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Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

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Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#111

Post by Sharlin »

cj wrote: post #6
davemp wrote: post #3

Kind of goes to show how out of touch and insular the tech exec sphere can be. Almost everyone I interact with in reality has a deep distain for LLMs and their touted trajectory.

> Schmidt then drew a parallel between artificial intelligence and the transformative impact of the computer — and was immediately met with boos. That's a shame. I assume the reason for the "deep distain" is rooted in fear of change, fear that LLM will make it harder to have a successful career. That's a pretty negative mindset to have as a college grad just entering the workforce. I'm not an AI fan boy, but we can't…

Do you think that protesting that X is happening is the same as pretending that X is not happening? Or are you saying that X is happening anyway, so you might just as well learn to like it? That's some highly dubious rhetoric.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#112

Post by _fat_santa »

The biggest issue I see with discourse around AI is you have two voices: one is of the tech CEO's and other elites that talk about it largely in the abstract and how it's going to take everyone's jobs, and then you have folks on Twitter/X that talk about things that they are actually using it for.

Generally what I found listening to both sides is the latter group is very optimistic about AI and what it can do while the former group tries to be optimistic but just ends up coming off as doomery about it. And the problem that the AI space has right now is the doomery group is just more visible to the average person and thus the average person gets their opinion informed by that group.

I really wish there was a way to better surface the sentiment that I see on X about AI, the folks there aren't talking about how AI will replace you at work and make you obsolete, they use AI every day and they know that's just not realistic, not now and probably not ever. Rather they talk about all the cool things that it can help you do now, and how it can be a force multiplier in the best sense.

The problem with the elites talking about AI is everything they say is just so detached and abstract. And their giant egos prevent them from seeing the damage they are doing to the field.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#113

Post by horsawlarway »

ilitirit wrote: post #20
xg15 wrote: post #5

> “The future is not yet finished. It is now your turn to shape it.” This sounds cynical if there is a kinglike president, surrounded by a small clique of tech billionaires who all are becoming increasingly open about the kind of future they want to realise.

It's also one of my major issues I have with how this is being introduced into many enterprises, including the company I work for: "Here's AI. Figure out how we can make money from it. We're adding it to your performance reviews" Basically, here's a solution. Find problems for it.

Yeah, I also see this occurring.

It's just wildly unprofessional from management, in no particular order my frustrations are:

1. A majority of planning documents from management have become LLM output, which no longer actually matches the desired/required work (but it sure looks nice if you don't have to read all of it).

2. Management undertones are pretty clearly: "Figure out how to use AI to replace yourself."

3. The visibility of leaderboards that promote spend with no relationship to output - ex: employees who spend the most tokens are rewarded, even when there's no equivalent boost in productivity.

---

My take is that AI is actually a managerial crucible - aka, a great filter for companies with poor management practices and processes.

Company management needs to shift in response to AI more than engineering, and I don't think most are prepared.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#114

Post by mbgerring »

Can someone in this thread who says “the kids must be wrong” give an actual optimistic case for AI? Because as far as I understand it, the “optimist” case for AI is that LLMs become God and wipe out human life as we know it entirely, and replace it with a transcendent post-human intelligence. And in the meantime, we’ll have a permanent underclass that will be kept alive on some kind of subsistence UBI. That seems to be the “good” outcome that e.g. OpenAI is playing for. I don’t understand why any of you think that’s good or positive or desirable.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#115

Post by wvbdmp »

qsera wrote: post #90
xt00 wrote: post #35

Tons of CEOs right now keep saying “young people need to learn how to use AI to be successful” and also “we aren’t planning to hire any new college grads due to AI”.. so which one is it.. seems everybody understands the super pro AI CEOs want to lay off nearly the entire company and run it on skeleton crew with a ton of AI and get ultra rich. While “some other” companies should totally hire lots of young people but n…

> run it on skeleton crew with a ton of AI and get ultra rich... I don't get people who believe this. Why would an AI company provide a service that someone can sell at 10x the price, mostly unchanged? Why wouldn't the AI company sell it directly?

This is what Amazon did for many physical products. It just takes time.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#116

Post by bigfishrunning »

flohofwoe wrote: post #41
wincy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who has driven the 1000x increased usage of AI in the past year or two? My mother is in her 60s and uses Gemini every day. These data centers aren’t being built for no reason.

That's also because traditional google.com has become a product search engine instead of a knowledge search engine. So far at least, the AI results are mostly free of product placement and thus automatically 10x more useful than the first few pages of search engine results (but probably not for long).

If the AI results were so undeniably good, google would let me turn them off and let user preference prove it. I verify those AI results when i fail to avoid reading them, and they're wrong a shockingly high percent of the time.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#117

Post by new_account_100 »

nilirl wrote: post #8

> Schmidt urged graduates to embrace freedom, open debate, equality and the willingness to engage with those they disagree with. I think it was a great embrace of freedom and open debate to boo him for only asserting predictions that benefit him.

I would boo him if I was there.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#118

Post by neves »

echelon wrote: post #59
davemp wrote: post #3

Kind of goes to show how out of touch and insular the tech exec sphere can be. Almost everyone I interact with in reality has a deep distain for LLMs and their touted trajectory.

> Almost everyone I interact with in reality has a deep distain for LLMs and their touted trajectory. The Western media is stoking these fears. Asia is embracing AI. Japan is using it in anime. India is going wild with large and small business usage. All of my friends in India report how popular it is, and how they're using it to get work done. I don't even have to mention China. I am sick of how our media is brainwa…

"the media" as an entire without human beings behind.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#119

Post by 542458 »

let_rec wrote: post #52
10xDev wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers speak for itself. What has had the same level of user growth?

If I use Google Search to do a search and I get an AI answer that I scroll past, do I count an AI user? The numbers are not reliable.

You could use ChatGPT/anthropic/etc signups as your proxy if you wanted, and those show similarly spectacular trajectories.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#120

Post by jiaosdjf »

rdtsc wrote: post #55

> “If you’d let me make this point, please —” Schmidt said amid boos. “The point I’d like to make is choose a diversity of perspectives, including the perspective of the immigrant who has so often been the person who came to this country and made it better. America is at its best when we are the country that ambitious people want to come to. Let us not lose that.” How does that tie in? You have to like AI because of…

Generous interpretation: instead of pearl-clutching over ethnicities and traditionalism America invited the world to immigrate and encouraged diverse ideas and industries. Other societies have shunned even foreign food and music (most countries barely have different races), never mind porn industry ('burn the degenerates'), space travel ('why waste money on the moon'), nuclear power, computers etc. Is AI not yet another industry that is easy to disregard yet potentially transformative?

Corporate interpretation: listen you filthy cattle, gen-AI is bottoming out all our pesky human labour costs and allowing me and my friends to milk every last drop out of this late-stage capitalist nightmare, you better get used to it because from now on 99% of you will just have to make do scraping by in the gig economy, selling your bodies or just generally being dancing monkeys for billionaires - we'll still hire some of you as nurses and waiters because we don't exactly want clankers looking after our kids

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