Comment by rob
14 hours ago
Just another AI generated website with 5000 calculators thrown together that looks like every other single one. From a brand new account with a post that looks like it was also written from ChatGPT. Somehow getting enough votes to show up on my homepage.
Things are definitely changing around HN compared to when it first started.
Fair call — it did kind of explode from one calculator to 60+ I’m a real person (long-time lurker, finally posting), but I get why it looks sus. Things are changing fast, and I’m just happy to be part of the messy early wave. Thanks for the honesty.
> Thanks for the honesty.
It's impossible to tell if this is AI or not. Another version of Poe's law. The only thing to do is assume everything is AI, just like you must assume all posts have ulterior (generalluy profit-driven) motives, all posters have a conflict of interest, etc.
Maybe the only thing to do is stop trying to understand posters' motivations, stop reading things charitably, stop responding, just look for things that are interesting (and be sure to check sources).
Reader, keep in mind that OP being "a real person" has nothing to do with whether their content is appropriate for HN.
Every spammer and scammer, even a bot, is ultimately controlled by a real person in some sense. That doesn't mean we want their content here.
people are hurt because something which defined them as a person can now be done by a machine; don't let them dissuade you
A fair amount of AI hype traffic is likely to be astroturfed and automated. Just serving AI investors.
Anyone who disagrees with the above are just hurt that their manual hyping has been replaced with machines.
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People are hurt when people turn person-to-person communication into person-to-machine communication. It's dismissive of their use of genuine wall-clock time trying to engage with you.
I would add to this: skills mean nothing if you don’t use them.
OP made a site with a bunch of calculators. Their critics didn’t make that!
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So true. I sometimes wonder how many ai bots there really are. I often see the telltale signs but often miss.
What are you implying?. He would have had to hire a good developer at least for a full month salary to build something like this.
And if you are thinking enterprise, it would take 2-3 developers, 2 analysts, 2 testers, 1 lead and 1 manager 2-3 months to push something like this. (Otherwise why would lead banks spent billions and billions for IT development every year? What tangible difference you see in their website/services?)
5000 calculators may look excessive, but in this case it magnifies the AI capabilities in the future - both in terms of quality and quantity.
> (Otherwise why would lead banks spent billions and billions for IT development every year? What tangible difference you see in their website/services?)
Well, I don't think all those people are spending their time making simple calculators.
Twitter/X incentivizes you to get engagements because with a blue checkmark you get paid for it, so people shill aggressively, post idiotic comments on purpose trying to ragebait you. It's like LinkedIn in for entrepreneurs. Reddit or it's power hungry moderators (shadow)bans people often. The amount of popular websites that people can shill their trash is dwindling, so it gets worse here as a result I assume too.