Comment by CM30

I think there are a few reasons for this.

First, a decent percentage of people enjoy programming for the process itself, and not the end result. For them, the idea of having a computer handle everything and playing QA tester every now and again feels like it goes against everything they enjoy about software engineering. If you're the kind of person who dislikes Dropbox because they can do everything themselves, AI is hardly going to rank any better there.

Secondly, a lot of people here do care a lot more about things like performance, technical debt, code quality, etc. AI probably appeals more to those that don't like to think about said things very much, and that's only a percentage of the Hacker News userbase.

Thirdly, a lot of projects discussed here are on the more complex or at least esoteric side. This is where AI tends to fall short, and hence those people may be a lot more skeptical about its usefulness.

There are also a lot of groups here that have... reasons to dislike AI in its current form. Maybe they're open source supporters that dislike how the biggest companies and most up to date models in this space seem to be against everything relating to software freedom (self-hosting, open source, no controls on content or usage, etc). Maybe they're worried their job is at risk, or are struggling to find a new one in this market. Maybe they like building computers or working on hardware and are finding everything's gotten significantly more expensive now that AI companies are using so many resources.

There are a lot of communities and subgroups here who have clear reasons to dislike the current AI boom, and who probably want the bubble to burst sooner rather than later.

Oh, and there are also plenty of people who hate how much of the site seems to revolve around AI now, and wish there were more posts and discussions about anything else.

Does that mean everyone here dislikes AI? No, of course not. Plenty of people here use it, or see it as a useful tool with a lot of potential.

But there are a lot of people here who have clear reasons to dislike it, either because the way it works is antithetical to what they enjoy about programming, or because their situation could get far worse due to its rise in popularity.