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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

#351

Post by ryandrake »

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…

> a constant drip-feed of outrage

I say this as someone highly critical of social media. I'm not sure you can entirely blame Social Media for this. The fact is, outrageous things are happening constantly throughout the world. We just didn't hear about most of it before Internet connectivity and the reach of social media. It's not like social media suddenly created outrage. It's just informing people about the existing absolutely outrageous things happening. Are the algorithms tuned for outrage? Sure. But that doesn't mean these outrageous things are not happening.

Back in the 1960s there was widespread outrage over the Vietnam war, but no social media drip to blame it on. The difference was: The outrageous acts were getting press and constant attention, through non social media channels.

You can either be 1. ignorant / not paying attention to the state of the world, 2. paying attention but deliberately ignoring the state of the world, or 3. outraged all the time.

I'm not saying it is good to be outraged, but that's our world. The state of the world is absolutely outrageous, and a normal human being should be feeling outrage at what is constantly being done.

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

#352

Post by omnimus »

autoexec wrote: post #214
jondlm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This... this... this! This resonates soooo deeply with me. The wild thing is that these tech "systems" (aka companies) are made up of ostensibly good people. It's often impossible to look at individual people and say, "they're the cause of this damage." I believe that some form of evil (this word feel inadequate) emerges amidst these large systems that is incredibly hard to pinpoint. It's why dissension is so fucking…

> The wild thing is that these tech "systems" (aka companies) are made up of ostensibly good people. I don't think that's the case. The people running these companies certainly aren't good people and everyone else in any position of power is either happy to hurt anyone and anything in exchange for a paycheck, or they're willing to take the money and turn a blind eye to the things they know are wrong. It's difficult t…

> “The people running these companies certainly aren't good people”

That is an heavy understatement. After reading some biographies and books about the tech elite… it's just much weirder and sickly than i ever imagined. Strange cults, religions and beliefs. Surprisingly high stupidity mixed with intense hate of humans. Straight up anti-social anti-human behaviour… and drugs, so much drugs that lead to psychosis. Narcissism and superiority… you would have hard time finding anyone moderately nice to hang out with. It's a real curse that the system pushes up people like this.

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

#353

Post by fluoridation »

slg wrote: post #287
rayiner wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>It’s like worrying in 1960 that the companies that invented computers will hoard the benefits of computing. Isn't that what happened? There was enough competition among computing companies that they weren't able to completely monopolize all the productivity improvements, but the financial benefits were mostly captured by the capital class in one way or another.[1] TVs might be cheaper today and we all like watching…

>I'm skeptical of the idea that the financial wellbeing of the average American has been improved by computers.

Really? Even with all the new avenues of education and communication that they opened up? You think the positives and negatives balance out to close to zero?

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

#354

Post by ctoth »

ori_b wrote: post #137
ctoth wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Maybe figure out the answers to that before forcing everyone into an economy where they still need to work to make money, but any worthwhile jobs have been automated away. The other question, of course, is what happens to the political power of the newly disposable?

Brother, I'm trying to. Any thoughts?

Also, what's a "worthwhile" job?

Have you read Player Piano?

Are brainjobs more important than musclejobs?

If we can automate musclejobs so people don't have to die in the heat and we can automate brainjobs so people don't have to lose their sanity in offices, wouldn't that be a better world?

Note: it probably won't be, because of what I like to call the "Enterprise High" effect, but here we are. Basically once the only thing people have to compete over is status, shit gets nasty quicklike, think PG's high school essay but for everything and forever. Everything goes into rivalrous goods like who's sleeping with who.

Star Trek as soap opera where all their needs are met and the only concern is purely social.

But this is probably better than a world where people don't actually have material needs met?

I legit don't actually know. Would love to figure it out though, what do you think!

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

#355

Post by jimbokun »

hattmall wrote: post #278
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.

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…

When exactly in history was this utopian age?

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

#356

Post by 12_throw_away »

simonw wrote: post #4

> Pew writes that 44 percent of U.S. adults now say they use OpenAI’s chatbot, a figure that’s more than doubled since 2023. > The next most popular chatbot is Gemini (24 percent), followed by Copilot (17 percent) and MetaAI (14 percent), with Grok (8 percent), Claude (6 percent) and Character.ai (3 percent) lagging behind. Claude in 6th place, behind Gemini and Copilot and MetaAI and Grok? No wonder the general publ…

Ah, they're using the wrong model, of course. "AI" hasn't failed, it's the users who are wrong.

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

#357

Post by layer8 »

nonethewiser wrote: post #253
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…

This is an interesting way of thinking about it. I generally agree. I especially agree that anti-AI sentiment partially comes from miss-using it. However: Determinism isn't a requirement for 100% correctness. A Las Vegas algorithm is randomized, non-deterministic and guarantees 100% correctness [0]. The execution can be different every time but the result will always be correct. determinism does not lose accuracy. It…

The economics of it (token cost) means, however, that what will be chosen most often is the barely sustainable minimum level of quality, aka race to the bottom. AI is more cost-sensitive in that way than humans caring or not caring about making things robust and correct used to be.

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

#358

Post by ori_b »

ctoth wrote: post #354
ori_b wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe figure out the answers to that before forcing everyone into an economy where they still need to work to make money, but any worthwhile jobs have been automated away. The other question, of course, is what happens to the political power of the newly disposable?

Brother, I'm trying to. Any thoughts? Also, what's a "worthwhile" job? Have you read Player Piano? Are brainjobs more important than musclejobs? If we can automate musclejobs so people don't have to die in the heat and we can automate brainjobs so people don't have to lose their sanity in offices, wouldn't that be a better world? Note: it probably won't be, because of what I like to call the "Enterprise High" effect,…

> Are brainjobs more important than musclejobs?

Try answering that without your brain.

We're trying to build a world where there's no advantage to having one, so start living in the future you want to build.

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

#359

Post by Shitty-kitty »

The industrial revolution is undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements in human history.

What everyone glosses over is that it really sucked for the workers that lived thru it. Highly skilled jobs like weaving became obsolete and the low-skill factory work that replaced it, paid little more than a starvation wage.

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

#360

Post by jimbokun »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #172
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.

Superhuman abilities for the wealthy tech oligarchs, economic indentured servitude and slums for the rest of us. Tens of millions of people in the US alone cannot obtain basic healthcare today, how would this outcome change for them because AI solved it? The only solid paths are regulation or prying the machine from the hands of those who hold it. GLP-1s are only widely available globally affordably because the paten…

Indentured servitude implies they still need us for something once they have superhuman robots doing their bidding.
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