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Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

paulkrugman.substack.com

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Re: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

#121

Post by bloody-crow »

> But why were they so willing to promote apocalyptic visions in the first place? The answer is money. They pushed the idea that they had a technology that would quickly and utterly transform the economy partly to dazzle Wall Street and secure financing, and partly to scare businesses into rushing into AI adoption for fear of being left behind.

I find a different explanation more plausible. They were actually candid and were saying what they were really thinking at the time. Then later when AI hate emerged and solidified, they were told by their PR advisers to cool it down on doomer perspective and lean more into an optimistic vision.

Re: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

#123

Post by saratogacx »

verdverm wrote: post #79
voidUpdate wrote: post #3

Given the amount of people on HN happily using LLMs for their everyday work and extolling the virtues of LLMs, "everyone" might be a bit excessive

The same Pew poll had some interesting data points Krugman left out - The first data point Pew presents is ~50% of Americans use Ai chat bots - The second data point shows 25% of those using it is for fun and entertainment (1:8 overall) - 1/4 of Americans use it daily Krugman lost me when he said "Ai is dishonest" as if it has intent. He makes too much rage bait these days.

English really doesn't have a good way of broadly saying "lack of a trait" that isn't "adverse to a trait". In coding we have to have specific terms for lack thereof that is distinct from "vale of zero of".

Discourse, especially around things like AI could benefit from having a term like nullhonest to enforce it is a lack of honesty as an associated concept instead of having zero honesty.

Re: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

#124

Post by saratogacx »

keyringlight wrote: post #57
somewhereoutth wrote: post #8

I went to look for a new phone about 6 months ago - everything was AI this, AI that, all the display stands made a big deal about AI (to the extent I considered a 2024 phone because no AI). In the end I didn't buy at that point. Just last week finally I had to buy a new phone, and so I went shopping again - this time no AI was mentioned anywhere . Not online, not on the stands in the shops, nowhere. The silence speak…

For what it's worth, my ASUS motherboard from 2017 has their overclocking utility branded as "AI suite 3" (implying there were 2 before). I think having a buzzword to slap on products that fits the latest trend is a checkbox for whoever is marketing these, whether or not it fits any textbook definition of that term.

Asus's AI Suite has been around a lot longer than that. My 2014 Motherboard has the same software, it came on a CD with the board. it was sold as a utility for continual performance, power, and noise/airflow tuning, nothing really like AI is sold as a feature today.

Re: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

#125

Post by verdverm »

intended wrote: post #119
verdverm wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is our job to educate our friends and family Otherwise they are going to get bad notions from people like Krugman

I think you are drawing a line in the sand that is close to you, but very far away from where Krugman stands, for it to be a fair distance to cross.

I've seen plenty of Krugman to recognize he's part of the political bipolariztion media ecosystem replacing trad news. I used to consume a lot of that group until I realized they are as much a part of the problem as the right wingers.

Both sides are about winning at all costs and dominating others. Politics should be about compromise, give and take. The real fight is against the oligarchs and Trump-Epstein class.

Re: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

#126

Post by verdverm »

saratogacx wrote: post #123
verdverm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same Pew poll had some interesting data points Krugman left out - The first data point Pew presents is ~50% of Americans use Ai chat bots - The second data point shows 25% of those using it is for fun and entertainment (1:8 overall) - 1/4 of Americans use it daily Krugman lost me when he said "Ai is dishonest" as if it has intent. He makes too much rage bait these days.

English really doesn't have a good way of broadly saying "lack of a trait" that isn't "adverse to a trait". In coding we have to have specific terms for lack thereof that is distinct from "vale of zero of". Discourse, especially around things like AI could benefit from having a term like nullhonest to enforce it is a lack of honesty as an associated concept instead of having zero honesty.

English has that for some words, like apathetic, but I would still hesitate from musing that word for Ai's "apathy" to facts and correctness.

Re: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

#127

Post by jerkstate »

jplusequalt wrote: post #92
jerkstate wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s time for people who understand how to use AI to stop trying to convince people who don’t. Let them churn their own butter, weave their own clothes, and type out their programs one character at a time. It’s what they want.

>It’s time for people who understand how to use AI to stop trying to convince people who don’t. This reeks of self flattery. Using AI isn't "hard". Any experienced developer can simply pull in a skill into your harness and have it writing code at a similar level to others with the same harness.

[flagged]

Re: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

#128

Post by ben_w »

steveBK123 wrote: post #117
pjc50 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is not a good use of AI and the customer service people are going to gradually work that out, especially once people start having the "you know this is a legally binding statement on behalf of your company, right" discussion. You can't put an AI in a flow which requires reliable results. I don't think people who are used to determinism have coped with that.

> You can't put an AI in a flow which requires reliable results. I don't think people who are used to determinism have coped with that. The problem is .. what flows don't need determinism? Search results / recommendation engine / ad targeting ? Arguably the majority of companies & corporate users are using these tools in cases they expect determinism. Email inbox summaries. Search summaries. What is the value of x qu…

> The problem is .. what flows don't need determinism? Search results / recommendation engine / ad targeting ?

That's not the relevant question, because the actual answer to what you asked is "all flows where human judgement is used".

The thing we need to not blindly use current generation AI for is "things where we accept the combination of an untrained (or barely trained) human with no QA".

IMO, the drive to use AI is not only fully automating a lot of things that shouldn't be so, but also revealing how some of them never should have been in the first place. If your human customer support agent makes stuff up and that got your business a penalty fine, you might discipline or fire them; not so easy when it's an AI that replaced a whole call centre in one go, even when the incident frequency is the same.

Re: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

#129

Post by api »

FeloniousHam wrote: post #87
api wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like self-driving cars being better than drunk, incompetent, or texting human drivers, AI software is generally better than the garbage churned out by code monkeys who don't care or cheap lowest bidder outsourcers. It's nowhere near the quality of hand-crafted expert human code, but that requires a hand-crafting expert human engineer and takes a long time. I predict that the latter will be reserved for the highe…

> It's nowhere near the quality of hand-crafted expert human code As of June 25th, 2026. Read your comment in four years, and tell me you believe what you've posted. Maybe one year? Four months?

This is definitely a dated comment, yes. I believe it is true today and probably will be for a while, but probably not forever.

The spec is the new code. I expect that in 5 years I will rarely write actual code. I will write specs and herd bots.

Re: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

#130

Post by throwaway-11-1 »

orangedog wrote: post #44
esperent wrote: post #4

An alternative theory: people care deeply about art, and the people who make it: artists, musicians, writers. This is a large part of what gives out society meaning, and even for people who don't think deeply about it, we intuitively understand that these artists (outside of a lucky few) get very little back compared to the effort and passion they put in, and the value they add to society. And suddenly, here come all…

I have a friend that argues this a lot an while I have done creative stuff, I just don't intuitively feel it. I've seen and heard very creative generated stuff. Is it unfair and does it suck that creatives aren't getting paid? Yes. But this is nothing new and I don't know how I feel that they deserve special compensation when people work their entire lives for pennies to support their families. It is though the artis…

I don’t get this reasoning, are you saying if other people have to struggle than everyone should? I think art is different in that it’s a medium for connecting feelings from one person to another via an outward expression. Sure there’s a couple artist who use ai and achieve similar outcomes but 99% of ai slop is premised that art is simply an artifact to view, totally detached from inspiration and talent
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