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The AI backlash is only getting started

economist.com

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Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#81

Post by josefritzishere »

lnenad wrote: post #51
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 n…

Sorry but it's painfully true. I now spending time daily like the "reverse-centaur" fixing things that AI has hallucinated, conflated, or just done wrong. It's miserable work. The copy/pasta part is easy.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#82

Post by orangecat »

adamddev1 wrote: post #17
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…

It seems by definition "below par" of whatever human activity it's training on. How can we achieve greater and greater heights of intelligence if we're just creeping closer and closer to a sub-par copy of human creative activity.

It seems by definition "below par" of whatever human activity it's training on

How many sub-par mathematicians could solve the unit distance conjecture?

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#83

Post by customguy »

dickiedyce wrote: post #7
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"...and no one would feel the difference" does speak to the inadequcy of bureaucracy and government execution. Maybe we wouldn't notice the difference with our interactions with bureaucracy and government, but fairly certain we'd notice the jobs market being flooded with Golgafrincham's cast-offs.

> "...and no one would feel the difference" does speak to the inadequcy of bureaucracy and government execution.

Well, the attempt to claim that speaks to something, but the claim doesn't really, because it's not true.

Let's not even try to get people to think about people who are not them, people who are in need, people with disabled children, whatever. I don't know about the US because it has very few spaces where people actually live together like humans would, but for the majority of the world, at least in major cities: nevermind healthcare or pensions and whatnot, just consider garbage disposal, and maintenance of plumbing and sewer system, the electric grid, and lots of other "small" things like that. The shit we take for granted and corporations moan about because it cuts into their profits and reduces the costs they can externalize slightly. Regulations that say they can't just put saw dust and some heroin in food, that type of thing. That came to be because that's the type of shit they just could not stop doing.

If you could quicksave and experience that just for yourself, without fucking life up really badly for everyone else and for decades, you totally should. I don't think most people who talk this stuff from myopic bubbles would last even a week. Because they don't think so well, we know this from the arguments, and are not likeable, we know this from how they don't consider other people. So to me that's absolute bottom of the food chain energy talking about the Ark B. Pure, pristine, unadulterated projection.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#84

Post by Jtarii »

dwa3592 wrote: post #64

People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either. Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he…

>Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines??

There is a lot of money to be made in the destruction of civilisation.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#85

Post by phantompeace »

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 really think an LLM will replace a surgeon?

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#86

Post by speak_plainly »

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.

I think the technology industry has a long track record of selling false promises, dead ends, and over-hyped solutions.

AI is an interesting experiment with some real-world applications, but it’s no tractor or mechanical loom... not yet, at least, and it’s far from clear that it ever will be.

As things stand today, AI is not the future. It’s a tool with genuine uses that is being marketed as a revolution.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#87

Post by xvxvx »

The best scenario for AI companies is that they replace the human workforce with their bots and make all the money. It’s a sick, amplified version of outsourced labor.

I’ve been rereading Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of The United States’ and the US has been doing this since day zero. Build the economy on indentured servitude. Replace that with slavery. Flood cities with freed slaves when wages get too high. Flood the country with illegals for the same reason. Offshore the work to poor countries. Automate as much as possible. Now AI.

Kudos to the AI leaders for the carefully manicured publicity, claiming this will make everyone free etc., but people see right through it. It’s the never-ending class war between a tiny minority of ultra-wealthy scumbags vs. everyday people one bad day away from being homeless.

Socialism will spread across the US and the battles will continue.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#88

Post by dgellow »

dofm wrote: post #75
dwa3592 wrote: post #64

People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either. Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he…

> People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Cal Newport calls this "Doom-Trolling" — there was an NYT article, he has talked about it on his youtube channel and there was an actually really great, long discussion with Ed Zitron about it where Ed covered a lot more topic ground than he…

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/opinion/ai-dangerous-open...

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#89

Post by dweinus »

estearum wrote: post #71
dwa3592 wrote: post #64

People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either. Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he…

Just because people are angry does not make it false. > Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? Because arms race. Game dynamics and incentive structures don't cease to exist just because someone notices them.

All those devs and data scientists and PhDs make a choice though. They could quit and work somewhere else. Even in a tough market their skills are in demand. They choose to work on this every morning.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#90

Post by WarmWash »

dwa3592 wrote: post #64

People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either. Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he…

>Who did not see this coming?

The general vibe of the internet at least for the last 20 years has been "Work sucks, play is fun, give whatever technology minimizes my need to work and maximizes my wealth and free time"

All these same guys have also talked about the need for UBI, so they basically have been promising the dream of the liberal internet: No work, free money, do whatever you want in your life.

The viability of this dream is pretty debatable, but it definitely checks all the boxes of the internet hivemind as of ~3-4 years ago.

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