To me it reads exactly like every other blog post of it's genre. It substitutes subjective personal experience for any kind of externally verifiable fact, makes appeals to anonymous authorities that always seem to support the author's conclusion, uses language designed to induce a sense of fear if not outright panic in the reader, and at no point addresses the fundamental reality of "AI's" catastrophic unprofitability. Not to mention how gross it feels to read the author's slobbering all over Amodei as some kind of model for good corporate behavior.
Fundamentally my real problem with it is that the author believes that if we make LLMs good enough at coding, they will then become capable of doing all other knowledge work to a high enough standard that they will replace human knowledge workers. That is such a breathtaking example of a Leap to Conclusion that if we could harness it's energy we could start sending spaceships directly to other star systems.
One data point for this thread: the jump from Opus 4.5 to 4.6 is not linear. The minor version number is misleading. In my daily work the capability difference is the largest single-model jump I've experienced, and I don't say that casually — I spent my career making precision measurements.
I keep telling myself I should systematically evaluate GPT-5.3 Codex and the other frontier models. But Opus is so productive now that I can't justify the time. That velocity of entrenchment is itself a signal, and I think it quietly supports the author's thesis.
I'm not a doomer — I'm an optimist about what prepared individuals and communities can do with this. But I shared this article with family and walked them through it in detail before I ever saw it on HN. That should tell you something about where I think we are.
the real challenge will be in the frontier of the human knowledge and whether llms will be able to advance things forward or not.
ps1; i'm using 5.3/o4.6/k2.5/m2.5/glm5 and others daily for development - so my work has 1.5x intensified - i tackle increasingly harder problems but llms still really fail big in brand new challenges like i fail too. so i'm more alert than ever.
ps2: syntactical autocomplete used to write 80% of my code; now llms replaced autocomplete but at a semanticlevel; i think and LLM implements most of my actions like a cerebellum for muscle coordination; but sometimes teaching me new info from the net.
That's where the 4.5->4.6 jump hit me hardest - not routine tasks but problems where I need the model to reason about stuff it hasn't seen. It still fails, but it went from confidently wrong to productively wrong, if that makes sense. I can actually steer it now.
The cerebellum analogy resonates. I'd go further - it's becoming something I think out loud with, which is changing how I approach problems, not just how fast I solve them.
4 months ago, I tried to build an application mostly vibe-coded. I got impressively far for what I thought was possible, but it bogged down. This past weekend, my friend had OpenClaw build an application of similar complexity in a weekend. The difference is vast.
At work, I wouldn't say I'm one-shotting tasks, but the first shot is doing what used to be a week's work in about an hour, and then the next few hours are polish. Most of the delay in the polish phase is due to the speed of the tooling (e.g. feature branch environment spin up and CI) and the human review at the end of the process.
The side effects people report of lower quality code hitting review are real, but I think that is a matter of training, process and work harness. I see no reason that won't significantly improve.
As I said in another thread a couple days ago, AI is the first technology where everyone is literally having a different experience. Even within my company, there are divergent experiences. But I think we're in world where very soon, companies will be demanding their engineering departments converge to the lived experience of the people who are seeing something like the author. And if they can find people who can actuate that reality, the folks who can't are going to see their options contract precipitously.
I think this part is very real.
If you’re in this thread saying “I don’t get it” you are in danger much faster than your coworker who is using it every day and succeeding at getting around AI’s quirks to be productive.
They’re all 90% there.
The thing is the last 10% is 90% of the effort. The last 1% is 99% of the effort.
For those of us who can consistently finish projects the future is bright.
The sheer amount of vibe code is simply going to overwhelm us (see current state of open source)
If AI tightens down the job market I just don't see why there would need to be this frantic urgency to adopt it. Getting a small head start might not mean very much once the dust has settled. Employers will still be cutting, and there will still be new blood who will adapt to new technology faster than you can.
The real danger is if management sees this as acceptable. If so best of luck to everyone.
