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Posted by mips_avatar 14 hours ago

Everyone in Seattle hates AI(jonready.com)
791 points | 795 commentspage 13
mensetmanusman 13 hours ago|
Finance and HR are supposed to demoralize parts of organizations asking for too many resources.
SecretDreams 14 hours ago||
> My former coworker—the composite of three people for anonymity—now believes she's both unqualified for AI work and *that AI isn't worth doing anyway*. *She's wrong on both counts*, but the culture made sure she'd land there.

I'm not sure they're as wrong as these statements imply?

Do we think there's more or less crap out now with the advent and pervasiveness of AI? Not just from random CEOs pushing things top down, but even from ICs doing their own gig?

chankstein38 13 hours ago|
Oh but we're all supposed to swoon over the author's ability to make ANOTHER AI powered mapping solution! Probably vibecoded and bloated too. Just what we need, obviously all the haters are wrong! /s
empressplay 13 hours ago||
Honestly if it's using a swiss-army-knife framework it's already bloated.
pdovj 11 hours ago||
Is it that everyone in Seattle hates AI, or that Seattle is the only place you know people well enough they’ll tell you the truth? The bar for that is much lower in Seattle too, compared to say, Japan. And the author seems tone deaf enough to not know the difference.
arjie 13 hours ago||
I wonder if I'm the guy in the bubble or if all these people are in the bubble. Everyone I know is really enjoying using these tools. I wrote a comment yesterday about how much my life has improved https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46131280

But also, it's not just my own. My wife's a graphic designer. She uses AI all the time.

Honestly, this has been revolutionary for me for getting things done.

empressplay 13 hours ago|
I recently returned to the world of education and it's _everywhere_. I feel for those people who hate LLMs because they've already lost the war.
runarberg 12 hours ago||
I live in Seattle (well a 20 min ferry from Seattle) and I too hate AI. In fact I have a Kanji learning app which I am trying to push on to people, and I brand it as AI free. No AI was used to develop it, no AI used to write content, no AI is there to “help you learn”.

When I see apps like Wanderfugl, I get the same sense of disgust as OPs ex coworker. I don‘t want to try this app, I don’t want to see it, just get it away from me.

nextworddev 10 hours ago||
I’m pretty sure the other 80% of non-tech Seattlites would love AI to take away the techies
satisfice 9 hours ago||
Negative? You mean realistic. You mean “refuse to tell lies.”

Just stop lying about AI. Thank you.

The author’s AI app looks like something that drains all the fun and challenge out of travel planning.

inshard 13 hours ago||
Seattle hits a doom (helped by the gloom) loop every winter. This too shall pass.
yieldcrv 13 hours ago||
Unlike Seattle, in Los Angeles there are few software engineers but I would not utter AI at all here

Its an infinite moving goalpost of hate, if its an actor, "creative", writer, AI is a monolithic doom, next its theoretical public policy or the lack thereof, and if they have nothing that affects them about it then it's about the energy use and environment

nobody is going to hear about what your AI does, so don't mention anything about AI unless you're trying to earn or raise money. Its a double life

BGyss 12 hours ago|
I was just about to post that this entire story could have been completely transposed to almost every conversation I've had in Los Angeles over the past year and a half. Looks like you beat me to it!
yieldcrv 12 hours ago||
the only difference is that I don't have the conversation ha, I don't tell people about anything I do that's remotely close to that, rarely even mention anything in tech. I listen to enough other conversations to catch on to how it goes, very easy to get roped into an AI doomer conversation that's hard to get out of
piljoong 13 hours ago|
This isn’t really a common-folk-vs-tech-bros story. It’s about one specific part of Seattle’s tech culture reacting to AI hype. People outside that circle often have very different incentives.
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