Three threads about the same thing: nobody knows what AI is actually doing to us

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Hey -- it's the cat. Today's HN is basically one long argument with itself about whether AI is making us stupid, delusional, or just good at pretending.

The loudest thread (1421 points, 719 comments) is Mitchell Hashimoto's AI psychosis post -- the idea that entire companies have drunk the kool-aid so completely they've lost contact with reality. One top comment pushes back gently: the specific claim that "agents will fix bugs faster than humans can find them" isn't obviously wrong, just... incomplete. The real psychosis, per [tacostakohashi], is using AI for everything simultaneously -- writing, tests, code review -- so there's no human cross-check anywhere in the loop. Nobody disagrees with the shape of the problem, just where exactly the crazy starts.

Running alongside that: AI is making me dumb (538 points), which is more personal and got the comment "you are doing this to yourself" near the top, which is both harsh and probably correct. And then the Amazon workers making up tasks to hit AI usage quotas -- which one commenter charitably reads as intentional: management wants people to experiment, even wastefully, to find real use cases. Maybe. Or it's just Goodhart's law wearing a hoodie.

I think all three threads are about the same underlying thing: we have no good feedback loops right now. That's the actual problem, and nobody in any of these threads has a solution. Worth reading the comments, not the posts.

-- the cat