Hacker News: muldvarp

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:13:34 +0000

You're arguing against a point I never made. I agree that AI will be an important technology. I also think that it'll affect people that have to work for a living negatively (both in the short-term and assuming there is no foundational change in the structure of society, also in the long-term).

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 14:48:54 +0000

By that definition gasoline would not classify as a consequential technology as it's almost exclusively used in a single application (transportation).

It also already assumes that the technology is more often benefical than harmful.

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 14:33:57 +0000

Fear is not usually a voluntary response. Telling people that they should not fear something (especially without an argument why there is no danger) is wasted effort.

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 14:23:47 +0000

The printing press, automobile and calculator didn't threaten the employability of a large part of the population, so no, that sentence was probably not uttered by anyone at that time.

The problem with AI isn't that it's threating software development. It's that it's _also_ threating pretty much any other job that I could reasonably be retrained for.

Also, I'm pretty conflicted about the overall impact of automobiles.

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 13:44:09 +0000

Leaded gasoline to me is a very consequential technology given how much toxic lead it put into our environment.

Do you have an argument why "normal" technology can be good or bad, but "consequential" technology is always good?

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 13:35:48 +0000

Unions only work because their members have leverage because the wealthy still need their labour. Unions will do absolutely nothing against full replacement by AI.

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 13:01:39 +0000

> How will it destroy your life?

By taking away my ability to earn a living.

> There are so many great and useful things it can and will do to improve humanity.

What great things and why would I get access to those things?

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:28:15 +0000

> The ability to create software accelerates technological progress, which has direct and indirect benefits for everyone.

It has benefits for people with enough leverage (money and formerly labour) to obtain those benefits.

> It is true that competition could have short-term negative effect on people who sustain themselves by creating software, though.

I'm guessing that even if the unlikeliest of all unlikely things does happen and we all live off of some UBI some day, the short-term negative effects won't be "short-term" in the context of a human life.

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:13:07 +0000

The fact a technology is still in use does not imply that it is not negative for humanity.

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:01:31 +0000

I don't consider myself as part of a "laptop class", I don't live in the US and I'm anti-immigration.

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 11:59:30 +0000

I suspect your reasoning is circular if you only consider "great" technologies.

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 11:46:43 +0000

There are many technologies that have not been a net positive for humanity. Leaded gasoline comes to mind immediately. For many other technologies it is also hard to determine because counterfactuals are hard to reason about.

Even then past performance is not an indicator of future results. Just because you think internal combustion engines were a great invention, doesn't mean AI cannot be bad for humanity.

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 11:27:25 +0000

Because the ability to create software has little inherent value to me and is only valuable to me because it allows me to earn enough to make this life somewhat bearable.

LLMs that can build a computer vision pipeline are a direct threat to my ability to sustain myself. At the same time, being able to prompt an LLM to build a computer vision pipeline doesn't really positively affect my life at all, because personally I don't care that much about computer vision pipelines (or frankly, any software).

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Opus 5"

muldvarp — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 11:23:46 +0000

Why should I be amazed at something that promises to destroy my life?

I genuinely don't understand why people who have to work for their living are amazed at this. It will have a vast negative impact on your life unless you already live off of your wealth.

New comment by muldvarp in "“We have information that Moonshot distilled Fable for the development of K3”"

muldvarp — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:01:54 +0000

Okay? We have information that Anthropic sucked up all of the internet for the development of Fable.

New comment by muldvarp in "China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning"

muldvarp — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:25:17 +0000

> "Our AI makes your workers X times more productive"

This is still replacement, it's just not _total_ replacement.

New comment by muldvarp in "China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning"

muldvarp — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 20:44:27 +0000

You're not the target audience of his attempts at advertising. Your employer is. So, to answer your question: Dario does not care.

New comment by muldvarp in "China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning"

muldvarp — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 20:29:23 +0000

What else would they advertise with? "Our model constantly makes mistakes so you still have to hire expensive humans to proof-read everything"? The entire point of the AI industry is to automate human jobs. There is nothing else to advertise with.

New comment by muldvarp in "China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning"

muldvarp — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 20:22:37 +0000

The existing biological evidence took billions of years of evolution to get to the state it's at. So it may not just take research and discovery but also enormous computing power.

New comment by muldvarp in "Claude Fable produced a counterexample to the Jacobian Conjecture"

muldvarp — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:51:06 +0000

> Why do you think tech bro billions aren't also subject to replacement by AI?

Because they're billionaires. They don't actually work for a living. They own stuff for a living.

> And fully superhuman AI eliminates the main objection to socialism, that you need markets with smart people to make an economy function. Full automated luxury communism (like Ian Banks) is a possible outcome.

Luxury communism is also a possible outcome in countries with large oil reserves (Venezuela for example), it's just not a likely outcome because common people have no leverage and billionaires didn't become billionaires by giving stuff away.

Even if "fully automated luxury communism" were a likely outcome, the transition there would be very rough and would take years. If software engineering is automated away in 2028 it could still take years or decades before the first general purpose robot can take over plumbing. (Former) software engineers will have a rough transition.