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Shunning AI is the human choice

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Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#111

Post by TOMDM »

Lambdanaut wrote: post #36
satvikpendem wrote: post #5

Interesting what the disconnect is between what the vocal minority say about AI versus the vast majority who use it every day and do not care, such as coders and even regular people, as ChatGPT has almost a billion users.

I'm not sure what you mean because you didn't actually say it, but AI is polling as one of the most disliked topics in the USA right now. More hated than ICE. Source: https://pos.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/260072-NBC-March-...

> AI is polling as one of the most disliked topics in the USA right now. More hated than ICE.

I don't think your source substantiates that.

From your source:

ICE

Somewhat negative: 9%

Very negative: 47%

AI

Somewhat negative: 24%

Very negative: 22%

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#112

Post by XorNot »

crazyfingers wrote: post #42
splittydev wrote: post #2

These people are going to have a really hard time coming to grips with reality in the next few years. AI is here to stay, and it's expanding very rapidly. If you can't fight them, join them.

> join them Become an LLM? Probably better to try and differentiate ourselves from LLMs than try to mimic them.

This is the part the AI advocates don't seem to get. There's nothing to learn with AI: each new model is better then the last. Requires less input to achieve a workable result.

The advocacy has always felt like cope to me and you see it in the advertising and LinkedIn: "get ready for AI", "adapt your AI workflows" - it's all centered on saying "you need the skills for the new thing so you don't get left behind".

But I don't need the skills for the new thing, because it does things for me. And each new successive generation will do more. Any time I would've spent bolting together some AI workflow a couple of years ago was wiped out when Claude came along. People are talking about there very clever multi-agent workflows or whatever, but it's all just prompts into the same datacenters and then...wiped out when the next model can just do it.

The advocacy is well...an excuse. The product looks and feels like AI. It's not impressive when it's generated by AI. The user isn't going to improve or build a better one, because they don't work on training new AI models. And a new AI model of sufficient power will just wipe out whatever skills you obtained, and the thing which might be useful - understanding the AI output - you'll never learn because you aren't doing it.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#113

Post by knuckleheads »

tptacek wrote: post #13
mrbungie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI as a tech is fine. But disliking it and the social/economic effects around it is fine too, people should be allowed to feel however they want to feel about certain techs and situations. To recommend people to suck it up is not the answer I wish in the society I want to live in.

There's a normative argument in the parent that's reasonable to engage and rebut, but there's also a positive component that's less easy to take issue with. It really isn't going anywhere, no matter what world you want to live in. People were upset about databases in the 1980s (some still are).

The idea of AI going anywhere always reminds me of https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-end-of-big-data/ from a decade ago.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#114

Post by frotaur »

BosunoB wrote: post #93

Counterpoint: Work sucks. Of the billions of workers on the planet, the number of them who love their job and would truly be doing it even if they didn't need to in order to survive is probably in the low single digits. Hating work is good, wanting it to all be automated is good. It is a pro-human flourishing stance, whereas keeping the majority of humanity laboring in jobs they dislike just to survive is against hum…

I don't think many people disagree with this. The main problem is that labour has been what allows regular people to have negociating power with those who own most of the capital.

People are worried that if they lose this leverage, nothing is stopping the few who have most of the capital to just disregard the needs of the masses.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#115

Post by malfist »

ieie3366 wrote: post #84
Lambdanaut wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean because you didn't actually say it, but AI is polling as one of the most disliked topics in the USA right now. More hated than ICE. Source: https://pos.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/260072-NBC-March-...

And how much of this is due to the sloppers/grifters/conmen who hopped on to the AI train (same thing which happened to crypto?) I feel like that is what the hate needs to be directed towards. Same thing with crypto. There is fundamentally nothing wrong with the technology itself. It’s that we are letting these scammers become the face of it

> There is fundamentally nothing wrong with the technology itself

It is when the foundation of the training set for the technology is predicated on stolen or exploited labor.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#117

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

chasd00 wrote: post #17
splittydev wrote: post #2

These people are going to have a really hard time coming to grips with reality in the next few years. AI is here to stay, and it's expanding very rapidly. If you can't fight them, join them.

My wife is a former journalist and was beginning her career when the web began to take off. All the old editors and reporters in her industry blew off the Internet, blogs, and web publishing in general. They thought no one will ever quit buying papers, it was a staple of modern life! She tried to clue them in but hit a brick wall ever time. I feel like history is repeating. I use AI regularly, where it works it works…

[flagged]

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#118

Post by endymion-light »

lccerina wrote: post #54
endymion-light wrote: post #20

There's a massive difference between the hatred of a CEO who is actively wanting to replace workers with what is essentially applied mathematics. AI seems more like easy reasoning for mass-layoffs & cost saving measures - and I rarely see articles that actually attempt to delve into this, instead seeking to just cancel out an entire technology. This article doesn't hate AI - it hates capitalism - which is a completel…

You don't need to have a "good knowledge" of a misused technology to hate it when it's used by malevolent people. In the same way I don't need to be a virologist to know that is better to avoid the flu, I don't need to be a ML/AI expert to see its direct detrimental effects on people, communities, and the internet as a whole.

But given your example - I don't care much for the opinion of someone who believes flu is spread by sinful thoughts. It's good to have a base understanding of something that you'd like to speak about.

Are local LLM models also within this hate sphere? What about fully open source vision models? That's what makes an article like this feel hollow - it's just someone talking about vibes.

Or to quote the article:

" But while I took mental notes on what I was observing, I also felt a lack of representation for true, profound, and guttural loathing of AI. The people like me who have only the vaguest idea of what defines AI, but extremely specific examples of why it sucks. "

That's why I think this article is a criticism of neoliberal capitalism rather than anything else. If it wasn't AI, it would be robotics, if it wasn't robotics, it would be Quantum. But i'd like to see better substance in articles on this site rather than just a dislike of robots.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#120

Post by lacewing »

tptacek wrote: post #13
mrbungie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI as a tech is fine. But disliking it and the social/economic effects around it is fine too, people should be allowed to feel however they want to feel about certain techs and situations. To recommend people to suck it up is not the answer I wish in the society I want to live in.

There's a normative argument in the parent that's reasonable to engage and rebut, but there's also a positive component that's less easy to take issue with. It really isn't going anywhere, no matter what world you want to live in. People were upset about databases in the 1980s (some still are).

There's plenty of things that are ubiquitous but not well-liked, so I don't see how "it's not going away, get over it" works as an argument. Many people won't be getting over it. Traffic jams are here to stay but I'm never delighted to be in one.

Outside the tech bubble, a significant proportion of the population is using AI, but in all surveys, it's hugely disliked. It's probably due to social anxieties that in big part trace back to how AI tech companies do marketing. If you have billboards that say "don't hire humans" and Gates and Altman talking about how most jobs are going away, what do you expect? People are not gonna be optimistic even if they secretly enjoy asking ChatGPT for relationship advice.

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