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Shunning AI is the human choice

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Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#391

Post by davebren »

egui wrote: post #195
velcrovan wrote: post #59

Hating "AI" in the abstract is like hating public-key encryption. Ultimately it's just math. Once the math is out there, there's no going back. Instead of futilely demanding technology to go away, it would be better to focus on organizing together for better outcomes. https://opcraft.co/writing/2026/04/getting-the-good-ai-futur...

The people who hate "AI" are correctly understanding it as a political project, not simply a technology. Ali Alkhatib's definition here is clarifying in this regard: https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/defining-ai

Seems more like a materialist religious project to me.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#392

Post by user34283 »

hack1312 wrote: post #282
BosunoB wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! The rich don't want to see mass starvation any more than the rest of us. We only permit homelessness and food insecurity now because of scarcity and a "just deserts" mentality where we blame people for their lot in life. When AI is doing the majority of labor, there will be no "just deserts" mentality, and there will be massive abundance.

This is plainly delusional. There already is abundance, global crop lands produce enough calories to feed twice the world’s population[0]. Greed is the reason for inequality and “AI” is not solving that. It is pure wishful utopian thinking to believe that there will be some massive AI-initiated abundance. [0] https://www.oneearth.org/half-the-worlds-food-never-feeds-pe...

It would seem to me that the main source of food insecurity is violent conflict rather than greed.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#393

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Aurornis wrote: post #350
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.

Tech people had a really good thing going for a lot of years. It peaked right after COVID when it seemed like anyone could get a job and a raise in tech by doing some interview practice and learning how to say the right things. Things even started getting weird for a while when this combined with remote work and being overemployed (multiple remote jobs) entered the common vernacular, even if it wasn’t common. When I…

Developers are a TINY percentage of the population (< 1%). The anti-AI sentiment is coming from the other 99%.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#394

Post by joquarky »

bsza wrote: post #325
7tflutter7 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Just like how the world vetoed atom bombs from existence instead of making 12,000 of them.

Not counting tests, we haven't seen one in action in over 80 years. If we could practice this level of caution with AI, that would be a great start.

That's because we built very fast computers to simulate them.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#395

Post by satvikpendem »

frizlab wrote: post #176
jesse_dot_id wrote: post #141

The hate around AI is entirely earned by the CEOs of the companies pushing the frontier models and integrating them into social media. Spending time and compute on generative audio and video was incredibly short-sighted. I think it was born of some arrogance that they were speeding towards the inevitability of AGI and now they're stuck with models that are as good as they're going to be due to poisoning, and very exp…

I don’t think it’s only that. I personally hate AI not because of CEOs and co, but because the tech is intrinsically born out of theft, and is still, to this day, evolving thanks to theft. And that’s even before the ecological considerations.

I (and I assume many others on especially HN) don't consider intellectual "property" as real so there is no "theft" in our minds, so this argument doesn't bear much weight.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#396

Post by EdgeExplorer »

splittydev wrote: post #254
afavour wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this attitude is part of the reason there's so much pushback. "it's here, it's staying, so shut up and like it". You're allowed to still hate something that ubiquitous. God knows a lot of people hate their jobs and have for a long time now! I think everyone should still be allowed to criticize AI. Criticism is good. Including for AI.

The same thing happened when we transitioned from horse carriages to cars. I'm sure a lot of people were quite outraged. But aren't we glad it happened? Sure, you're allowed to hate whatever you want. I never said they're not allowed to hate AI. I said they're gonna have a hard time in the future if they can't accept that the times are a-changing'.

Heck no. The world would be a way better place with no personal automobiles. Trains, yes. Even trucks and buses, sure. Cars, nooooooooooo. Cars are among the most clearly net-negative inventions to come out of industrialization. They should be criticized and fought until finally defeated. Self-driving cars are a massive waste of human and physical resources to provide a solution that is still strictly worse than proper urbanism and transportation network design.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#397

Post by chasd00 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #365
jesse_dot_id wrote: post #141

The hate around AI is entirely earned by the CEOs of the companies pushing the frontier models and integrating them into social media. Spending time and compute on generative audio and video was incredibly short-sighted. I think it was born of some arrogance that they were speeding towards the inevitability of AGI and now they're stuck with models that are as good as they're going to be due to poisoning, and very exp…

Did people hate the computer this much when it became a thing?

I distinctly remember people hating on Google search (and the internet in general) when things got going and how it will dumb everyone down and no one will understand how to use the card catalog at the local library anymore.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#398

Post by duchef »

jolt42 wrote: post #261
kalleboo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is here to stay. It's getting better every day with no end in sight. We're a year away from AGI, once we have AGI, there is no need for white-collar jobs, everyone working in an office will be fired. (Some people argue we already have AGI, some argue that the term AGI doesn't even matter anymore since the models are already so intelligent) We're maybe 3 years away from robots, they'll take over blue-collar jobs, a…

When we have AGI, we'll have self-driving cars. We aren't getting either in a year's time. The need for white-collar jobs in areas will shrink (not disappear), possibly to expand elsewhere.

I think his point was that we are bombarded with cataclysmic language from AI leaders about our sooncoming intellectual demise.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#399

Post by satvikpendem »

palmotea wrote: post #266
frizlab wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s only that. I personally hate AI not because of CEOs and co, but because the tech is intrinsically born out of theft, and is still, to this day, evolving thanks to theft. And that’s even before the ecological considerations.

> I don’t think it’s only that. I personally hate AI not because of CEOs and co, but because the tech is intrinsically born out of theft, and is still, to this day, evolving thanks to theft. And that’s even before the ecological considerations. I also hate it because: 1) Fundamentally, it's about reducing the power of labor (which are what the vast majority of people are) and I know I'm a laborer. This is why the CEO…

If you're a programmer or (physical) engineer you've been automating other people's labor all this time, it's ironically hypocritical that now that engineers are the ones being automated that they cry foul.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#400

Post by DrewADesign »

zozbot234 wrote: post #132
lccerina wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many devs would be able to keep working if GitHub disappeared tomorrow? You can do inference on SOME laptops, but the current shape of GenAI need massive data centers to be used at scale. Also the existence of various big tech companies rely on these data centers being place, without them they are useless.

The nice thing about local AI is that it really can run anywhere, you just need enough storage space for the weights and the context. It just gets slower if you run it on potato-level hardware.

For bang-on user cases like coding, sure. For concept art and other still-image diffusion tasks, sure. For damn near anything else, calling hardware that doesn’t approach the inference breadth and performance of data-center-hosted remote services ‘potato-level’ is pretty disingenuous… never mind any significant training. Not only that, hardware is less accessible than it’s been in years— nvidia is re-releasing the 3060 so gamers can buy something. For anything you’d stake your business on? Good luck.
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