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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

#271

Post by wartywhoa23 »

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.

Those were wonderful times, I see no problem with driving by a paper map, emailing photos, and sending gpg-encrypted e-mails, which all the surveilling scum could go fuck themselves about, at all.

Convenience is the glue that got all the frogs stuck to their boiling pots.

> the technology we have now has saved hundreds of millions

Oh wow, are you sure it's not billions?

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

#272

Post by hparadiz »

whimsicalism wrote: post #254
cjfd wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not so sure. The world of printing out driving directions or emailing photos sounds a lot more calm. Also, simply quite enjoyable. The current world is cramming too many events in too little time, it seems. Stress is quite bad for health so I am not so sure about these hundreds of millions of lives saved. It may also have costed quite a few.

nah, that was ass. i think the really major negative has just been scrollable video. all these other things - uber, airbnb, grocery pickup, etc. have largely just made my life better.

Can you imagine sitting around waiting for a phone call these days? At home? With a landline? Lol. Or going to the video store to drop $20 (with inflation today: $48) on three movies that you had to actually return by driving. The romantic waxing about hanging out with people is hilarious. More often than not it meant coming home at 10 pm and watching shitty network tv by yourself. Now I can play games with all my friends across the entire world.

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

#273

Post by apparent »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #208
apparent wrote: post #117

It's hard to balance the downsides (devastating job losses that will affect certain fields) with the upsides (curing diseases, increasing efficiency in ways that will reduce costs of many goods). Is something a net benefit if everything is cheaper and cancer is cured, but you have no job?

Is something a net benefit if the upsides are hypothetical and the downsides are extant?

You think it's unclear as to whether AI will accelerate the rate at which diseases are cured? And if jobs are eliminated, that means costs will necessarily go down.

I'm surprised how much people downvoted this comment. It acknowledges the upsides and downsides and doesn't say which is greater. It acknowledges that some people will have some very negative impacts. I guess if you think it's all good or all bad, then you would disagree with my open minded take...

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

#274

Post by wyre »

rayiner wrote: post #202
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…

> 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? I don’t get this. It’s like worrying in 1960 that the companies that invented computers will hoard the benefits of computing. It doesn’t make any sense. There is no secret formula to any of this. The math underlying the mod…

The 60s were 60 years ago. There were regulations back then that protected the common folk and capitalism wasn't as ruthless and aligned with the will of the 0.1% as it is now.

I want to be optimistic and agree with you, but I don't think the parallels are as strong as you say they are. We already have Anthropic withhold Mythos from the public, the governement now allowing the use of Fable, I don't think its farfetched to think that the US will start regulating access to Chinese/open-source models, pricing for compute isn't slowing down. The problem isn't AI, but who controls the compute that powers it.

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

#275

Post by simonw »

logicchains wrote: post #70
lunar_mycroft wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Claude really that much better than all the others for normal use?

It's not that Claude is better, it's that Gemini and Copilot are so overwhelmingly bad.

Especially the free tiers. Meta AI, too.

Weaker models and less powerful harnesses give people a very sub-par experience compared to what you get if you pay for access to the better tools and models.

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

#277

Post by bitmasher9 »

K0nserv wrote: post #85
bitmasher9 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Here’s a recent gallup poll.

You’re right that the AI opinions are largely colored by the business practices around it.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/694835/image-capitalism-slips.a...

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

#278

Post by hattmall »

svara wrote: post #135
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…

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.

The problem is, at least in theory, that it entirely changes the calculus of how advancements take place. In the past, when the pace of advancement was stronger the primary factor was the cultivation of a culture that valued prestige and knowledge over monetary gains. It didn't really matter how much money you threw at a problem because the bulk of the people responsible for advancements weren't interested in obscene wealth. Obviously those people were well compensated but any number of entities could provide that compensation. It was about bringing prestige to your lab / school / town or even country.

If AI becomes a primary catalyst for advancement it further moves the needle in the monetary direction.

That redfines advancement to mean something different than what is beneficial to society to be what is monetarily best for the owners of said advancment.

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

#279

Post by hparadiz »

autoexec wrote: post #256
hparadiz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 was always an option to have the technology without the bullshit. We can have GPS without allowing Google or Apple to track our every movement. We can have useful websites without allowing the people running those websites to mine every scrap of data we upload and sell our private information to anyone willing to pay for it. It's not a requirement or law of nature that every technology sold must be used against th…

Everything you just said is readily available now. You can use a FOSS OS on a mobile device with an offline mapping program. They were available before Google Maps was even a thing on Android 1.x. I know because I used to download them and use them without even having mobile internet in rural areas. The only thing stopping you is yourself.

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

#280

Post by rose-knuckle17 »

- polls can manipulate people to give the answer a pollster wants.

- half of everyone is below average.

- americans, unbelievably, voted to re-elect Trump.

The fact that 16 percent of americans are short-sited, ignorant and speak in contradiction to their best interests should surprise no one.

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