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Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

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Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#121

Post by stackghost »

jstummbillig wrote: post #86
gortok wrote: post #29

When 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…

>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?

This is satire, right?

If you seriously think that AI is going to improve the lives of anyone except the robber barons who own the AI you are absolutely delusional.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#122

Post by steve1977 »

everdrive wrote: post #35

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so) The loneli…

I think social media is almost an oxymoron, as a medium is something "in the middle" and social contacts should be direct and not mediated (IMHO).

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#123

Post by ericmcer »

gortok wrote: post #29

When 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…

Heavily agree.

The computer should be a force for order, because being a living creature is chaos.

That said LLMs can be used in ways that promote order. People just got excited and wanted to believe they could be trusted in chaos mode.

For reference chaos mode would be prompting something like: "Look at my journal entries and tell me what I should do to fix my life". Versus using one to build a table of common themes and analyzing the resulting spreadsheet yourself.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#124

Post by jchw »

everdrive wrote: post #35

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so) The loneli…

> And I don't mean that I went down any rabbit holes -- rather common culture was hollowed out, friends were distracted, friends fell down their own extremist rabbit holes.

Yeah... It's actually not so hard for me to just not take part in social media. The big struggle is that what I'd like to leave more than anything is a world born of its influence. The small percentage of people who are willing to go outward to places beyond the bounds of ten or so websites/apps of the Internet are still vastly influenced by them even when they reach outside. And despite that it would only take a handful of people "defecting" to form a nice tightly knit community, it's hard to find that many people with a common thread tying them together that aren't afflicted with behavior influenced by social media.

I don't want to just have places on the Internet that are actually "secretly" kind of like offshoots of Twitter/Reddit/Discord communities. That's almost not better and yet it's what a lot of attempts at "hey we're doing forums again" tends to feel like.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#125

Post by cryo32 »

idank wrote: post #95
AngryData wrote: post #54

Earlier 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…

The success of AI doesn't hinge on whether you can vibecode it all or even one particular sector really well. For example, despite several attempts to make vibecoding PCBs, it's still pretty crap. But it's really useful as a copilot, human in the loop for targeted tasks in electronics. Same for CAD work, not so good at drawing but still useful at looking at an image, understanding it, and answering specific questions…

The reality is experience isn't codified in text.

It's passed person to person over long periods of time.

And you can't train an LLM on that.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#127

Post by zuzululu »

vanuatu wrote: post #91

It's interesting that many developing and Asian countries have a more positive view of AI: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/15/people-around-the-w... How much of this is due to AI vs. the government and corporate structures in society? (Saw elsewhere that Chinese people were also much more optimistic)

probably because none of these polls can be trusted or accurate representation

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#128

Post by breezybottom »

jstummbillig wrote: post #86
gortok wrote: post #29

When 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…

This is completely incoherent. Of course we need deterministic computer programs; much of society depends on it.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#129

Post by woah »

This is less insightful than what people might want to read into it. The democratic party has adopted an anti-ai stance as a position in the partisan football game. NPR tote bag carriers read with great concern about AI's terrible water usage (in reality a tiny fraction of that used in things such as lawns), and about the fact that it can do a better job than amateur artists.

On the other side, you don't see a similar upswell in support from the right. AI companies are from San Francisco, and their CEOs are weird, awkward, and probably gay abortion lovers.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#130

Post by spprashant »

cryo32 wrote: post #2

The 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.

Not ever profession has an insatiable desire to automate away their own jobs.
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