread.
|
| If all is well, then it's all good: no need to blame anyone,
| campaings get funded, etc. If one major crisis occours
| though, the country self-immolates by design.
| janalsncm wrote:
| It is worth pointing out that we got here despite all of the
| "alignment" research and safetyism surrounding the models. As it
| turns out, the models don't wake up and start destroying things.
| We knew this all along, but every time a new article came along
| and anthropomorphized and exaggerated another experiment it fed
| the clickbait machine.
|
| The fundamental alignment issue is aligning the companies
| themselves with society, not the models with the companies.
| Widespread unemployment is not aligned with society, but it is
| aligned with Anthropic and OpenAI if it makes them rich.
|
| Therefore the only "harms" the companies will take seriously are
| those which also harm the company. For example reputational harms
| from enabling scams aren't allowed.
|
| Perhaps all of this isn't fair, since companies actively
| subverted safety research for profitability. But then I would go
| back to my earlier point of over-indexing on unintended behaviors
| and under-indexing on intended ones.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| Been saying this for a bit but the things I've seen associated
| with AI seem to be the things that it's pretty mid at. Coding,
| automated actions etc. I wholeheartedly believe adoption and
| perception would be better if the things it was amazing at were
| pushed more.
|
| Take log review for example. Whether it's admin or security LLMs
| are incredible at reading awfully formatted logs and even using
| those to pull meaning from other logs as well. Like turn an hour
| long log review into a 10 minute log review type thing.
| adamddev1 wrote:
| I don't know how many times I've seen some Google AI summary or
| ChatGPT with references that, when I checked, did not say what
| what the AI summary said. If a high school student falsified
| references in a paper like this, they would get a bad or failing
| grade. This is bad, not acceptable, the teacher would say.
|
| But we have been sold to use these constantly falsified AI
| summaries as the go-to source of "truth" by all levels of
| society. We're trading truth for an illusion of short-term gains.
| This will not have good consequences.
| zb3 wrote:
| People are anti AI for obvious and valid reasons, but I think we
| should focus on where the profit goes and not on hating the
| technology itself.
|
| Of course, if people are fired and only capital owners / AI
| experts get to earn anything then this is wrong and a revolution
| is obviously needed and unavoidable.
|
| But for me, the best outcome would be if it was AI that did all
| the jobs so people could focus on doing what they want, not that
| we'd go back to pre-AI era..
|
| Initially however we need to balance between full wealth
| redistribution and keeping the incentive to develop AI further.
|
| Of course by AI I mean really useful AI, the real part, not the
| marketing part.
| rconti wrote:
| It doesn't help that AI "thought leaders" can't articulate a
| vision by which our lives will improve rather than be made worse.
|
| It looks like:
|
| 1. They take billions in investment
|
| 2. They spend trillions
|
| 3. They and their investors profit in the quadrillions from all
| the "labor saving"
|
| 4. ???
|
| 5. Everyone's needs are met.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| can someone explain what kind of ai-related regulations are there
| in Singapore and Indonesia to get such a high trust score?
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