We already live in that world. It's called "Hey Siri", "Hey Google", and "Alexa". It seems that no amount of executive tantrum has caused any of these tools to give a convergent experience.
- "transform complex topics into easy-to-understand explanations."
- "edit and transform images using simple text descriptions."
- "summarizes a research article, and answers specific questions about it."
You can see all of them here: https://www.hyperwriteai.com/aitools.
Hyperwrite does also have a markdown editor with an ai copilot sidebar that seems a little more substantial: https://www.hyperwriteai.com/ai-document-editor.
I don't know enough to disprove Matt, but I don't know why anyone should listen to him. There are far smarter people who have come up with similar conclusions.
Covid comparison is apt. I remember being insanely scared in Jan 2020 when those videos of Chinese people dropping dead were coming out (and being shamed by most of my peers etc). Few months later it was starting to become obvious it was really only a major risk if you were old or infirm, but the rest of the world had took awhile to catch up.
AI’s big and gonna change stuff - and like COVID probably for the worse - but we’re in a poorly understood hype cycle right now.
Increase shareholder value in the short term.
> Increase shareholder value in the short term.
everytime I see this as the ultimate conclusion for all of these kind of hype posts
Some people really need to be told not to believe everything they see on the media.
Only a risk in terms of dying sure, but plenty of people lost taste and smell for long periods before the vaccine (I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have yet to get it back). I'd rather be dead, to be honest. The food around my part of the world is too delicious.
Jokes aside it should be noted that the author is a founder and ceo of an AI company, not to mention an active investor in the sector. (All disclosed in his "about" page)
Was there something specific in the article you found unconvincing, or that directly counters an experience you've had with AI?
I posted that because I consider blogging a fringe form of journalism, and basic journalism ethics require clear disclosure of conflict of interests.
His entire blog is very self serving. Which doesn't mean his opinion is wrong, but potentially not "cold" or impartial. More like a sales pitch probably. He is also very trasparent about his business but the article is posted here without that context, and I think it's important to point it out given the era of sensationalized and fake news we live in.
The truth of this seems much more banal. Computing has become a major drag. There have been tens of thousands of libraries that reinvent the wheel. Every operating system has become a toy. All major language systems have an absurd learning curve. Each important application is fortified by a giant corporation. Social media is self-important pop babble.
LLMs are surprisingly good at dealing with complex systems. I can fire one up and ask, for example, why this Swift code is not compiling. But why doesn’t my Swift editor explain that problem? Why is it a confusing question at all? The entire system was built from the ground up at enormous expense. Why do I seek outside help?
Our computing is full of whizzy animations and pointless Victorian ironmongery. All meaningless. AI is medicine, not the cure.
Yesterday I had to explain to Opus what the color white is and what "bottom right" means after it declared problems fixed, repeatedly, that a literal preschooler would have been able to tell were absolutely unchanged from the original problem description.
I am still waiting for this world of redundant programmers I've been hearing about for years.
"The future is being shaped by a remarkably small number of people".
That is a lot of power in the hands of a few people. Probably nothing to worry about. Power is hardly ever abused...
They did it first because doing it first was easier. There are tons of examples around and code can be verified to work.
What if it doesn't understand what you're asking it to do and keeps failing and you have to keep rolling back? Can you understand the 20,000 lines it's generated so you can make the change yourself without tearing your hair out? Can you fix bugs in it that it can't, without starting from zero and having to understand the whole codebase?
I'm not convinced this person knows what they're talking about.
I could say AI is here - we don't even need to do research anymore. All I need to say is: "Claude, cure cancer", go away for 4 hours to drink my coffee, come back and boom - cancer cured. Perfect research ready for funding and trials.
People would call me crazy. But what if I say 'PHARMACEUTICAL CEO', 'PhD', 'MULTIPLE COMMERCIAL DRUG SUCCESSES' - people will eat it up.
