They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
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They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
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Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
#2Very good read. We definitely deserve healthy innovation that contributes to human flourishing.
Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
#3> These people literally come to the event to learn about new things, and even they are gagging on this stuff.
I remember the reactions on /r/technology when the iPhone or the iPad were announced. I remember the reactions when the M1 processor came out. Just like this audience, lots of people who subscribe to this stuff nominally care about new technology. But the truth is that where I religiously chant "We're ARSENAL, ARSENAL FC, we're by far the greatest team the world has ever seen" they chant something else.
These reactions are meaningless. "The iPAD?! It's four iPhones stuck together HAHAHAHA and named after a MENSTRUAL PAD HAHAHA this is going to flop".
The difference is that Arsenal will only fail to win the Champion's League once every year. These guys die a thousand deaths every day they see new technology.
Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
#4I remember Steve Jobs being heavily mocked at the time of the iPad release. So this maybe isn’t as new as the author claims.
Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
#5I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened, but in the last decade or so, the message coming from the tech industry has been less "technology will improve your life and help you be a better human being" and more "technology will replace you as a human being and make you obsolete."
I think this is a big, big mistake and a large reason why AI specifically and the tech industry in general is being perceived negatively. SV seems less interested in making "cyborgs" that enhance human abilities, and more interested in godlike AIs that aren't human at all.
Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
#6> These people literally come to the event to learn about new things, and even they are gagging on this stuff. I remember the reactions on /r/technology when the iPhone or the iPad were announced. I remember the reactions when the M1 processor came out. Just like this audience, lots of people who subscribe to this stuff nominally care about new technology. But the truth is that where I religiously chant "We're ARSENA…
I remember the reactions when the first M1 macbook actually landed in people's hands and honestly can't remember a single one which wasn't at least 'well I'll be damned this is actually ok' - and the great majority was 'this is a revolutionary device'.
This kinda never happens in football, sorry ^_^
Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
#7> "I actually think that AI fundamentally makes us more human"
Whether you are excited by AI or not that phase is just cringe BS and deserves all the booing, so maybe the crowd wasn't "booing ai" but just booing the crappy presentation full of corp speak.
Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
#8Yup. Over the last 10-15 years the innovation in tech has gone from cool tech that serves users, that improves lives, to instead legal engineering, user hostile tech and behaviour that milks users for every last drop of revenue.
AI might be a cool tech that can serve to make the lives of actual humans better, but it might require breaking up big tech and fostering customer centric competition to realise any benefits to society at large.
Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
#9> Not even Apple is like Apple anymore. A similar backlash happened a few weeks ago, when Apple launched its super-high-tech virtual reality headset. The early response on social media was mockery and ridicule—something Steve Jobs never experienced.
I definitely remember a huge viral wave of mockery about the iPad in 2010. It was everything from stretching things and calling it "innovation" (as in, just a big phone), comparisons to women's sanitary pads, you name it. Mockery of Apple and Apple fanboys was one of the peak internet memes of the time. Mocking AI is tame in comparison.
Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing
#10I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened, but in the last decade or so, the message coming from the tech industry has been less "technology will improve your life and help you be a better human being" and more "technology will replace you as a human being and make you obsolete." I think this is a big, big mistake and a large reason why AI specifically and the tech industry in general is being perceived negatively. S…
Ask truckers about this with the nearly decade long plus narrative that the second self driving is mastered they will be laid off, combined simultaneously with complaints about how no one is entering the lucrative trucking industry.
I’ve had non tech family and friends who are currently dealing with the result of American cutthroat capitalism and barely able to cover living expenses despite having two people working full time, ask me how I felt about the risk of AI to my job.
My answer has consistently been that I’m not afraid because one of these results happens. A: AI hits a peak soon and can’t replace any work I do, so it doesn’t matter. B: AI does get sophisticated enough to replace the work I do at which point we’ve basically reached almost star trek level tech where machines can do most of the work and we’ve allocated resources through society in a way that everyone benefits. And lastly the one I think is most likely C: AI automates all this knowledge work for the benefit of company owners and we end up either accepting it as a group and falling back to pre industrial serf like social structures or every rises up in a social revolution.
To be honest I’d expect that going back to serfdom style rules would be the most expected and stable but the current group of western oligarchs don’t seem to care to make sure that their burgeoning serf class have their basic needs met and instead want to antagonize them for not being rich. It’s a really odd juxtaposition of rabidly independent culture where people believe they accomplished everything by the sweat of their own brow crossing with the results of of a society that lets an individual run a company of 10s to 100s of thousands of employees at the same time