A Hacker News Archive of 800 'Wake Me Up When AI Can…' Bets, Now Put to a Vote
Wake me up when AI can...
A developer collected roughly 800 Hacker News comments from 2016 to 2026 that set a bar for AI — 'wake me up when it can…' — and turned them into a public vote. Nearly 9,700 people cast over 100,000 votes on whether each goalpost was cleared. Turing-test claims mostly got a yes until qualifiers were added, while 112 statements, mostly about code and text, were judged clearly achieved.
Whenever I hear someone complain about an LLM, I try to picture having the same conversation a year ago.
- smcg
Hmm, but these are all programming tasks. AI hasn't made a meaningful positive difference in most people's lives, and it is making a negative difference in many areas.
- baal80spam
Is this about goalpost moving?
- ghusto
"When an AI is capable of creating new explanatory theories that are GOOD (not world salad)" and statements like it miss an important point. Here, let me explain via snark:
"When a person is capable of creating new explanatory theories that are GOOD (not world salad)"
Let's not flatter ourselves, we were never very good at a lot of things to begin with. Then we hold AI at the unattainable standard of zero mistakes permitted.