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My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

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Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#101

Post by drivebyhooting »

ultrarunner wrote: post #73
drivebyhooting wrote: post #15

AI is awesome as a consumer. You can just build whatever bespoke thing you want. It can walk you through a myriad of home improvement projects.

It walks my retired parents through their home projects like the project is a labyrinth. Spewing reams and reams of nonsense at them, but their memories are short enough (and their trust high enough) that they follow it aimlessly until they lose interest. For the most part, they wander around close enough to reality to be harmless, but they rarely ever land on “success” until it suggests hiring a professional. At lea…

I’m sorry to hear that. I think AI can be quite dangerous. But their experience is a skill issue.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#102

Post by briandw »

nomel wrote: post #89
dlubarov wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it's a short-term economic quirk Not with the memory cartel that exists right now. They're more than happy to keep things exactly as they are, with lawsuits flying [1]. [1] https://www.rainintelligence.com/blog/dram-price-fixing-laws...

Fabs take a long time to build. The price will come down once the new fabs come on line. It’s expensive because there isn’t enough of it. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s supply and demand. We’ve see this boom and bust cycle again and again.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#103

Post by hresvelgr »

pier25 wrote: post #79
japhyr wrote: post #2

Of 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…

> you've got a really high bar to clear to prove that you're actually helping students learn better, and teachers teach better Absolutely. In fact the data from the past 10-15 years clearly shows the best education technology is still pen and paper, books, and good pedagogy.

I have tried memorisation systems like Anki, but nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing consolidates my knowledge better than writing the actual concept down with pen and paper.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#104

Post by vkou »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #100
vkou wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric motors empower you, and are available to almost anyone. Trillion-dollar AI firms sitting like a dragon's hoard of state-of-the art models and hardware disempower you. That's the difference. --- People who were disempowered by motors weren't exactly thrilled about them, either, but they were a minority underclass.

> Electric motors empower you, and are available to almost anyone. AI is much more available to people than motors of any kind. Long-press your Android phone's power button: There's Gemini.

> AI is much more available to people than motors of any kind

Vacuum cleaners, washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners, automobiles of all shapes and sizes (private and shared), power tools are all examples of electric motors that you own and can do useful things with.

What electric motors do is give you power over your environment.

---

You don't own Gemini. You are allowed to use Gemini as long as your economic value to Google exceeds the cost of the electricity to run it.

With Gemini, Google has power over you.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#105

Post by Barrin92 »

crmd wrote: post #18

Ordinary people were generally marvelous of the electric motor because it was obvious how it would make life better. Their great grandchildren, with the same common sense, are extremely cynical about LLMs and other knowledge work robots. What changed?

>What changed?

Motors, electric or otherwise, made it so you can jump in a car, or a bus and drive you and your friends to the movies or on a holiday and go out and see the world. LLMs make it so people end up like delusional zombies talking to a screen.

Nothing has changed about people, they had common sense then and they have common sense now and they recognize when you try to sell them something useful that makes the physical world and their social situation better and when you want to sell them something out of dystopian sci-fi novels.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#106

Post by alanwreath »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #99
solid_fuel wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Them: Using AI has made my personal experience with my job much worse, and I dislike using it. You: Have you considered using more AI? Dance monkey, dance! Show them how good at AI you are! Genuinely, learn to read the room - or at the very least read the comments you plan to respond to before you respond to them.

> at the very least read the comments you plan to respond to before you respond to them Did you see the part where they complained about the experience with low quality contractors becoming extra bad? A suggestion to get rid of those contractors entirely so now they only have the AI problem might actually be an improvement.

That probably is exactly what is being referred to: the combination of low quality contractors who have access to AI means even more slop to wade through.

If AI is a 10xer the question is what is it 10xing.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#107

Post by palmotea »

jrockway wrote: post #25

Relatable. AI is something I only bring up to the most trusted of trusted friends. Politics is more approachable these days. I think a lot of people have formed opinions without having used it, and honestly, they probably can't afford to use it. I use Claude a lot at work because it's something my employer provides, and I'm always impressed with the results. It saves a lot of time and lets me get more done. But it ai…

> But it ain't cheap. So people really don't get to try out AI and form their own opinions....

