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Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

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Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

#101

Post by whatshisface »

pixel_popping wrote: post #69
fullshark wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will happen inevitably, we are throwing spaghetti at the wall right now, and cleaning up the mess, lessons will be learned. The question is whether that phase will lead to real lasting damage and to what. For myself I no longer read cold emails, I believe they are all AI generated, and that communication method may legitimately die culturally. What else will be destroyed?

Many things will change, because many things are currently useless in the world right now, literally most jobs in a way shouldn't even exist. You think a guy behind the mcdo counter should exist? It shouldn't, that just an engineering "mistake" as it can already be solved, the world is just slow to catch-up, but it's not only AI, that's just automation. We banked for decades on jobs that virtually shouldn't exist exc…

Why would they give you a UBI? They would have no reason to do that...

Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

#102

Post by hellisothers »

xg15 wrote: post #94
frb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO shrugging it off as “superficially plausible text” is the extreme to the other side. We’re past plausible text since GPT-2 and it’s undeniable that the technology is making waves right now and is having an impact. As you can’t judge the impact of the Industrial Revolution by the first steam engines, you can’t dismiss the impact the technology is having right now.

In writing code, yes. But has there been an actual positive impact in other fields?

“In producing textiles but has there been actual positive impact in other sectors?” I’m sure the Industrial Revolution didn’t just happen all at once, it started somewhere and crept.

Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

#103

Post by xg15 »

ianm218 wrote: post #73
multiplegeorges wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the leading CEOs are saying the next generation will be unemployed due to AI... uh yeah, you're gonna lose them!

Isn't it bad now that Sam Altman and the others are backpedaling on this and going "jobs are going to still exist you just can't imagine them!" because the PR problem was getting so big? [1] Like don't we want people running these companies to be honest to the public rather than misdirection? [1]. https://www.platformer.news/sam-altman-ai-backlash/

> "jobs are going to still exist you just can't imagine them!"

Ironically, this makes even less sense.

If (ostensibly) the goal of developing LLMs was so we can all create more while working less, but he also assures us there will be just as much work in the future, then what was the point of this tech in the first place?

Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

#104

Post by cdrnsf »

xg15 wrote: post #94
frb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO shrugging it off as “superficially plausible text” is the extreme to the other side. We’re past plausible text since GPT-2 and it’s undeniable that the technology is making waves right now and is having an impact. As you can’t judge the impact of the Industrial Revolution by the first steam engines, you can’t dismiss the impact the technology is having right now.

In writing code, yes. But has there been an actual positive impact in other fields?

No. It ruins art, ruins music, ruins communication and on and on. It's cancerous with respect to anything related to art or cultural value.

Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

#105

Post by teachrdan »

ilaksh wrote: post #95
lsy wrote: post #33

There's a very real possibility that AI proponents completely lose the next generation of adults. The output is not enjoyable to consume, the people who rely on it are not cool, and the effects of using it are unpleasant and hard to defend on aesthetic, intellectual, or moral grounds. There are real use cases for this technology! But the idea that the generation of superficially plausible text is "the next Industrial…

> The people who rely on it are not cool. That's the only statement that's true. Admiting to AI use is unfashionable in the western world at this time. But how much would you like to bet that 90% of those students who were booing also used AI to do their homework for them quite often? So your take away would be "the AI stole their education". No, they were dishonest and the AI helped them cheat themselves out of lear…

> But how much would you like to bet that 90% of those students who were booing also used AI to do their homework for them quite often? So your take away would be "the AI stole their education". No, they were dishonest and the AI helped them cheat themselves out of learning.

This is like saying a smoker can't criticize the tobacco industry. It's entirely possible to recognize that AI in school is a huge problem while (hypothetically, in this case) still using it. Indeed, if enough of your peers are using it and you do not, you are effectively being punished for being virtuous. It's a lot like being the one cyclist in the Tour de France who isn't doping.

Similarly, if your peers aren't able to keep a conversation going in a seminar because they had AI do their reading and assignments for them, then you, as a student, are having your education stolen from you in a very real way. Education is something that happens in community. When enough of your community is using AI, your education will suffer.

Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

#106

Post by andai »

jklinger410 wrote: post #6

If you want people to like AI, show them a future that doesn't leave them in abject poverty.

Cost of goods and services drops by orders of magnitude at every point in the supply chain.

That being said we already have relative superabundance and we're more miserable than ever, so it's not clear that more of it will cheer us up.

Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

#107

Post by whatshisface »

Sh0000reZ wrote: post #64
jklinger410 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you show us how AI will not create abject poverty? How are we not going to be begging whoever controls chip fabs and electrical plants for compute tokens? HOW!? EXPLAIN IT.

[flagged]

How would improved standards and reliability make the AI alternative to white collar jobs less appealing?

Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

#108

Post by Esophagus4 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #81
piloto_ciego wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doom is popular right now. People want to feel terrible and pessimistic and their media diets only reinforce this.

To be fair, the labour market for a recent humanities graduate is quite crap right now, too.

In particular, CS students are feeling it more than most majors. (Especially compared with the shock that most of them probably thought CS was the field for job security.)

Saw an article recently that said CS majors were up there with performing arts majors and art history majors in terms of unemployment rate.

Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

#109

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

hirvi74 wrote: post #85
iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owe is an interesting choice of a word. Don't get me wrong, I personally am of the opinion that, by default, most schools for most programs, the related body of works can be accomplished by a warm body ( some of it based on personal anecdotes -- in US mind you ). There are exceptions and those include some non-humanities and, well, people who are curious ( but that was always true for them ). Still, just because a te…

Perhaps, owe was a poor word to use too. I will admit that, however I did not think that would be a point of focus in my comment at the time. > in US mind you That is my only reference. > Still, just because a technology facilitates something does not make their distaste any less potent. Sure, I agree once again. I may have not explained my position well initially. I just cannot help but feel it's a little hypocritic…

https://archive.is/20260511160009/https://www.404media.co/uc...

As I am reading the source, it is more weird than I initially accounted for. The speech she gave was fairly benign compared to some of the bigger quotables from Musk, Altman or other AI industiry figures. Basically, march of time and 'I remember when' kinda nostalgia.

But given how weirdly benign the speech was, I have to ask. Why the boos? Is there some context I am missing? Was the speaker recently on the wrong side of history?

I am asking half-jokingly, but it seems like there is a giant part that is missing somewhere and I have no reasonable way of explaining it.

Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution

#110

Post by MSFT_Edging »

altairprime wrote: post #84
mywacaday wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My great hope for AI is that it kills social media by making 99% of content and comments untrustworthy and not worth consuming.

Social media isn’t always about consuming content . It’s also about getting jolts of momentary joy and reward. You get those in two ways: seeing cool things, and participating in cool things. Especially cool things before they go viral. Clicking like on a post that isn’t viral yet , and gambling to yourself whether it will go viral, has the same dopamine flux when it pays off as winning at the slots. Even my reward-d…

The vote counting thing can be interesting.

There's the classic "I wish facebook had a dislike button" or the equivalent for twitter.

But in the thread-based forum context, removing the downvote has interesting effects. For one, it stops people who down-vote-brigade to lower visibility. It also stops the "I don't like that guy" engagement and works on a more positive "I appreciated this comment" mode.

It's not one-size fits all but I've seen positive effects on more marginalized forums.

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