Let's see what you can find out about Matt Shumer, the AI CEO, from his public profiles:
No technical background - looks like a business 'entrepreneurial' degree from what looks like a middle-of-the-road school No experience working anywhere other than the companies he founded No notable exits or commercial success from the companies he founded And if you dig deeper, it appears that:
His latest startup is a scam https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41484981 He is the CEO of a startup He's trend-hopping on the 'new thing' (all in with VR in 2019, now AI) - incredible that there is no crypto in there The post offers no concrete evidence for its claims and is peddling fear and sentiment, yet somehow respected publications write opinion pieces about his article, credible people retweet it, and it goes MEGA viral.
The only credit I am willing to give here is that he managed to accurately reflect the vibes that resonate with people, which is really a shame because this is what people actually think.
What's worse is that now he probably has legitimate people seeking his views and opinions on technical matters because he's got it 'so right' and he is so 'knowledgeable' about it.
Hopefully someone can succeed in online reputation management for websites, content, and people, and help us separate credible from grift.
I remembered this guy from his “Reflection 70b” scam in 2024. That should have basically put his credibility at zero, but clearly it has not.
I found this interaction in the HN comments from the time of that minor scandal to be prescient:
>> It's amazing what people will do for clout. His whole reputation is ruined. What was Schumer's endgame?
> But does reputation work? Will people google "Matt Shumer scam", "HyperWrite scam", "OthersideAI scam", "Sahil Chaudhary scam", "Glaive AI scam" before using their products? He wasted everyone's time, but what's the downside for him? Lots of influencers did fraud, and they do just fine.
Does using "@dang" work to get attention to this?
I'm not saying the article isn't worth reading. I just now wondered--and wouldn't be surprised--if it was written by AI.
We arent innovating in other areas that might soften the blow. We dont have good support systems, social security, healthcare, or even demands in other areas. How many engineers are going to be plumbers and construction workers?
That will happen in an universe where infinite acceleration and infinite speed is possible. The laws of our universe are still bounded by the speed of light. Nothing grows exponentially forever.
When it comes to something as complex as AI, what are the odds that a random person is going to have any sort of good/informed take on it? Especially someone like this, who's a non-technical angel investor? Their entire job is hyping things up to raise money / get paydays. They actually list on their resume various "viral articles/tweets" that they made that got attention / raised money. Could this guy remotely explain, technically, how an LLM works under the hood? I highly doubt it. His credentials are not building AI, not technical knowledge, but hyping up companies that use AI.
Well, at least he gives 1-5 year time frames for all his grand claims, so when they don't actually happen he'll be quickly proven wrong. But of course, it's the internet, and nothing will ever come from somebody making grand claims and then being completely proven wrong, there will be no follow up, no self reflection, no retraction, no long-term credibility hit, just on to hyping up the next thing after getting his payday.
I have just gotten off 3 years as a developer for that kind of project, and I used the best AI tools diligently every day. It often saved me time. Like from some small drudgery of half day of flailing about in config land. Or it could generate some nice rails controllers and a javascript front end from a well-written spec. writing tests was also a strong suit.
but just as often it failed to understand the depth of the product and its myriad concerns and led me down the garden path, reducing my efficiency.
Aside from that, a large part of my job was the parts that weren't coding - wrestling with specs that were far from ready for primetim, chaotic internal processes, deployment, internal coordination/communcation, talking to customers, etc.
In the end it seemed like it saved me maybe 20% of my time overall. Nothing to sneeze at.
I get that greenfield apps that have no customer contact can be created with a phrase now. That's pretty amazing. But I would love to see Opus 4.6 up against a real beast of a codebase that you're far from a master of.
And best of all, when it messes up, it doesn't get sued!
You do.
I wonder what will happen.
I hope he has a good hosting plan.
Interesting. So you regularly make new apps in 1 hour each.
How is that the same as...writing a book? Did you mean write several short stories? Or are we talking non-fiction?
