I feel like I fall into the neutral camp for the current round of AI bots. I've seen less-capable people churn out text/documents that aren't really better or more informative than their human level slop, except for more voluminous. So I guess that goes in the slightly negative column. But not a huge negative, since it just needs to be mostly ignored, like their previous human content. It is mostly a bit insulting to generate this slop. If I wanted to know what the chat bot has to say about something, I'd ask it myself. There is more low-effort slop on YouTube to wade through, but that probably means I should engage in something more productive than YouTube. Does that count as a positive or negative? The current crop of LLMs make meme generation easier. Again, is that a positive or negative? I'm not a professional computer programmer so churning out reams of code doesn't really excite me. Most of the questions I ask the bot are apparently too hard for them to answer correctly. Like I was wondering about the modulus of elasticity of "low-stretch" synthetic fiber ropes vs steel-wire cables. And it seems like it couldn't give me a straight answer. Like I just want the data using the same/consistent units so I can compare. Data center build-out/expansion isn't something I fear. There was some boring AI-generated art on the wall of a beach rental house I went to recently. It is something I wouldn't generally even notice, but one of my children looked closely, and sure enough there were oddly shaped sea shells and other artifacts. Again, luke-warm to that. Did some corporate artist lose a commission on some stock image art? I guess I could feel a little bit bad about that. I wouldn't have thought the rental was worse if they just had a blank wall.
My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
61–70 of 221 posts
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it while the people I know who hate it all seem to be idelogically motivated (seemingly this is a cause de célèbre on the left right now?)
My partner cried the other day because her long-planned PC upgrade is now an order of magnitude more expensive than she budgeted for pre-AI-boom.
I don't love this either, but at least it's a short-term economic quirk. At some point fabs will figure out what the long-term demand looks like and scale up production accordingly.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? You google something, and the AI overview makes shit up. Just happened the other day with my oven - it hallucinated a diagnostic step that doesn't exist on my model. You go to type an email in gmail, and it tries to suggest sentences as you're typing. Press the wrong key and now you have to delete what it inserted. The things it suggests are just wordy…
most of these complaints aren't because of AI though, managers have always looked to make staff redundant when there is a cheaper alternative regardless of quality, politicians giving tax breaks to giant corporations? was always happening before AI came along
You are perfectly welcome to blame it on capitalism, and you're not entirely wrong, but before LLMs machines couldn't fill these roles at all - so LLMs are the enabling technology here that is being used to justify the cuts.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#64Of course everyone hates AI. For most people, it's actively making their lives worse, not better. AI is a really effective technology when used with restraint, in appropriate places. But it's rarely being used with restraint, and it's being inserted just about everywhere. If you're trying to work in AI on a product related to education, you've got a really high bar to clear to prove that you're actually helping stude…
No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it while the people I know who hate it all seem to be idelogically motivated (seemingly this is a cause de célèbre on the left right now?)
What AI has done to my job as a software developer is make my personal output higher while taking away almost every ounce of enjoyment, interest, and passion I had for the job. Overnight I went from loving my job to hating my job as much as everybody I know outside of tech hates their jobs.
I won't even get into what it has done to the already-awful experience of working with low-quality contractors.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#65The only thing more annoying than ai boosters is aai self-haters. Either use it and shut up or don't use it. It's like when people are all like 'oh I know that I should really be vegan but im not mentally strong enough'
> Either use it and shut up or don't use it. Many people do not have a choice to not use it at their jobs due to internal mandates. Regardless of their own use, many people are subjected to externalized cost of AI proliferation (data centers, layoffs, electrical bills, etc). One cannot choose to not be affected by it. But even if one were personally not at all affected by it, it is still reasonable for someone to pus…
You always have a choice. If my job made me bash puppies on the head with a hammer, I'd quit. All you have to decide is where you draw that line.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
as regards posts online, left out the part where you fret (or do not know enough to fret) about the fact that you not knowing if it is a bot or not is part of the problem, or how it could affect you if you reply or not. many times, so many bots and drones have been unleashed looking for a juicy person to take down or troll that you find it difficult to interact online under your own identity, then find it difficult t…
> as regards posts online, left out the part where you fret (or do not know enough to fret) about the fact that you not knowing if it is a bot or not is part of the problem, or how it could affect you if you reply or not. many times, so many bots and drones have been unleashed looking for a juicy person to take down or troll that you find it difficult to interact online under your own identity, then find it difficult…
aye. at the same time it is harder to get an email account not linked to your real identity in some way (most services want sms; even if you pay for something, your gps is there). i mean, some people abuse things. that doesn't mean i or you should be silenced or treated like dirt. even if it does not fit a norm, it is still better than being hunted to be silenced. this is what i have witnessed ai being used for, and it is getting worse with kids.
people forget people from different stratas use tech in different ways. the way a middle class kid picks on another kid and a lower or upper class one does is different, just as the way they use tech to do so varies.
same as with adults.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#67The only thing more annoying than ai boosters is aai self-haters. Either use it and shut up or don't use it. It's like when people are all like 'oh I know that I should really be vegan but im not mentally strong enough'
>Either use it and shut up or don't use it.
Life isn't this simple.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#68[deleted]
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it while the people I know who hate it all seem to be idelogically motivated (seemingly this is a cause de célèbre on the left right now?)
What AI has done to my job as a software developer is make my personal output higher while taking away almost every ounce of enjoyment, interest, and passion I had for the job. Overnight I went from loving my job to hating my job as much as everybody I know outside of tech hates their jobs. I won't even get into what it has done to the already-awful experience of working with low-quality contractors.
Effective organizations are busy replacing the low-quality contractors with AI. Seize the opportunity to demonstrate how you can get more done with a $1,000/month token budget than with $10,000/month in contractor salary.
Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
#70Of course everyone hates AI. For most people, it's actively making their lives worse, not better. AI is a really effective technology when used with restraint, in appropriate places. But it's rarely being used with restraint, and it's being inserted just about everywhere. If you're trying to work in AI on a product related to education, you've got a really high bar to clear to prove that you're actually helping stude…
No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it while the people I know who hate it all seem to be idelogically motivated (seemingly this is a cause de célèbre on the left right now?)
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