June 7, 2026
Prompt and Circumstance
Ask HN: Are we as society going to let LLM companies take all the values?
Terrified commenters say the AI gold rush could leave everyone else broke and irrelevant
TLDR: A Hacker News post warned that artificial intelligence tools could swallow jobs, creativity, and wealth, leaving ordinary people with less purpose and less pay. Commenters split between full-on doom, anger over rich companies grabbing power, and a brutal shrug that ownership of ideas was never real anyway.
A worried Hacker News poster basically walked into the internet town square and asked the question hanging over a lot of people’s heads: are we really going to let a handful of artificial intelligence companies vacuum up everyone’s work, money, and meaning? Their fear wasn’t just about robots writing emails or making songs. It was bigger, gloomier, and way more dramatic: lost jobs, hollowed-out creativity, fewer human connections, and a future where the people who own the machines end up owning everything.
And wow, the comments did not stay calm. One old-school developer went full apocalypse mode, declaring that “AI will ultimately be our doom” and asking what humans are even supposed to do when the machines start making the next generation of themselves. Another commenter cut straight to the power-politics angle, calling AI a “massive power grab by the very wealthy,” which is about as subtle as throwing a chair on live TV. Then came the spicy pushback: one person shrugged at the whole ownership panic and dropped the icy take that “intellectual property was always a farce.”
There was even bonus mini-drama about downvotes, because of course there was. One commenter complained that people were silently downvoting instead of explaining themselves, which turned the thread into a tiny side-quest about internet manners. So yes, this was a debate about the future of humanity — but also, very importantly, about people being annoyed online. Classic.
Key Points
- •The post argues that large language models could lead to major negative societal effects if adopted to their logical conclusion.
- •The author says younger workers could lose career ladders, leading to a permanent underclass and possible social unrest.
- •The article claims creators may stop sharing music, writing, experiments, and other work if LLM companies can use that material without compensation.
- •The post argues AI-generated outputs could normalize mediocrity and reduce human communication in areas such as art, software engineering, and email.
- •The author contends that economic value may become concentrated among LLM owners and producers, potentially causing stagnation and reduced progress.