Why do AI-related comments here often have an anti-AI tone?

Because we've seen the consequences of order-of-magnitude mismatches between {executive understanding of technical capabilities} and {actual technical limitations}.

Related by same user "Ask HN: Why are comments here overwhelmingly critical?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40430263

Because we're in the hype stage of the cycle. It is there, but still flawed, yet business people keep throwing money at it. Also, it can create _some_ content but it's a race to the bottom situation. Certainly not good enough to fire all editors of a publication and "substitute" them with AI.

TL;DR the problem is not in the technology but those who own/use it.

I'll float a few reasons.

The indolent and ignorant who dreamed they'd create an NFT and become a multimillionaire overnight rapidly pivoted to AI when ChatGPT came out and that left a bad taste in people's mouths.

I hear duckspeak where people use "AI", "Blockchain" and "5G" in the same sentence and I inevitably roll my eyes. (I felt a little dirty writing that sentence)

The Google economy was always exploitative and unfair to content creators but the use of the web as training material for AI has woken people up. Mostly I want to say "where were you 10 years ago?" and see it as the same kind of bandwagoning as the people who say AI-Blockchain-5G as if it meant something.

One of the most hated characters on Mastodon is the "Midjourney Artist" who posts blocks of 9 images they got straight out the AI without any selection or editing. As a photographer and inkjet printmaker I've learned the hard way that people don't want to see my unfinished work whether it is the photo that almost worked (e.g. this morning I took a photo at a picket line but didn't get the demonstrators to stand together to make it look like a lot of people were there, I gotta go back..) or the collage where the color temperature of one print is different from the others or the borderless print that the printer didn't align quite right. To look like a serious amateur or a pro I have to only post my best result.

Some people think "Midjourney artists" are a threat to art no matter what they do. I don't buy that. I have a print right above my workstation with an A.I. edited photo, if I post that photo I don't want to talk too much about I had Photoshop draw me an extra line of bricks because I don't want to get mistaken for one of those "Midjourney artists".

I think combined with the endless profit incentive (aka calitalism) that we’re seeing a global enshitifaction across our knowledge systems.

When AI doesn’t know the answer it makes it up. Writing articles, books, policies, laws, reports are all boring and mundane and made faster with with generative tools like chat-gpt, but the quality of all of it is being degraded. Sometimes from the tools producing a near enough result over and over, but more so that this is pressuring out the knwokege workers that were or are producting quality work. It’s accelerating erosion of our social systems at a time when these systems are already under pressure.

Comments about AI often sound negative because people are worried about what it might mean for the future. They might not understand it well, or they've seen scary stuff about AI in movies. Plus, there are real concerns about things like privacy and fairness.

Fear of the unknown Misinformation Lack of understanding Ethical concerns