Show HN: How much of Hacker News is about AI?
This website counts titles containing the standalone word "AI", case-sensitive and word-bounded. "OpenAI" doesn't count. "AI-powered" does. There's a toggle for a wider vocabulary: artificial intelligence spelled out, LLM, GPT, and model and vendor names. Some quick stats: - 14.4% of new HN titles this year, against 10.9% in 2025. On the wider vocabulary, 21.9% and 16.1%. - First month above 1% was Oct 2016. Above 5%, Feb 2023. Above 10%, May 2025. - Over the last five years the quietest month was Jan 2022 at 0.8%. The peak was Feb 2026 at 15.9%. - 13.6% on weekdays against 12.4% at weekends. - Show HN runs highest of any category at 19.8% this year, which makes this post part of the number. As of this post, today is at 15% for the standard filter and 19% for the extended.
Discussion Highlights (19 comments)
sharemywin
it would be cool to use embeddings to categorize into like 10-20 categories and get a giant pie chart
missingpackage
At first I thought about how many posts were written by AI
bklosky
you could fetch the text from linked blog posts over time and run 'em through pangram, I bet >20% of blogs linked on HN today are totally LLM written
noobplus
And so comes the AI comments as many as the AI posts just saying for fun
caminanteblanco
Would there be some way to see what percentage of the front page meets those qualifications? I don't browse /new very often, so I have less of an idea of how representative that is. It would be interesting to see if they trend similarly. Thanks for the cool project!
rzmmm
It's remarkable how stable 20-30% show HN concentration is after late 2022, for the extended stats.
xpct
Good. Now do what % of posts link to AI generated articles.
ChrisArchitect
Related: How Much of HN is AI? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435728
hartator
Would be curious to see how many comments are AI generated.
Dwedit
The topic of an article being AI and an "AI-Generated Article" are two completely different things.
lanewinfield
I expected this to call out the number of links that are obviously vibe coded, like itself! If you see: - ALL CAPS subheaders - a light beige background - burnt sienna anchor and/or highlight text - a "• LIVE" (or really any pulsing • symbol with an ALL CAPS follow-up) - tons of variation in font sizes (this one has 15 different text sizes!) - more typically, a lot of overexplaining ...you know it's vibe'd, specifically with Claude!
noxss
Interestingly, we can deduce that the actual percentage will always be higher since not everyone uses those labels/words.
philipwhiuk
Recursive given that this is AI generated from another post on how much AI was on HN.
Vaslo
I tried to click on the link at work and it got blocked as "pornography".
lupire
Who would do this project and not use an LLM to classify what counts as "AI"?
marshblocker
You don't need a website for this.
waldrews
Every technical topic involves AI now. Even if it's about why the ancient Greeks didn't turn their steam engines to industrial use - the AI's should be researching the details. We might as well ask which topics involve humans or use language.
kingkemol888
This is a good project!
geludobre
AI itself, is an increasing topic, overall, in our day-to-day personal and professional life. It's either embrace it now, or cry later.