Interesting to see an opinion piece on the register pointing out 3 camps, none of which apply to most people I know who work in software development.
Mainly that ai is a useful tool. Sometimes it is magical but has limits and is often wrong. It can be a great illustrator of sunk cost fallacy when working on very complex problems. But light years faster and more useful than googling for solutions when faced with a difficult debugging challenge. On net I would much prefer to have ai around than not.
I think it is a miss that software development is completely omitted in this article, esp a tech or tech adjacent publication that's been around for forever.
The MIT report that found 90% of workers are regularly using LLMs at work, many of them even multiple times daily[1], somehow has become the spark of the recent explosion of "AI has failed" articles. Which is ironic, because it shows that the people we trust to write with integrity are either only reading the headlines or purposely misleading with their articles.
If that's the case, LLMs cannot replace these primary source summarizing clowns fast enough.
I've used AI to get meaningful results(working code) out of it.
The service provider got little useful out of it because I'm fine using their free versions for it.
Also. AI is not as good as it's going to get. It going to get much much better than it is but it's going to follow a mostly mundane trajectory getting there.
According to the AI hype merchants we should see titanic super-AGI slug it out in the sky, by year 2023. That clearly did not happen.
What we will get is hype for current model+1 and disappointment when it's released for the coming decades.
Very dumbed-down take on the subject. What's "AI"? ChatGPT and Google AlphaFold are both AI.
I very much doubt speech and voice recognition and synthesis, as well as visual object recognition, are "as good as they will get" (however scary some of the practical applications might look like). Ditto specialized neural networks like aforementioned AlphaFold.
General-purpose chatbots trained on randomly selected data from stolen books and social media (and increasingly on its own slop)? Very likely.
Architectures allowing the said chatbots trigger actions online or (worse yet) IRL? Almost definitely.
I see two overlapping audiences here on HN, the hackers (now called makers) and the VC profit driven crowd. The popping of the bubble is going to hit those two camps differently.
The hackers will be glad to see the price of AI compute and hardware drop like a rock once everyone in the VC world realizes they've overbuilt, and a sell-off happens. We'll be using those resources to build the next things almost immediately. In fact, I'd be surprised if planning for that hadn't already started.
The VC type will ... I have no idea, actually.. I'm not a profit driven person. But experience shows they'll be around to do it all again for the next bubble in a decade or so.
As for AI itself, it will continue to get better and deliver value for those who know how to use it. For me, ChatGPT5 is an amazing improvement for generating code.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 36.2 ms ] threadIf AI can't do this job, it probably can't do yours either.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722gne7qngo
Bottom line: AI has very poor grasp of reality --- because (surprise, surprise) it has zero real world experience.
Mainly that ai is a useful tool. Sometimes it is magical but has limits and is often wrong. It can be a great illustrator of sunk cost fallacy when working on very complex problems. But light years faster and more useful than googling for solutions when faced with a difficult debugging challenge. On net I would much prefer to have ai around than not.
I think it is a miss that software development is completely omitted in this article, esp a tech or tech adjacent publication that's been around for forever.
AI Companies are still overhyped.
Say farewell to the AI bubble, and get ready for the crash
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44964548
Tech, chip stock sell-off continues as AI bubble fears mount
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44965187
Is the A.I. Sell-Off the Start of Something Bigger?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44963715
AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44940944
95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44974104
If that's the case, LLMs cannot replace these primary source summarizing clowns fast enough.
[1]https://nanda.media.mit.edu/ai_report_2025.pdf
The service provider got little useful out of it because I'm fine using their free versions for it.
Also. AI is not as good as it's going to get. It going to get much much better than it is but it's going to follow a mostly mundane trajectory getting there.
According to the AI hype merchants we should see titanic super-AGI slug it out in the sky, by year 2023. That clearly did not happen.
What we will get is hype for current model+1 and disappointment when it's released for the coming decades.
I very much doubt speech and voice recognition and synthesis, as well as visual object recognition, are "as good as they will get" (however scary some of the practical applications might look like). Ditto specialized neural networks like aforementioned AlphaFold.
General-purpose chatbots trained on randomly selected data from stolen books and social media (and increasingly on its own slop)? Very likely.
Architectures allowing the said chatbots trigger actions online or (worse yet) IRL? Almost definitely.
is just silly. It'll get way better. Not sure about the timing but it'll happen.
The hackers will be glad to see the price of AI compute and hardware drop like a rock once everyone in the VC world realizes they've overbuilt, and a sell-off happens. We'll be using those resources to build the next things almost immediately. In fact, I'd be surprised if planning for that hadn't already started.
The VC type will ... I have no idea, actually.. I'm not a profit driven person. But experience shows they'll be around to do it all again for the next bubble in a decade or so.
As for AI itself, it will continue to get better and deliver value for those who know how to use it. For me, ChatGPT5 is an amazing improvement for generating code.