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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

#291

Post by aix1 »

Simulacra wrote: post #16
silisili wrote: post #10

Because 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 hate the AI customer service, from drive thru to call center AI complete with fake background sounds, I hate it all. As a customer I find it insulting.

Then why do you keep giving them your business? Have things gotten so bad where you live that there are no companies left who would treat you with respect?

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

#292

Post by slg »

JoBrad wrote: post #199
slg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So just to summarize, it seems like the most optimistic outcome that the collective of HN could come up with in the hour since my original comment was that medical care would improve and you might be able to pay for it if you retrain yourself for some yet unknown new career that might suddenly appear at some point in the future. That's the optimistic vision we're asking society to buy into? No wonder it's only 16%.

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

#293

Post by pesus »

jstummbillig wrote: post #153
pesus wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

By trying! How else is it going to happen? Are we going to deny the immense potential? Nobody needs to draw up a specific plan for that to hold true, we are good at figuring shit out and using tools. I am not saying it's going to work but we are not getting much smarter right now, and we really need all the help we can get to accelerate more complicated stuff. And it is accelerating! Will it be as useful as I hope it…

> By trying! How else is it going to happen? Are we going to deny the immense potential?

Trying what, though? What is it? Immense potential for what? So far this entire comment doesn't actually say what you think we should do in any capacity. It doesn't really say anything at all.

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

#294

Post by windexh8er »

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.

Has it? If we've saved hundreds of millions, then I would argue simply the amount of money spent in AdTech could have saved billions.

The Internet of the 90s and early 2000s was amazing. The Internet today is a dumpster fire of attention hoarding, regurgitated content and, now, slop.

Society as a whole may be better off without a lot of the convenience features we have, but I also don't agree that it's all or nothing. We could have an amazing tech relationship today. But a select few wanted to monetize it for themselves. Here we are, welcome to the free market.

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

#296

Post by aDyslecticCrow »

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.

Yes, that's very nice. But that's very different models from LLMs and slop image generators. AI as a term has been butchered beyond recognition; when mentioning the current harm of AI investor hype and job automation, people are talking about generative models using LLMs or prompt based input, which have seen little to no use in "accelerate biological and medical discovery"

Sure, the transformer is great for making larger neural networks with better learning potential, which are improving protein folding models a fair bit. But do we need the combined budget of the Apollo program or interstate highway system (adjusted for inflation) per year, to develop better molecular simulation models? (no, the most advanced ones run on mundane hardware and trained just fine on pre 2020 infrastructure).

So while it's true that; "AI" ((primarily) Neural network based deep learning techniques) are wonderful tools to make society better; slop generators absorbing the entire energy budget of a few small nations to generate infinite propaganda, linked-in posts and shrimp Jesus is only tangentially helping in that goal while destabilization civilization in the process.

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

#297

Post by transitKnox »

This isn't terribly surprising. Americans either think AI is so good that it will replace their jobs, or AI is so bad that it will cause too many mistakes. Their beliefs aren't unfounded, but it gets more accurate by the quarter. I personally think it all just shifts - AI becomes much more reliable and accurate over time, and as such, we all use it to be 30-100% more effective at our work.

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

#298

Post by pesus »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #187
sheeshkebab wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s not been useful anywhere else - no self driving cars, no laundry helpers - just some idiotic animatronic carcasses that are barely able to walk around, and semi autonomous killer bots on ukraine frontlines.

I saw over a dozen self driving cars on my way to work today. Weave Robotics launched a laundry helper months ago, although my sense is that "laundry folding" is a bit of a meme and people don't actually care very much about automating it.

I strongly disagree. Tedious yet necessary and ultimately unending tasks are exactly what the average person wants from automation.

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

#299

Post by qwertygnu »

armchairhacker wrote: post #194

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.or…

> % of U.S. adults who say they think the impact of AI on __ over the next 20 years will be positive or negative

Blank | Negative | Positive | Equal | Not sure

Society | 40 | 16 | 31 | 13

Them, personally | 31 | 23 | 27 | 19

---

Probably as much a commentary on the fallacy that bad things won't happen to us, personally, as much as a commentary on AI. But I found the difference interesting.

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

#300

Post by thewebguyd »

pdonis wrote: post #174
thewebguyd wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd answer: No, we should not have to work to eat, they should not be mandatory, and no not everyone has to work. But those problems need solved first before completely upending the current system. The system does need changed, but that change must happen before mass unemployment, not after the fact.

> we should not have to work to eat It takes time and effort and resources to produce the food you eat. If you aren't expending that time and effort and resources yourself, either to produce the food, or to produce something you can trade for it (or trade for money you use to buy it), who will? If the answer is "other people", why should other people have to work to produce the food you eat while you don't? If the an…

Fair enough, we are no where near post-scarcity levels of automation yet despite what frontier lab marketing says.

But still, there are more people on the planet than necessary for all of the "meaningful" work of providing for society. It would be a good thing, with the proper safety nets and protections in place (something like UBI) to have a lot of the "bullshit" jobs automated away. That leaves us into a situation like I said that "no, not everyone has to work" nor should we just force everyone to work my effectively making up roles. If half or more of the population finds themselves unemployed due to AI/Automation, the answer shouldn't be make-work "dig a ditch then fill it back up" it should be use our new found productivity and surplus to just take care of everyone's needs without it being tied to employment.

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