> I also think people are mad at the world. Times are tough for many. Hearing about a job-killing machine doesn't exactly inspire joy. So I kind of understand the pushback on datacenters and AI and that sort of thing. I don't find it particularly logical; datacenters have existed forever and most money poured into computer programs are basically designed to mess up your life (deny you credit, deny you healthcare, rebook your flight to a terrible time, the list goes on) and so I don't think AI is anything new in that respect. But, if you're mad at the world, you might as well find something to take out your rage on and raging against AI will make you a lot of friends.

Then you need to quit confusing simplistic pattern matching for logic. Details matter, as do degree and scale.

Yes, data centers "existed forever," but compared to a hyper-scalar AI datacenter; they were small, used far less electricity, and their generators were used for backup, not primary power.

Yes, there were computer programs that could "mess up your life," but they were narrow in function so not such an existential threat. I'm sure you understand the difference between a phone tree and Claude Mythos.

And maybe develop a little empathy? You said "people are mad at the world. Times are tough for many." Why is that? Do you think part of that might be that people have gotten the chair kicked out from under them. And along comes AI, which has been promised to be a bigger chair-kicker than anyone's ever seen?

> I work in the AI infra industry and ya know, a lot of our customers have really good ideas that are going to save people a lot of time and effort, so I am OK with the general direction of the field as a whole.

Oh, but why would people be so "illogical" to be mad at such a thing as AI? It's so hard to understand, right? [Insert Upton Sinclair quote here]

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#108

Post by __rito__ »

hresvelgr wrote: post #103
pier25 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you've got a really high bar to clear to prove that you're actually helping students learn better, and teachers teach better Absolutely. In fact the data from the past 10-15 years clearly shows the best education technology is still pen and paper, books, and good pedagogy.

I have tried memorisation systems like Anki, but nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing consolidates my knowledge better than writing the actual concept down with pen and paper.

Creating flashcards is also such a chore!

For the recall part of education, the book's exercise, or simply covering up the relevant part with hand and forcing a recall, writing about what you learned, teaching someone else - all work great, and the flow is much more natural.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#109

Post by __rito__ »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #101
ultrarunner wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It walks my retired parents through their home projects like the project is a labyrinth. Spewing reams and reams of nonsense at them, but their memories are short enough (and their trust high enough) that they follow it aimlessly until they lose interest. For the most part, they wander around close enough to reality to be harmless, but they rarely ever land on “success” until it suggests hiring a professional. At lea…

I’m sorry to hear that. I think AI can be quite dangerous. But their experience is a skill issue.

Not really.

For example, the AI model being used is also a big factor.

Gemini 3.5 Pro, Grok were like this - spewed nonsense advice for anything 'physical'. Grok gave me very poor gardening advice, as an example.

But Claude Opus 4.8, 5, GPT Sol 5.6 are much better in this front.

So, it is an AI/model issues, not a skill issue.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#110

Post by yogthos »

jltsiren wrote: post #90
yogthos wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find interesting is the contrast between the West and China here. Most people in the West expect that AI will make their lives worse in some way. Meanwhile, 84% of Chinese are excited about this tech, and expect that it will be used to make their lives better. it's a really vivid contrast between the way new technology becomes integrated into each type of society. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-0…

The same probably holds without AI. China is still in the stage of development, where people reasonably expect that the future will be better. The West has not really been optimistic about the future since the 90s. There is always something around the corner threatening to make the future worse. Maybe it's the economy, maybe it's climate change, maybe immigration, or terrorism, or war, or whatever.

It's worth noting that China has seen decades of steady development, and has avoided the boom/bust cycles we see happening in the west. While we've lived through dotCom bubble, the 2008 crash, covid, and now the looming AI bubble, China has just seen steady progress without the working majority getting screwed every decade like clockwork. While future can always bring something unexpected, it is possible to have a resilient system that adapts to the problems as they surface.
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