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oulipo2yesterday at 12:07 PM3 repliesview on HN

okay, but again: if you say in your blog that those are "facts", then... show us the facts?

You can't just hand-wavily say "a bigger percentage of programmers is using AI with success every day" and not give a link to a study that shows it's true

as a matter of fact, we know that a lot of companies have fired people by pretending that they are no longer needed in the age of AI... only to re-hire offshored people for much cheaper

for now, there hasn't been a documented sudden increase in velocity / robustness for code, a few anecdotical cases sure

I use it myself, and I admit it saves some time to develop some basic stuff and get a few ideas, but so far nothing revolutionary. So let's take it at face value:

- a tech which helps slightly with some tasks (basically "in-painting code" once you defined the "border constraints" sufficiently well)

- a tech which might cause massive disruption of people's livelihoods (and safety) if used incorrectly, which might FAR OUTWEIGH the small benefits and be a good enough reason for people to fight against AI

- a tech which emits CO2, increases inequalities, depends on quasi slave-work of annotators in third-world countries, etc

so you can talk all day long about not dismissing AI, but you should take it also with everything that comes with it


Replies

antirezyesterday at 1:22 PM

1. If you can't convince yourself, after downloading Claude Code or Codex and playing with them for 1 week, that programming is completely revolutionized, there is nothing I can do: you have it at your fingertips and you search for facts I should communicate for you.

2. The US alone air conditioning usage is around 4 times the energy / CO2 usage of all the world data centers (not just AI) combined together. AI is 10% of the data centers usage, so just AC is 40 times that.

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simonwyesterday at 1:26 PM

How does widespread access to AI tools increase inequalities?

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senordevnycyesterday at 7:14 PM

Just dismiss what he says and move on, he's already made it clear he's not trying to convince you.