Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The AI backlash is only getting started

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 272 posts

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#51

Post by lnenad »

josefritzishere wrote: post #10

Frankly, most AI is pretty meh, really only impressing AI enthusiasts, with their near religious fervor. There's a big delta there between power users and everyone else. It writes bad emails, messy code, incorrect metrics, dubious slide decks, ugly graphics... the consumer rejection of AI is only growing. At the same time, the product itself is sold wildly below cost. So it needs to be increase in price at the same t…

I never understood people like you.

Factually that's just not true. Five years ago current llms would have seen like magic to even data scientists working on them and realistically their impact has been felt by many. Just taking jobs into account, imagine an average worker in an average industry; how do you think something like Fable compares? Worse? By how much?

Like even many years ago we had alphafold that had a non negligible impact on biology, who knows what's gonna happen when this technology grows up.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#52

Post by fabianholzer »

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #3
eventinbox wrote: post #2

people conflate "AI is overhyped" with "AI is useless" and neither is quite right. the backlash is mostly against the hype cycle not the tech itself. give it 2 years

AI is already too useful to discard, we could automate 90% bureaucracy and government jobs and no one would feel the difference. But of course fear/angst/rage sells.

The reason for the existence of bloated bureaucracy is political will not the technical inability to automate processes before the advent of the current wave of AI.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#53

Post by jcgrillo »

eventinbox wrote: post #2

people conflate "AI is overhyped" with "AI is useless" and neither is quite right. the backlash is mostly against the hype cycle not the tech itself. give it 2 years

OK but I already gave it 2yrs. How many 2yr grace periods do they get before it becomes clear they're simply lying?

It really doesn't help to have stuff like this in print:

> a technology that could power a surge in productivity and incomes, help find cures for untreatable diseases and improve everything from education to green tech.

They just take these claims completely uncritically and move on. Where is the productivity increase? Where are the cured diseases? Where are the improvements in education and green tech? So far, it's all a big fat zero. Maybe in 2yrs some of this will actually be true? Is that the hope?

This is scammer shit. If any of this was true you wouldn't have to ask for extra time.

EDIT: The fact we're all calling this "AI" is part of the problem. It's not AI yet, it's still ML. The Overton red-shift comes for us all in the end.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#54

Post by baron816 »

vitorfblima wrote: post #19

The untold promise of IA is to replace labor. That's probably the only reason why some people are willing to spend trillions of dollars in pursuing this technology. Mere tools would never justify this kind of investment. It's no surprise that people are getting angry, even though many are using AI in their everyday life.

This is just how productivity works. If people spend less time building a unit of output, then you have more output.

People aren’t going to stop wanting stuff. Right now, the world can’t come close to making all the stuff people want. As long as there’s a desire for further consumption, there will be work for people to do.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#55

Post by gruez »

vitorfblima wrote: post #40
gruez wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The untold promise of [tractors] is to replace labor. [...] Mere tools would never justify this kind of investment. How's this any different than say, tractors, or the mechanical loom? After all, agricultural employment went from 90% in the past to 1% today.

We're talking about ALL labor.

Do you think the average dirt farmer in the 1800 is going to be assuaged by the prospect of almost all farm work being mechanized, because he can be a "medical and health services manager" or "data scientist" instead?

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#56

Post by kakacik »

vitorfblima wrote: post #19

The untold promise of IA is to replace labor. That's probably the only reason why some people are willing to spend trillions of dollars in pursuing this technology. Mere tools would never justify this kind of investment. It's no surprise that people are getting angry, even though many are using AI in their everyday life.

Yeah I don't know a single normal peer who is properly happy with AI, folks are not stupid. There is like 1-2 semi-autistic high performing folks who have tunnel vision, 0 emotional intelligence/empathy and are just happy to have some powerful toys.

Every single expert I asked in our circle had at least serious doubts they will have jobs in 10 years. Doctors, lawyers, assistants, of course IT folks, various other white collar jobs. Of course managers with FIRE button are very anxious and feel like firing should have been done yesterday as long as resulting damage is manageable, quietly hoping they will not be also made redundant because at the end same logic applies to them and they often add little on top of simple yes/no decisions sucked out of a thumb.

How disconnected somebody has to be to think folks would cheer on something that will cause absolute catastrophe for them and their families. Literally everybody groks it. Nobody expects employers to have any empathy when they could be removed.

I view AI research and dev folks in similar vein as nazi bureaucrats - quietly working efficiently behind the desk, making vast machineries work, without a care in the world on impacts of such work on fellow man.

One hopefully positive aspect is - prices are rising, and when SHTF they should be on level which makes them long term sustainable, making obvious how costly such replacement would be. But I think it will still be worth it in high cost societies unless governments add regulatory & financial friction, in similar vein ie chinese cars have high import fees. If that fails, resulting situation will be a catastrophe since I don't believe in some form of UBI promise as sustainable long term situation, people are way too nasty, greedy etc.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#57

Post by rvz »

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #3
eventinbox wrote: post #2

people conflate "AI is overhyped" with "AI is useless" and neither is quite right. the backlash is mostly against the hype cycle not the tech itself. give it 2 years

AI is already too useful to discard, we could automate 90% bureaucracy and government jobs and no one would feel the difference. But of course fear/angst/rage sells.

> we could automate 90% bureaucracy and government jobs and no one would feel the difference.

This is really naïve in the long run, since you ultimately cannot solve social problems with technical solutions.

It's always techies that fail to realize the second / third and forth order of events when this level of disruption is measured by the number of mass layoffs you can do in each quarter.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#58

Post by continuational »

vitorfblima wrote: post #19

The untold promise of IA is to replace labor. That's probably the only reason why some people are willing to spend trillions of dollars in pursuing this technology. Mere tools would never justify this kind of investment. It's no surprise that people are getting angry, even though many are using AI in their everyday life.

Well, what if it "just" increased white collar productivity by 1.5x, what would that be worth?

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#59

Post by hatefulheart »

gruez wrote: post #29
vitorfblima wrote: post #19

The untold promise of IA is to replace labor. That's probably the only reason why some people are willing to spend trillions of dollars in pursuing this technology. Mere tools would never justify this kind of investment. It's no surprise that people are getting angry, even though many are using AI in their everyday life.

>The untold promise of [tractors] is to replace labor. [...] Mere tools would never justify this kind of investment. How's this any different than say, tractors, or the mechanical loom? After all, agricultural employment went from 90% in the past to 1% today.

Are you suggesting we can make this comparison because there are no meaningful differences in society from the early 20th century to today?

I reject this argument as bad faith from the start.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#60

Post by adamddev1 »

treis wrote: post #36
adamddev1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People absolutely would feel the difference if AI models started making 90% of the decisions. You were just denied an application because some LLM decided you fit a certain statistical pattern. Where did the LLM go wrong? What were the steps taken to make that decision? Who can you appeal to? Nobody. AI bureaucracy would just keep chugging along, making decisions based on prejudices and patterns it finds but doesn't…

What do you think the government is like today? At least with LLMs you'd get your incorrect answer quickly and cheaply.

Human incompetence, or human-written algorithmic incompetence in code can still be identified, appealed to, and dealt with.

With LLMs you get incompetence cut off from human embodiment and any chance of empathy, baked into opaque black-boxes, and automated and scaled.

We should be arriving to build things that are correct, not saying "stuff sucks already, let's make more stuff that sucks."

Post reply on HN