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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

#131

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

dlubarov wrote: post #62
mintplant wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It could be a medium/long term political quirk, because as long as RAM and GPU prices stay high the BigCos maintain a monopoly on non-trivial AI compute, and personal AI can't happen.

I still can't work out if data centre mania is an irrational faddy bandwagon event or a covert socio-political monopolisation strategy.

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

#132

Post by 72deluxe »

happytoexplain wrote: post #64
CSMastermind wrote: post #7

Earlier 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.

I found it meant I could produce loads and loads of code I can't mentally keep track of, and therefore have no hope of understanding without ........ a LLM.

Colossal brain rot for me.

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

#133

Post by cure_42 »

dlx wrote: post #127
krat0sprakhar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI slop that's everywhere is making it worse. Even if someone doesn't care about AI, their feeds (YT, Instagram, LinkedIn) is now filled with AI slop

I'm actually thinking that may be a good thing. Maybe people will get off these feeds and...interact with people IRL? ;)

There is nothing about using the most popular social media platforms in the world that implies someone doesn't have an active and healthy social life. If you think it does, you may be projecting.

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

#134

Post by s1artibartfast »

palmotea wrote: post #124
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.

> 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. I hear AI is especially awesome in domains you personally don't understand.

Yes, but unironically. It's a fantastic tool for learning. Better than Wikipedia or Google search.

I've used it as a fabulous tool to learn so many new things. From walking step by step me through rebuilding an electric motor, to reviewing and explaining my child's medical reports.

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

#135

Post by scotty79 »

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…

Most people I know that hate AI have faulty versions (1 year behind the frontier) pushed on them at their jobs. People who are free to experiment with frontier models capabilities at their own pace mostly love it or at least are impressed by its capability.

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

#136

Post by s1artibartfast »

mawadev wrote: post #121

Reasons why I currently dislike AI: - it is not as accurate and good as advertised - being forced to use and care about it - it is bad for the environment at the scale and competition that exists in this economy - it is a mirror, and augmentation and reveals really inhuman takes and thought processes from people who are on the longer lever in society - it is already in use for very unethical things (spying and war) -…

I'm curious what bad experience is regular people have with AI. For me it basically makes everything better. I use it probably a hundred times a day and struggle to think about interaction where I walk away wishing it It wasn't involved.

I listen to AI generated audiobooks on the way to work. It makes my job easier and find data or papers or emails for me. On the way home I can have a Back in forth conversation about history. At home at helps me with my personal projects or come up with recipes to make dinner. How are regular people using it that is so awful?

A lot of people are spun up about it, but it almost always seems to be about distant concerns, not their personal experience.

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

#137

Post by 72deluxe »

arecsu wrote: post #28
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Data centers and their side effects (higher electricity prices, etc) and job layoffs attributed to AI; plus a bunch of industry specific objections (like say, how it's currently destroying the educational system). > Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it Not sure what crowd you're running with. Myself and coworkers use AI an…

I love using AI. Getting my crazy ideas turn into software has never been easier. I like to architect software, not the code itself. The code has always been the means to my ends. I also love learning complicated concepts, from academics, math, physics, to art, philosophy, religion. It's wonderful to translate knowledge that is already out there but hard to understand somehow, because you can ask about it over and ov…

Have you ever wondered how ridiculous it would be to say you love cars and then not have a clue about how it works? As in, "I've built a wonderful car", but have no idea how the engine or any of the components work.

Replace "car" with "application" or "software", and that's what you're doing. Would you get in a car "built" by someone who knows nothing about cars?

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

#138

Post by rsynnott »

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?

Well, for a start, electric motors worked properly and didn’t generate infinite amounts of unreadable crap.

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by sixtyj »

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.

Thank you for mentioning this. Tactile experience is completely different.

Manfred Spitzer and his book (2012) about digital dementia is full of proofs.

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