I'm getting burned out on the AI stuff. Every day it's half the posts on the front page. Startups, tools, it's neverending. It's somewhere on the spectrum between huge hype and real paradigm shift, so it's not unexpected, and very possibly not unwarranted, just tiring. If I could go a week without hearing about ChatGPT and AI tools that would be nice.
It's a tough one because follow-ups [1] and repetition [2] aren't in the spirit of HN (it's hard to stay interested under a repetitive barrage), but significant new information is [3], and there has been a ton of that too. So we're in tradeoff land. If it helps at all, we've downweighted a ton of AI-related posts that don't really contain new information. I know that many are still making it through though.
The Launch HN posts are a special case because that's one of the things HN gives back to YC in exchange for funding it; and as you can imagine, there are a ton of AI related startups wanting to launch right now. However, Demo Day starts tomorrow, so you have two more threads to endure today (the other one being https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35445097) and Launch HN season should simmer down after that.
We don't have topic categories. We do try to downweight topics that have had large amounts of coverage, except when there's significant new information. The links in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35445497 point to lots of past explanations, if anyone wants more.
One of the first times I recall hearing someone gripe about the frequency with which a topic was appearing in news was during the Eurocrisis, when a news presenter quipped about the Greek financial situation being in the news rundown once again.
9/11, the 2nd US-Iraq Gulf War, the 2007-8 Global Financial Crisis, and Covid-19 come to mind.
I consider this a strong indicator that there is in fact a significant story developing, and whilst AI has certainly presented us with sixty or seventy years of false starts, the prospect and impacts of fast take-off make it the sort of thing that 1) is hard to judge either in advance or as it's happening and 2) would absolutely change the world. Exceptions include fad/fashion, political, and some investment hype-cycles.
Even if the current OpenAI / LLM fuss is a false alarm / limited breakthrough, it's breathtaking enough as it stands and as has already been demonstrated to take very seriously. Soaking up solid takes (and yes, they're hard to sort from the chaff, another characteristic of major stories) does seem worthwhile.
You can flag or hide stories on HN, so long as you're logged in (and have met the fairly minimal karma thresholds).
