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College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

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Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#361

Post by saghm »

mschuster91 wrote: post #347
saghm wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you got everything you could possibly want in life or have enough money to buy whatever you want... then for quite a lot of people of either gender, the illegal and illicit becomes the next thing to obtain. But with a society that empowers men more than women, and relative power disparities of all types lending themselves to behavior like this (plenty of people who don't have everything still have enough power…

> But with a society that empowers men more than women, and relative power disparities of all types lending themselves to behavior like this (plenty of people who don't have everything still have enough power to exploit those they have power over). In the abstract, sure, it might not be something inherent to men, but it's kind of hard to ignore the fact that in practice women are victimized by behavior like this at a…

I feel like the existence of victims of women doesn't detract from the overall point I was making, which is that overall the distribution of people who exploit people like this is overwhelmingly tilted towards men being the dominant source. The fact that you can point to specific counterexamples as a distraction from this is exactly what I'm trying to argue against being useful. For any significant source of mistreatment of an oppressed group in history (which I won't bother calling out examples of because they will readily come to mind), there were likely some members of the oppressed group who took part or at least didn't stand up for the others, but equating that with being the overall source of the mistreatment is at best misguided and at worst actively muddying the waters.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#362

Post by teekert »

48terry wrote: post #258
nemomarx wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large crop harvester is a tool, but if you used to work on a farm by hand it's not a tool you're going to get to use. It's a replacement for your labour and value, right? someone else will get to use the tool and earn money. So the question is in what way ai is a tool to these kids.

Let's add to this comparison a bit. Said farm workers have also been noticing headlines over the last years like: "Crop harvester CEO predicts crop harvesting machine will wipe out millions of jobs within months" "Crop harvester CEO: 'the crop harvester could destroy the world economy'." "Farm lays off half its employees, pivots to crop harvester" (repeat this one about 10 times a week for months) Then some idiot wal…

The harvester is super expensive, using an LLM is not.

Who’s to say AI is not a democratizing force? Like the Internet? And book printing before that? Suddenly we all have a Personal Assistant, suddenly we can all build tools to make the computer do what we want.

Hey where is Stephen Fry with his podcasts when you need him!

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#363

Post by fluffybucktsnek »

saghm wrote: post #220
irishcoffee wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people walk away from physically, mentally, or emotionally abusive relationships. I know many. Reading the question generously, the person is asking why someone stays instead of leaves. Two of your 3 examples are emotional manipulation (big red flag, run away) and the last one is a threat to your life (big, big red flag, run away). I think it is reasonable for someone to not understand why a person would cho…

You don't think that the CEO of Google might have some resources at his disposable to manipulate or threaten someone?

They might, but that isn't what they are addressing.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#364

Post by teekert »

48terry wrote: post #259
teekert wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so what is it then? To me it's a tool. It helps me accomplish my goals with less effort. That's the definition of a tool right? What is AI to you then? Perhaps I'm being dumb, but not sarcastic.

The direct and unambiguous purpose of AI as a tool has been to replace labor and treat workers badly. This is not some doomsaying thing. This is literally what CEOs and billionares creating and pushing this shit have openly discussed and shared with reporters (who proceed to publish the quotes 100% uncritically and with no investigative sense of curiosity to ask further questions about it). They are excited at the id…

They can’t be so stupid to think that there is anyone left to extract value form when that happens.

Either we find something better to do than work for -or glue our eyeballs to the products off- our tech overlords or they go down with us. (I used that dash myself thank you).

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#365

Post by teekert »

esafak wrote: post #180
teekert wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so what is it then? To me it's a tool. It helps me accomplish my goals with less effort. That's the definition of a tool right? What is AI to you then? Perhaps I'm being dumb, but not sarcastic.

If I use AI to automate swathes of your field out of a job AI isn't the only tool.

Ok I get that. But what is the remedy? Other than to suck it up and make money using our unique human abilities?

Or ok, perhaps laws are in order that state that AIs need to pay taxes too, and do some wealth redistribution that way…

Maybe capitalism is now broken and we need something new to help us deal with post scarcity socially.

I for one welcome our new Starfleet overlords.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#366

Post by teekert »

dogleash wrote: post #267
teekert wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is he supposed to say? "Ok let's stop developing AI so you can all have the exact job you trained for?" That hasn't been the case for decades. When I left my eduction I could sequence 200 basepairs using gels. Now I process terabytes of NGS data on supercomputers. I dealt with it, I enjoyed it. Edit: Not saying these kids have nothing to rage against, they can't afford houses, are uninsured, they face a huge…

>So what is he supposed to say? How to deal with it. Spitting "deal with it" at the audience just says he was so unprepared that he didn't even realize he was literally hired to give them that send-off guidance. But being skilled and notable in a field doesn't make people insightful.

Good one.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#367

Post by lenerdenator »

mikestew wrote: post #192
lenerdenator wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs are hired by boards. Boards are hired by shareholders. Most publicly-traded American companies have their shares held by pension and retirement funds. Pension and retirement funds exist to send money to people over 55.

Yes, as an oldster I’m constantly on the phone with mutual fund managers expressing my desire for CEOs to push more AI. :eyeroll: Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to conspiring with my fellow seniors to keep house prices up in my local area.

I know you're trying to reduce it to absurdity, but that's not what I'm saying you're doing, and I think you know it.

I'm saying people chase returns. If you find out that one mutual fund is going to give you reasonably higher returns than your current mutual fund, you're likely to at least consider the option of switching to that competing mutual fund, regardless of how they get the increased returns.

Multiply that times a few dozen million people and you start to see some effects on the economy, like laying off workers in favor of using AI.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#368

Post by lenerdenator »

triceratops wrote: post #348
lenerdenator wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do once you exhaust the value of the retirement account that matches the principal that you invested into it.

If money from investments made with earned money isn't also earned money then no money is earned money.

Of course it's earned money, it's just that someone else earned it.

Increasingly those someones are people who have a lower standard of living than their parents' generation did.

That tends to rot those someones' faith in the future, which is a good way to bring about undesirable changes in a society.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#369

Post by lenerdenator »

gruez wrote: post #166
lenerdenator wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs are hired by boards. Boards are hired by shareholders. Most publicly-traded American companies have their shares held by pension and retirement funds. Pension and retirement funds exist to send money to people over 55.

By that definition anything that happens in politics or corporate america is "fervently pushed by people over 55", because that's the group with the most political and economic power. AI push? Boomers. Datacenter backlash? Boomers. ESG push? Boomers. ESG backlash? Boomers.

I know that there's backlash and push on each issue from every age range, but people ultimately vote with their wallets. They're sending their money to people who get them the most money regardless of what they think on an issue.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#370

Post by ath3nd »

madnewgrad26 wrote: post #298
ath3nd wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will deal with it alright. It's only so many speeches like this before the boos turn into other things.

Absolutely. They have no idea the vitriol my classmates have for them. I really am worried, lot of friends are very casual about their extremism. When anger and disgust is the feeling of the majority: it’s only a matter of time…

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