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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

#191

Post by titzer »

slg wrote: post #93
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…

>The only hope we have is that they're wrong, and their power to change things will be minimal. What even is the optimistic outcome if they are right? What are we all working towards? Like do people think that these AI companies will create some superintelligence, suck up all the financial benefits of that, and then just decide to share it with the rest of us out of kindness? Because I legitimately can't see a realis…

One not-so-bad outcome would be that open weight models get better, smaller, more efficient, and easier to use while hardware gets faster, more efficient, and more widespread. Imagine when mobile CPUs have the GPU/NPU power of today's discrete GPUs and models are smaller and faster than today's models.

That allows really powerful local-first AI applications, rather than being beholden to AI providers. With the advance of coding agents, anyone can build their own applications.

The downstream effects of widespread local AIs is a rise in AI slop that feeds the distraction machine and attention economy as well as surveillance. I don't know what the solution to those is, but the local experience is going to be powerful.

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

#192

Post by al_borland »

aspenmartin wrote: post #50
al_borland wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI seems more like a feature than a product.

If you mean the technology diffuses into all products and processes instead of some standalone production that maybe makes sense to me but the models themselves feel like a product

The models themselves feel like a product in the same way weather data/models are a product. Consumers don't buy/interact with them directly. They are built into more consumer facing products that people actually buy and use.

While some weather obsessed people will bemoan the difference between various data providers, most people just see the weather and don't know or care how the data gets there.

With the new Siri that's rolling out, I don't think most users would know or care if it was using Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, or even xAI on the backend. It's mostly trivia when they're all reasonably capable.

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

#194

Post by armchairhacker »

Please link to the actual survey instead of this commission outlet, which didn't even link it themselves: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-an...

In the survey, 31% Americans believe AI will have an "equally positive and negative impact", and 13% are "not sure"; it's 16% pro 44% N/A 40% anti.

I wish the survey also included non-Americans, because from a 2025 survey (https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/10/15/how-people-aro...) people from other countries were less concerned; those from Israel and South Korea were more optimistic than pessimistic.

Notably, Pew did this survey 14 months ago and the results were better, but not by much: 17% pro 49% N/A 35% anti. They also did a survey in 2023, and already 50% of US respondents were "more concerned than excited" about AI, while only 10% were "more excited than concerned".

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

#195

Post by thatmf »

ctoth wrote: post #113
slg wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only hope we have is that they're wrong, and their power to change things will be minimal. What even is the optimistic outcome if they are right? What are we all working towards? Like do people think that these AI companies will create some superintelligence, suck up all the financial benefits of that, and then just decide to share it with the rest of us out of kindness? Because I legitimately can't see a realis…

What are jobs for? Should we have them? Should they be mandatory? What does it mean to have to work to eat, is this a good setup? Does everyone have to work? Should they?

No, but what are the odds of the robust welfare state that would be required to actually enable some sort of post-work society taking shape here in America? I'd truly like to be optimistic but, politically we have been moving in the opposite direction ever since the end of the New Deal, and the oligarchs who control the technologies are not exactly benevolent.

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

#196

Post by sylos »

jms703 wrote: post #72
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…

> tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives This. Many of us are cogs in these machines doing the harm...to ourselves and others around us. The thing is, these companies can't exist without employees. But employees need the companies for money to pay the other companies.

We are rapidly reaching a point where companies will exist without human employees, there'll just be the owners and an ai workforce.

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

#197

Post by heathrow83829 »

jmyeet wrote: post #28

The one and only product for AI is labor displacement and wage suppression. That's why companies love it. That's why people hate it. We don't live in a society where the benefits will be shared. We live in a society that would rather let people die in the streets than potentially hurt shareholder value. We are bouldering towards the total collapse of society. To me, it's like 10,000 people want to rule the post-apoca…

the AI bros would counterargue and say that with all the increased productivity, it will just open up more opportunities and thus more jobs. But, i don't think we're seeing that. Net jobs seems to be going down.

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

#198

Post by Telaneo »

hparadiz wrote: post #106
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…

People just forget the before times. No one wants to go back to printing out driving directions or emailing photos. We take all these things for granted now but I am 100 certain the technology we have now has saved hundreds of millions of lives through downstream butterfly effects.

It's possible to have both internet maps and photo web sites, and not have unregulated* social media.

*Or rampant or whatever other word you feel fits the current state of social media.

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

#199

Post by JoBrad »

slg wrote: post #158
svara wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm legit pretty excited about applying AI to accelerate biological and medical discovery. It's already happening right now, still in relatively mundane ways, but there's so much to do.

How much of American society will get to share in the benefits of those new biological and medical discoveries when we don't have any health insurance because we lost our jobs to AI?

An optimistic view is that the jobs displaced by AI will be like the jobs displaced by industrialization: while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required.

At least one data point in favor of this view is the middling success of the AI rollout so far. Of course it’s eclipsed in the short run by the number of jobs cut to fund AI rollouts.

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

#200

Post by ambicapter »

aspenmartin wrote: post #139
cyanydeez wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~~economy~~fascism

Absolutely, you are right even though many may consider this too snarky. But herein lies the fork in the road. - consider that right now autonomous drones operate in Ukraine using the latest and greatest frontier models - consider that fascist or authoritarian governments will now have a kind of access to their citizenry’s deeply personal lives that they’ve only dreamed about before. “Show me everyone who has insulte…

> autonomous drones operate in Ukraine using the latest and greatest frontier models

link? Seems infeasible from a latency standpoint.

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