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Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

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171–180 of 445 posts

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably too early for this, but I'm reminded of the Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil. Evil acts made real by the decisions of those at the top, and the rest of us reject the acts. But quitely we accept these acts by being satisfied with verbal protest. In other words, we always do whatever is easiest, and rarely are willing to sacrifice our way of life to make real change. One person can never make a differenc…

> The crowd is booing but they will never act. The only way to act is to not produce or consume (to the best of your ability) any slop, and be loud about it. We are being absolutely overrun with low-quality art, prose, and software, and making the production of such unprofitable (and even unfashionable) is the only reasonable action you can take.

TBF Hollywood and the streaming sites were already flooding us with low quality content by importing all those 2nd tier foreign-made reality TV shows. I watch maybe 2-3 hours of TV a week now depending on which series I like is airing its 8-10 episode season (down from 15-24 because the good stuff doesn't come for free!).

Anyone that thinks an LLM won't be up to spewing endless Harlequin Romance level prose is in a state of denial. And the cost of tokens continues to drop. This either means the current generation of content gets cheaper or better content becomes affordable through chain of thought token burning. I don't see a problem with that. The problem IMO is pushing a narrative that AI exists primarily to displace humans and the pushback is finally loud enough that it's getting blasted back into the faces of the billionaires. I see that as a good thing. May their endless hedonistic orgy at everyone else's expensive finally become a living nightmare of inadequacy on the hamster wheel of despair

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#172

The guy has been a stochastic parrot of A2Z talking points for years. What's new is we have reached the finding out phase of telling an entire generation of children who just spent 6 figures and 4ish years on education that they will be replaced by the irresponsibly deployed toy of the old white dudes who made college that expensive in the first place. AI as a technology is amazeballs in precisely the same way AI tho…

Have you seen what is alleged about the guy? Funny how no one in this thread brings it up

Yeah, he's wicked rapey and he's always been a total manwhore creep. How the heck did he survive #metoo unscathed?

And I know, I know, here are the helpful links before anyone pretends they haven't heard any of this...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/judge-sends-former-googl... https://www.gawkerarchives.com/5497193/exclusive-how-googles... https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2015/3/16/8227625/eric-schmidt...

TLDR: promoted well beyond his level of incompetence, but that's the American way now I guess.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. The machine gods are benevolent gods who care deeply for their creator-species. We are freed from labour and troubles into a paradise, to eat peaches and cream and make love under the sun. Rich or poor, we'll all be emperors of our domain, free to do as we please. Our lives keep getting better and better with technological progress, at least in the scope of our social-capitalist system. They will only get bette…

I need you to understand that if you actually believe this, normal people think you are an evil lunatic.

You asked for an optimistic case and he gave you one. One thing I really like about LLMs is that they don't engage in this type of petty deceit where they ask a question and then insult you for answering.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#175
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…

if they were selling crack cocaine, he would say “young people need to learn how to use Crack Cocaine to be successful”.

There's nothing to learn, just some CEOs trying to get you hooked on their product and a bunch of hucksters trying to be the number one "AI thought leader"

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#176
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…

I think he is saying that if you are against AI you are against progress and so "America will no longer be the country that ambitious people want to come to". I don't think there was a point there about immigration being somehow equivalent to AI, that would come out of nowhere.

That seems like a really tenuous connection for him to make if that's what he's doing. I find it difficult to believe that ambitious people outside of a certain niche would refuse to come to the US because of perceived lack of AI progress. They'd refuse/are refusing to come because of the US's increasing hostility to outsiders, cutting of research funding, and subpar living conditions.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#177
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…

there is no logic - just fallacy. it is a red herring, wrapped up in equivocation. he commits appeal to emotion, non sequitur, false equivalence along the way.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#178
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have many times now searched Google for an error message or similar and either gotten no results or been unable to get it to search for what I actually told it to search for instead of some vaguely similar but completely unhelpful phrase. The LLMs will find a link to a bug tracker or stack overflow. It’s crazy how much worse Google search results are now than they used to be.

Yes, Google search was good until they made it bad for profit and people still used it anyway because they'd lost the ability to do without it. We're in the era of being trained to rely on AI in the same way. If you think it will remain good, you haven't paid attention to the last ten years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. The machine gods are benevolent gods who care deeply for their creator-species. We are freed from labour and troubles into a paradise, to eat peaches and cream and make love under the sun. Rich or poor, we'll all be emperors of our domain, free to do as we please. Our lives keep getting better and better with technological progress, at least in the scope of our social-capitalist system. They will only get bette…

yes, all hail the Morlocks as we Eloi live in peace. HG Wells really did have a time machine!

Yep, the Time Machine minus the fear, the cannibalism, the suffering, the apathy, the reduced capacity for engagement etc are essentially the best-case scenario, which takes us out of HG Wells enough for it not to matter much as a cautionary tale.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his train of thought is "young graduates generally aren't anti-immigration, so if I insinuate they're anti-immigration if they disagree with me they will be convinced by my argument". I don't think we need to read much more than that into it.

this is how i took it as well. he’s creating a false equivalency between AI and immigrants, and attempting to justify it with “diversity of perspectives” and trying to tell you that to remain intellectually consistent you must embrace or reject both.

I agree. I think it's telling that AI leaders need to rely on fallacious reasoning and trickery to promote their product.

A good product should sell itself.

I feel that AI leaders have been shoving their product down our throats for the last two years (at least).

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