Well, everywhere AI is being sold in a way to replace humans. Humans don't want to think about having to use a product at work that is genuinely aimed at actually replacing their job.
Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society
81–90 of 521 posts
Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society
#82imo the negative sentiment is less a practical response to AI specifically, and more an emotional response to digital technology in general. Eg: i think my kids will likely be more comfortable, have more convenience, than me — but i worry a lot they will be more anxious and lonely. I don’t personally believe this gets solved through regulation, religion, or self-discipline. imo we just need technology products that d…
Unless you’re in the top 5-10% of American society, it’s unclear that your kids will be more comfortable than you. Data here:
https://economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-...
At the core, this is what the pessimism is about. If AI replicates the advent of personal computers and the Internet, our society will look more like India where everyone has technology but only 5-10% of people live really well
Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society
#83The pushback I see everywhere outside of tech suggests the tech industry vastly overestimated the interest. The tech industry doesn't speak for the entire planet as much as it likes to think it does.
Frontier model companies aren’t banking on the general public “wanting” AI. They are on a path to a product that won’t need to be wanted because the entire economy will need it.
I'd argue the economy is propped up on pointless work providing employment. If you throw AI in that it'll contract and it'll either collapse entirely or move to a social care model that no one will foot and rapid class division. You'll end up with burning or unused datacentres that is all.
Any economic model that I've seen leads to failure. The only reason it's popular now is that numbers are going up. People are just edging it.
Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the tech industry is overestimating its value. Because it can code they think it can do anything else, but unlike code a lot of other work can't have a bunch of little bugs and mistakes because you can't open up real life and edit it after the fact. Plus it lacks actual reasoning to solve novel problems. Hiring an engineer to finetooth comb blueprints for mistakes before construction will take nearly as much…
Definitely. The secret will be identifying use cases where AI usage is a potential upside with limited downside, not the current blanket statements about replacing all jobs without considering lifetime ROI. There’s a lot of boring work AI can automate with minimal risk. There’s also the potential to decrease risk with AI too, including ensembles of different AIs modals and AI + human.
A human that hand-compiles 10,000 lines of C code is a very silly person. A human that works on device drivers and drops into assembly code for a dozen highly critical lines to enable real time communication can be irreplaceable. AI is a tool that can be highly useful and it's a tool with a number of large flaws that you need to acknowledge and account for. Knowing when it's worth using is a vital skill.
Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society
#85I think views on AI are not really views on AI, they are views on capitalism. People don't feel optimistic that AI's impact will benefit ordinary people because, even if works out, the benefit will accrue only to capital owners. This view feels pretty understandable to me, but is ultimately orthogonal to whether AI is useful and effective for the kind of tasks we want to leverage it for.
The empirical data doesn’t support this view. Capitalism approval rates in the US is much more favorable than 16%.
That makes sense, but I would love to see the data on it. I don't doubt at all that capitalism in isolation is viewed more favourably in the US, but that doesn't preclude the intersection of AI and capitalism being viewed less favourably.
I suppose my comment should've said "views on AI aren't solely views on AI, they are views on AI as it intersects with capitalism"
Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society
#86When I use a computer to do work I want the computer to be right. I want to be able to trust the computer. With the inherit non-determinism and probabilistic nature of generative-AI, that fundamental reason why I engage a computer is lost. If the spreadsheet is wrong, it’s because the math is wrong, it’s because I made a mistake. It’s not because all of a sudden the computer decided the nature of algebra should be di…
Reality is non-deterministic (not actually, but in practice). We do strange things to balance this out all the time. Thinking that computer software must be exempt from that mess as a goal is just strange, and concerns itself too much with the ideal of a tool and not enough with the more important question: What if our lives get much, much better? Roughly everyone wants more out of life including the top one percent (and I don't mean the top 0.0001%, just your ordinary industrial nation doctors). How could we possibly morally justify denying everyone the best shot to get at least to that level, and I mean living people RIGHT NOW, ASAP not in a few hundred years? Who would be okay to say "yeah but you know, artists, copyright" and deny those who benefit most from this the opportunity?
How could we not take this shot? I understand perfectly well that a lot of things will need reconfiguration and that it's going to be painful, but dear lord, let's focus on making it go well instead of ending it.
Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
This wildly assumes that "I voted for $candidate" means "I like $candidate." Every presidential election cycle we get served up two turds, one with a (D) and the other with an (R) by their name, and we have to pick which turd we'd like to ruin our country for us the least.
while I’d say that was true in most elections, this one the choices for the future couldn’t be more stark. The dude just had a UFC on the white house lawn, for instance, and fell into the Iran/Israel trap every previous president had avoided. But yeah, Kamala and Trump are the same level of turdness /s.
What do combat sports have to do with anything?
Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society
#88When I use a computer to do work I want the computer to be right. I want to be able to trust the computer. With the inherit non-determinism and probabilistic nature of generative-AI, that fundamental reason why I engage a computer is lost. If the spreadsheet is wrong, it’s because the math is wrong, it’s because I made a mistake. It’s not because all of a sudden the computer decided the nature of algebra should be di…
Reality is non-deterministic (not actually, but in practice). We do strange things to balance this out all the time. Thinking that computer software must be exempt from that mess as a goal is just strange, and concerns itself too much with the ideal of a tool and not enough with the more important question: What if our lives get much, much better? Roughly everyone wants more out of life including the top one percent…
> How could we possibly morally justify denying everyone the best shot to get at least to that level, and I mean living people RIGHT NOW, ASAP not in a few hundred years?
How exactly do you think this is going to happen?
Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society
#89Because the writing is on the wall already. Who hasn't been annoyed with "AI customer service", we already read about AI in the military, then you have the envisioned huge loss of jobs. People generally seem to like using it as a chatbot, or answer questions, on their own terms. But anywhere it's been forced against the user asking for it has been a disaster.
I had an AI agent lie to me
I called siriusxm to get them to turn off their stupid advertising on my in-car infotainment
I had called like 3 months ago to do the same thing. The human agent confirmed she turned it off on my account
I called again recently and asked the AI to turn off in-car ads and weather alerts. The ai INSISTED this was my car's manufacturer responsibility.
I kept yelling and swearing until it finally transferred me to a human. The human confirmed that it was a part of sirius AND that the feature was disabled (it turns out that disabled features on inactive accounts automatically become re-active on 'free weekends'. Holy fuck that seems illegal. the only way to disable features during free weekends is to have an active account (aka paying them)).
My next car is going to be seriously driven by a lack of connectivity, lack of sirirusxm. I'll buy a car where someone already figured out how to physically remove the radio
Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society
#90The pushback I see everywhere outside of tech suggests the tech industry vastly overestimated the interest. The tech industry doesn't speak for the entire planet as much as it likes to think it does.
I really think there’s a concerted effort by the media to demonize AI though. Every third story I see on my news feeds is some sensationalist story about how AI/data centers are bad. The media does have an interest in doing this—writers are fearful that they’ll be first on the chopping block.
I'm not even media and I'm demonising it. It's the hubris of the technology industry attempting to destroy society for financial gain only.
You should change the world by playing chess, not creating a new game and shitting on everyone playing the old one.
My only objective is doing damage it to it before it kills our pensions and 401k's etc.