Agents break things and slop floods the commons

A headline said Swedish broadcaster TV4 postponed a show after an AI agent erased edited material. The company denies it, which commenters noted. Elsewhere, an Ask HN asked HN to add a flag for AI-generated articles. Replies pointed out that detection is unreliable, that the guidelines already ban generated comments, and that voting can be gamed. Cliff Stoll's "Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated" post was about AI slop that misreported his death. Strafe, a new open-source E2E-encrypted Discord alternative, was dismissed in a top comment as "vibecoded bs from last week that can't even get the links on their page right."

The pattern is that "AI-made" is becoming a trust discount. Whether it is an agent deleting work or an AI-written obituary, people assume errors and low effort.

There is a counter-current. The thread "AI is a tool and using it well takes skill" argues that results depend on the user. A 60-year-old in another thread says Claude Code reignited his passion for building. A commenter in the first thread said AI is great for weekend projects but real engineers matter once you scale.