All in all, it's clearly the AI skeptics that have egg on their faces. Sam Altman is very flawed and you could make a strong argument for why that's why he blew an enormous lead to Anthropic. Dario's predictions in general haven't been that far off. The general public is becoming increasingly aware of AI as a big deal (and something about 60% hates). Our jobs, regardless of where on the adoption curve we are, have undeniably changed a lot.
Zitron and a whole lot of people on HN were trying to claim this was a nothingburger or at least no more important than the invention of IDEs up until Dec 2025, and then all of a sudden everyone quietly shifted what the "reasonable" opinion was. If I were those people, I'd spend more time taking a look at what was wrong with my priors than look outward.
Millions of books go in the trash every day. Should all private property come with such an asterisk that it ought to be preserved for whatever unlikely contingency you can imagine? I don't know, AI actually seems like a much more worthwhile pursuit.
In one of the first articles that I saw about this topic they were describing a scenario where a botany manuscript from the 19th century that only had three remaining copies was being digitized and then pulped.
They don't care about the R.L. Stein Goosebumps series or Louis L'Amour pulp fiction. They want the stuff that isn't digitized and they're willing to destroy original artifact to do so with no guarantee that even the digitized text will ever be made publicly available.
> In one of the first articles that I saw about this topic they were describing a scenario where a botany manuscript from the 19th century that only had three remaining copies was being digitized and then pulped.
That was something that someone on Twitter made up and then got quoted in an article. All of the books being scanned have ISBNs, meaning they're from 1970 or later. The books being sold off are rare in the sense that there aren't many copies in circulation, but they aren't priceless artifacts. If they were, they'd be being sold individually at high prices by boutique booksellers rather than being sold by the pallet by wholesalers. It's going to mostly be stuff like "The Best Places to Eat in Milwaukee, 1992 edition" or "The 2006 Guide to the Stock Market" or "Teach Yourself Visual Basic 3.0 in 28 Days".
This seems out of line with what you were saying above. Do you mean you would put money on a position less favorable than 50/50? What do you consider the likelihood such that you think you can announce it to be false today? 99%? I'd happily offer 30 to 1 odds on this today and add a 3x buffer for you up to $1000 of my dollars if you're serious.
I'm confused. In the original comment I pointed out that the article claims AI is a major topic when polls show that isn't the case. I still believe that in 2028 AI will not be a major topic as shown by polls and voting behavior.
I'm not sure how I'd formulate the bet, but maybe it could be "as of election day 2028, AI will not be a top five concern mentioned in the most recent open-ended poll by Gallup polling the American public. This bet will not be decided by a poll in which AI is specifically mentioned in the polling question."
Not clear on where you're confused. The article does not claim this is the state today, it says in 2028- did you misread? In any event I think this is entirely plausible, say >9%, based on trendlines and the fact that I hear about this constantly already- two of the candidates in my primary had a position on this and I'm not exactly in SF. I'm prepared to hand you as much as $1k in the 91% of worlds where this doesn't happen in exchange for 30x as much (eg. 30k) in the 9% of worlds where it does. EV for me is .91 * -1 + .09 * 30 = +1.79. You claim you can say already today that this is false; I assume that means you're >99% certain. EV for you is then .99 * 1 + .01 * -30 = +0.69 (nice). Thus there is a mutually beneficial trade at the >3x your position and <1/3x my position point, and I offer 30:1 odds. I don't care if this is a nominal one of my dollars to thirty of yours, $1k is just my limit.
I don't normally do this, but you brought up your willingness to bet so I figured I'd offer.
I didn't think it was possible you misread- you had like 5 replies calling this out, but I recall them being gray and maybe you have showdead disabled- but don't feel obliged to commit if your real probability is 97% for this.
This term:
>This bet will not be decided by a poll in which AI is specifically mentioned in the polling question.
I cannot honor. In the >9% of worlds where you are wrong, any poll that excludes AI is necessarily heavily biased against me. Better to pick a particular poll.
What do you think of people that say that about climate change? It seems you don't understand fully. This is not the time go get tired, right before this actually starts impacting jobs and people in other ways.
I "pair" with claude-code and still write 30% by hand, with additional review with gpt-5.4, but I definitely write fewer bugs than before. I'd estimate my speedup to be 2x.
The only people underwhelmed by AI in February 2026 are people who have formed an identity around being AI skeptics over the last couple years and are struggling to shed it. I haven't met anyone who has seriously used the new models who isn't a at least a bit awed and disturbed.
That's very true in terms of how capable these chatbots clearly are, but I believe the author was using 'underwhelming' to refer to the societal impact.
