I'm Tired of Talking to AI

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

AI-Mediated Communication Feels Hollow and Disrespectful

  • Many describe a growing fatigue with receiving AI screenshots or pasted LLM text instead of a real reply.
  • It feels like people are “outsourcing thinking,” dodging responsibility and engagement, and turning conversations into one-sided info dumps.
  • This is compared to an evolved form of “let me Google that for you,” but worse because AI output is often verbose, wrong, and socially flattening.
  • Some now quietly ignore or avoid coworkers who respond this way, or explicitly tell them “I can ask the AI myself; I wanted your view.”

AI at Work: Tool vs. Crutch

  • Used well, AI helps with code hints, analysis, summarizing logs, generating drafts, and navigating complex systems (e.g., travel planning, troubleshooting).
  • Used badly, it generates pseudo-specs, bloated PRs, hallucinated architectures, and “fake progress” that engineers must painstakingly unwind.
  • Non-technical managers and weak contributors are seen leaning hardest on AI, sometimes projecting that if AI could replace them, it can replace everyone.
  • There’s concern that those who act as mere “AI proxies” are making their own jobs obviously automatable.

Content Quality, Detection, and “AI Slop”

  • Many perceive a flood of AI-generated “slop” across Reddit, YouTube, GitHub, blogs, even internal tickets.
  • AI detectors are widely criticized as unreliable and prone to false positives; rising “AI scores” may partly reflect humans writing more like LLMs.
  • Some see AI as just accelerating pre-existing dysfunction: content farms, SEO spam, templated writing now scaled up.

Trust, Manipulation, and Bots

  • Commenters describe large-scale astroturfing, nudge campaigns, aged/botted accounts, and speculate that platforms quietly tolerate or contribute to fake activity for “line go up” metrics.
  • This fuels a broader “trust crisis”: doubts about whether posts, comments, music, books, or even friends’ messages are genuine.

Human Contact, Norms, and Pushback

  • Many advocate retreating to offline life: travel, concerts, local communities, small invite-only forums, and face-to-face conversation.
  • There are calls for new norms: never forwarding raw AI output, clearly labeling AI-assisted text, and shaming thoughtless use in professional settings.
  • Others are more accepting, viewing AI as another tool wave we’ll eventually normalize, though they acknowledge this transition is socially rough.