10,531 karma · joined May 21, 2017
Sometimes using a LLM can assist these and sometimes it can feel like cheating myself out of a good thing and I'm not entirely sure where the borders are. It could also be related to a sense of ownership or pride in ones work and seeing the value in doing quality work.
"Software engineering at the tipping point" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n41YjR5QfU
Yes, there are a very great many!
The philosopher David Gray says that most modern thinking sees our way of life and liberalism and "progress" as meaning growth and change. It implies it is inevitable, a kind of always changing improvement.
Change that has occurred is for the good and its impossible to go back. I like the ${current_year} meme where someone says "it's 2026 things have changed, sweety". The joke is funny because that's what people actually say and that they say this every year but they don't notice that they say that every year.
So the modern way of life has many people who view people in the past as not real, as figuratively made of wood, who are primitive, who didn't lead complex lives.
David Gray concludes by saying that Liberalism therefore needs to be constantly fought for, that you cannot rest on your laurels and think that humanity is naturally and inexorably progressing.
These scrolls and History as a whole challenges a fundamental psychological investment in modern liberalism.
To think of the world as always improving and evolving for the better directly opposes a kind of empathy about how people 2500 years ago are the same human beings as we are. The scrolls should humble us.
Given this.
> 2. "Real and complex lives" doesn't mean "just the same as ours", mind you.
They are more like ours than we like to imagine. We prefer to think of ourselves as improved.
In these comments there's a common pattern where some users argue that they do not agree that the submission was LLM written and they often focus on specific details to refute it (e.g em-dashes) and some users see the overall pattern clearly that it's totally obvious. For me it's a kind of smell, it's off putting and it's obvious. The article says to "trust your gut". But it's also something that comes with practice and time, it's not some innate thing. People may have better things to do than expend mental energy noticing patterns in a bunch of social media posts. The more I see it, the more I see it.
The take away I get is that it's okay to notice patterns and it's okay to not notice patterns. Remember that other people may be noticing patterns and associations in things that you might miss. Be charitable.
Far more interesting questions are:
1) If you cant see the patterns of LLM writing, does the idea that the thing you liked was written by LLM worry you?
2) If you can see the patterns clearly is the fact that it's LLM written worry you?
Because in our comments there's many who do not care that LLM's are writing content and theres many who do care. But are these correlated with those who can see the LLMs or who are blind to them?
Shops come and go, churches do not move, schools tend not to move much, industry areas is somewhat dynamic, military installations might be static or dynamic, trees grow or are removed.
It's going to be like when we all used cat meme pictures in our slide decks - in the future it's going to be obvious and cringe and a liability now.
It's like postponing a major credibility and trust failure event to yourself by a few years in the future for some feel good attention now.
Some can't and that's fine. I also find it comically easy to detect, but it's a kind of pattern recognition, a skill that takes a bit of investment of time and energy on some internal disposition. It also operates on the unconscious: if it feels off it might well be off. Like map reading, or like listening to jazz, some people just don't can't seem to do it and that's fine. Most people around me can't read code and thats fine.
Also: some others don't care about what they see or how they write and levels of literacy are also lowering, and some others are enthusiastic users of the new technology so have to protect their investment.
My first impression is that floods of articles do not accurately reflect the real world, but just show some facet of it. But if they are both correct and both are to be taken as real, should we expect that students will agree with academia and not use AI in their education? Might we see the return of traditional learning?
(Education is different than our industry. In our industry, most of those using LLMs are forced to by the powers to be. In education, the powers to be do not want the students to use LLMs.)
Therefore one way to weaken these criminals would be to weaken this trust factor. In a way therefore comments like "can we actually believe they will really shred it" goes towards this aim.
I have to wonder what criminal hacking gangs that do not operate on trust would do. Would it be like the replacement of organized crime (mafia) with the arguably wider damaging unorganized violent drug gangs?
Would you say that the same students who are protesting AI have used AI to graduate? Its ok either way.
Edits - condensing the questions:
1) Are these protests reflective of the majority of students?
2) Do the majority of students use LLMs regularly in education?
Given the above questions what change in education and change in personal AI use might we see?
To me it feels like an anti-fur protest by people who themselves are wearing fur coats. Why don't we see news of academics happy that their students have made the u-turn they want?
I thought the outcry against AI was from the universities themselves because the students have all happily embraced it and were using it all the time? But now the outcry seems to be by the students themselves?
Are these different students? Maybe: they seem to be about to leave education instead of using it to pass their exams. They have got their certificates. If they are the same students, maybe it's about their use of AI? Perhaps the reaction is a kind of psychological effect of their use, an effect of shame or guilt? Or maybe its not about their personal use but about a wider adoption by other people and the change in the world around them? They don't see their own use of AI as relevant.
Maybe its about the news stories? They all seem to be hype.
Or perhaps it's a fashionable topic for the latest small protest movement? its news because its new, but its not a widespread movement or is it? Is it more like an anti-car protest by people who are forced to use cars and cant use public transport?
So: Will we see the reduction of use by students on their work, and a kind of happiness by the academics on how their students want to learn properly?
Does using AI increase or lower that failure rate?
Does seeing a project that uses AI fail mean it wasn't going to fail if it didn't use AI?
To try to answer it with my gut: I imagine that we could see more projects failing, but the percentage that fail would be the same. Most projects that use AI will fail because most projects generally will fail, but the time and cost to get a successful project will lower.
The general rule is that the Americans don't fly during the winter but they do tend to downplay and not publicize the times when they do fly.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/mcmurdo-statio...
One way to weaken any group that works on trust would be to make them less trustworthy. That way victims wouldn't be as confident paying the criminals and thereby making the effort by the criminals less attractive.
Poor chap, we will see an increasing number of people we once respected get fooled.
But looking at it another way: this should make us seriously think what the chat interfaces to LLM are doing to many people.
Thinking positively, it could just be newsworthy because he is famous and he so misses the mark. Other older famous people might agree with us but that's not news.
In the future these tells will be more identifiable. We will be easier to point back at text and code written in 2026 and more confidently say "this was written by an LLM". It takes time for patterns to form and takes time for it to be noticeable. "Smoking gun was so early 2026 claude".I find thinking of the future looking at now to be refreshing perspective on our usage.
Chances are that most projects that use vibe coding will fail, and chances are that most projects that succeed will use LLMs
Or is this also true: "I don't change what a LLM writes so long as it doesn't seem like something I would write"
It's just like vibe coding it's the new normal. We don't notice our own unique voices when writing. But as a collective we do notice LLM voices.
Submissions are different than comments in HN rules - don't worry about it.
Somewhat anonymous, short in time, one to one, with the potential to connect afterwards on outside channels. Possibly only one conversation a day allowed, and possibly only available to pre set contacts.