So far, life goes on roughly the same as it did five years ago. This can feel 'underwhelming' in contrast to the onslaught of public discussion about, and huge investments in, AI.
Most of us here on HN are programmers, and we all know how radically LLMs have changed our code projects. Even so, the change to our everyday lives (aside from our work or hobby project) is not, just yet, glaringly obvious. This year, it's mainly... every website shoves an AI box on its site that nobody seems to want!
There is also that contrast about it being genuinely useful for work/programming and the fact that, for now, it changes the rest of my life in a negative way - by making PC hardware unavailable, by hearing every day I'll be out of work in 6-24 months, and by having to deal with people taking the information from Chat for granted.
Not true. I'm a really heavy user of AI. And it's improved my productivity dramatically as a developer, but it doesn't work in every situation even in programming. I see it as an indispensible tool, but its not, right now, a tool that will replace me as a programmer or product manager or salesperson, or marketer. or (in my case) an owner and investor.
Will that happen in the future, maybe. but I don't have enough insight into how AI is evolving in the labs to make a judgement on that.
This statment is really annoying and getting boring. There are A LOT of us who have built careers evaluating technology with healthy skepticism, finding where it works and were it doesn't, excited to share & learn - and we've heard "this time it's different" many times. Now because we refuse to jump in without that same nuance and thought, and proclaim "everything's different over night!" we're branded as ludites when we're really trying find a balance.
I don't hear people saying "nothing is going to change", but I do hear questions about the timeline and if the current levels of investment match returns. Branding these people as stuck in some sort of negative identity is bullshit.
in a nutshell: AI - even if transformative and in the future a widely used general-purpose technology - is normal technology. I reject the technological determinism that is being fed to us, especially the idea that AI itself is an agent in defining its own future. I think adoption and the post-adoption spread will be slow & uncertain (relative to the current messaging) regardless of where it ultimately takes us. I think the absolute societal impact is grossly overstated, and the roles of institutions shaping the path underestimated or ignored.
You’re creating a false dichotomy to alienate perceived opponents. Frankly, it’s really annoying and close-minded, and you haven’t contributed anything to the conversation.
What disturbs me is the speed of improvement, moreso then the capability.
Maybe it will plateau in the next 6-24 months, in which case it will “only” be as disruptive as the computer or industrial revolutions, albeit at a faster pace.
Software jobs have been steadily outpacing other white collar jobs for the past year, but it's unlikely you will find one unless you work on your attitude and your ability to communicate respectfully.
This is a great point, because when you ask it (Claude) if it has any questions, it often turns out it has lots of good ones! But it doesn't ask them unless you ask.
You can define "ponder" in multiple ways, but really this is why thinking models exist - they turn over the prompt multiple times and iterate on responses to get to a better end result.
Well I chose the word “ponder” carefully, given the fact that I have a specific goal of contributing to this debate productively. A goal that I decided upon after careful reflection over a few years of reading articles and internet commentary, and how it may affect my career, and the patterns I’ve seen emerge in this industry. And I did that all patiently. You could say my context window was infinite, only defined by when I stop breathing.
That is to say, all of that activity I listed is activity I’m confident generative AI is not capable of, fundamentally.
Like I said in a cousin comment, we can build Frankenstein algorithms and heuristics on top of generative AI but every indication I’ve seen is that that’s not sufficient for intelligence in terms of emergent complexity.
Imagine if we had put the same efforts towards neural networks, or even the abacus. “If I create this feedback loop, and interpret the results in this way, …”
Probably the lack of external stimuli. Generative AI only continues generating when prompted. You can play games with agents and feedback loops but the fundamental unit of generative AI is prompt-based. That doesn’t seem, to me, to be a sufficient model for intelligence that would be capable of “pondering”.
My take is that an artificial model of true intelligence will only be achieved through emergent complexity, not through Frankenstein algorithms and heuristics built on generative AI.
Generative AI does itself have emergent complexity, but I’m bearish that if we would even hook it up to a full human sensory input network it would be anything more than a 21st century reverse mechanical Turk.
Edit: tl;dr Emergent complexity is a necessary but insufficient criteria for intelligence
This has nothing to do with burden of proof, it has to do with journalistic accuracy, and this is obviously a hit piece. HN prides itself on being skeptical and then eats up "skeptic slop."
Zitron and a whole lot of people on HN were trying to claim this was a nothingburger or at least no more important than the invention of IDEs up until Dec 2025, and then all of a sudden everyone quietly shifted what the "reasonable" opinion was. If I were those people, I'd spend more time taking a look at what was wrong with my priors than look outward.