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Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

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Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#11

Post by rvz »

lioeters wrote: post #8

Ex-CEO of Google telling a crowd of young graduates entering society, "You will work for AI." Then trying to counter the boos with remarks like: "If you get offered a chance to ride on the rocket ship, you don't ask questions you just get on." This is not only about AI the technology, it's the deserved anger against the privileged and powerful for their utter mismanagement of society. The youth sees through the bulls…

The worst part was he was smirking.

At this point, people in tech are just as hated as bankers and the general public will see them as their enemies, taking away their job, but this time permanently.

Of course he knows there will be a crash in this, so its unsurprising to see this reaction. But the point is, Schmidt does not care either way as he stands to benefit and expects humanity to be paying for the tokens.

He is already prepared for the eventual backlash anyway.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#13

Post by ivewonyoung »

float4 wrote: post #5

As someone who's in his late 20s and didn't (consciously) witness the dotcom crisis I want to ask the older people here: was this also part of the dotcom bubble era? Were people working in bookstores angry at Amazon, people working in retail fashion angry at fashion ecommerce stores, etc?

Free Prime shipping which started in 2005 was the real killer. Before that it was more about the large variety that was simply not available in bookstores etc. so people were willing to pay extra for shipping.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#14

Post by Austizzle »

stavros wrote: post #4

Honest question, are people against AI, or against AI being solely in the hands of a few massive companies, thus concentrating wealth even more? Are people against local models as well? What if they could run Claude at home (maybe with the same power requirements as now, but maybe with much less upfront cost).

I feel like it's a mix of so many things it's hard to know the answers to any of these questions.

- the job market is harder now, apparently because of AI - environmental concerns due to data centers - the ethical issues with scraping people's copyright data to power AI - slop overwhelming the Internet, fake videos all over tiktok that seem real - safety issues like AI psychosis

The world is hard right now, and a lot of the things that make it hard seem to intersect in all sorts of ways with the way AI is being developed, run, and used.

If you solve one of those issues, you still haven't solved the other ones.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#15

Post by foldr »

lioeters wrote: post #8

Ex-CEO of Google telling a crowd of young graduates entering society, "You will work for AI." Then trying to counter the boos with remarks like: "If you get offered a chance to ride on the rocket ship, you don't ask questions you just get on." This is not only about AI the technology, it's the deserved anger against the privileged and powerful for their utter mismanagement of society. The youth sees through the bulls…

>If you get offered a chance to ride on the rocket ship, you don't ask questions you just get on

This doesn't even work as a metaphor. I absolutely would not jump on the chance to ride on a literal rocket ship without asking a hell of a lot of questions first!

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#16

Post by SirFatty »

float4 wrote: post #5

As someone who's in his late 20s and didn't (consciously) witness the dotcom crisis I want to ask the older people here: was this also part of the dotcom bubble era? Were people working in bookstores angry at Amazon, people working in retail fashion angry at fashion ecommerce stores, etc?

Apples and oranges.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#17

Post by ompogUe »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #6
float4 wrote: post #5

As someone who's in his late 20s and didn't (consciously) witness the dotcom crisis I want to ask the older people here: was this also part of the dotcom bubble era? Were people working in bookstores angry at Amazon, people working in retail fashion angry at fashion ecommerce stores, etc?

Not really. Secretaries and typists aged out of the job market, Barnes and Nobles was still booming and attracted all the bookstore scorn, people still bought things in stores anyways.

What I remember is the big box book stores coming to town and putting the independent and smaller stores out of business. While I did appreciate having access to stacks of modern computer manuals, it didn't last long: once the mom-and-pops were out of business, the big box stores pivoted to converting half of their floor space to selling candles and pillows.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#18

Post by Daviey »

float4 wrote: post #5

As someone who's in his late 20s and didn't (consciously) witness the dotcom crisis I want to ask the older people here: was this also part of the dotcom bubble era? Were people working in bookstores angry at Amazon, people working in retail fashion angry at fashion ecommerce stores, etc?

No, it was novel and exciting.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#19

Post by AnimalMuppet »

stavros wrote: post #4

Honest question, are people against AI, or against AI being solely in the hands of a few massive companies, thus concentrating wealth even more? Are people against local models as well? What if they could run Claude at home (maybe with the same power requirements as now, but maybe with much less upfront cost).

Speaking just for myself:

I hate AI output. I hate it in code, I hate it in prose. It's just off in ways that range from subtle to absolutely blatant. It's wrong in ways that the humans involved (if any) either can't or don't fix.

I hate the carelessness of other peoples' time and attention. No, I have no interest in what your AI "thinks" in response to your prompt. If that's what you're doing, just send me the prompt, not the AI output.

And I hate the AI companies, not so much because AI is solely in the hands of a few companies, but because they're trying to make it appear so inevitable and once-in-a-lifetime-get-on-it-now-or-be-left-behind-forever that everyone is losing their minds and chasing it like lemmings.

I'm against all of it. I actually care about people. Computers are tools; that's all. When the tools make it harder to connect with other humans in a human way, when the contact turns into this weird unnatural garbage where I can't hear the heart of the person on the other side, then computers are bad tools that need to stop being used. (Yes, you could have "corporate speak" that had the same problems, but at least that came at the speed that humans can type. AI lets it flow far faster, fast enough that it drowns out actual human communication. That's a huge loss.)

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#20

Post by krackers »

Austizzle wrote: post #14
stavros wrote: post #4

Honest question, are people against AI, or against AI being solely in the hands of a few massive companies, thus concentrating wealth even more? Are people against local models as well? What if they could run Claude at home (maybe with the same power requirements as now, but maybe with much less upfront cost).

I feel like it's a mix of so many things it's hard to know the answers to any of these questions. - the job market is harder now, apparently because of AI - environmental concerns due to data centers - the ethical issues with scraping people's copyright data to power AI - slop overwhelming the Internet, fake videos all over tiktok that seem real - safety issues like AI psychosis The world is hard right now, and a lot…

I don't think AI safety/psychosis/alignment issues are on most people's minds. All of the other ones are basically downstream of AI furthering wealth inequality. Job market for obvious reasons. Environmental concerns are mostly downstream of the fact that cities are suddenly accommodating data centers while they didn't care about promoting growth of infrastructure before, and citizens are asked to foot the electrical/water bills. (People would not care about environmental impacts as much if they weren't immediately impacted, say the DCs were built in Africa).

Also missed is the pushback against AI art: the further devaluation of talent, and an associated loss of meaning many people have. I think this is probably still downstream of it threatening jobs though, since people would not react as violently if they could truly treat art as a hobby instead of as a profession.

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