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Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

nytimes.com

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Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#111

Post by bluefirebrand »

HappyHacker731 wrote: post #80
georgemcbay wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "safe" jobs will get squeezed in two ways. Like you said there will be more people trying to do those jobs causing devaluation on the supply side, but at the same time overall demand will drop because there will be less people with comfortable white-collar jobs that make up a lot of the demand for the work those jobs perform.

Exactly. I've been thinking about the demand issue for a while now too. It makes me think either the frontier labs are really "move fast and break things" cultists that truly don't care about any second order effects, or they're 100% convinced "asi" will subsume all forms of labor. If you permanently remove a massive chunk of labor from the white collar sector that will cause a massive drop in consumer spending, whic…

> It makes me think either the frontier labs are really "move fast and break things" cultists that truly don't care about any second order effects, or they're 100% convinced "asi" will subsume all forms of labor

Either one of these shows they are anti social, anti human sociopaths that only care about enriching themselves at the cost of anything else

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#112

Post by HappyHacker731 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #85
HappyHacker731 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we'd 100% be in a recession A little confused as to how exactly a handful of unprofitable companies are keeping us out of a recession? GDP is not the economy. We have been in a "recession" for a while now, not that that word even really means anything anymore.

How old are you? I hate to pull rank on people, but if you're an American who wasn't yet on the job market in 2008, you've never experienced a sustained recession and don't understand the comparison you're drawing. A recession feels much worse than "things cost too much and the world kind of sucks", and workers are affected as much as businesses and CEOs are.

Just because it isn't as bad as 2008 yet doesn't mean we aren't in a recession. I would argue that we were also in a recession before the housing collapse actually hit. Economists will also tell you that the great recession ended in 2009 which I think we both know is bs. My point is that it's a nebulous term and the economy sucks right now despite a few companies keeping GDP artificially inflated.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#113

Post by bogzz »

thankyoufriend wrote: post #100
bogzz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weavers had a rough go of it for sure, but at least they did not have to spend 4 years of their early adulthood being intellectually challenged in a higher education institution, often going into debt, in order to become qualified weavers.

Actually it was 7 years of physical training that deformed their bodies: "But the work left the body callused, bent, and molded. You could tell a cropper by his enormous forearms and by the “hoof” of callused skin that built up on his wrist. In the spring of 1811, George was in his early twenties, and he’d spent his post-adolescent life learning the trade. Seven years of hard, exacting labor; seven years of paying hi…

Thank you for correcting my misunderstanding! Let me pivot then-- I still argue that it is a fundamentally different case when it comes to LLMs.

1. Threatening young and educated people with not being able to realize the potential that they believed they were building for themselves is toying with social uprising.

2. Weaving is an apt example of redundancy on account of technological innovation but it's a poor comparison to LLMs where the narrative is that they will continue to get better until they approach a general intelligence level which would put a much much higher percentage of the population at risk of losing their jobs. Again, the segment of the population that has invested most into their skills, and will be the most angry and capable of organizing should that come to pass.

Weaving doesn't as aptly represent the core of what we as a species are good at and excel at, as knowledge work does.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#114

Post by bko »

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #110
bko wrote: post #67

Reminds me of the quote: No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded. These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. I'm sure most teachers and schools would prefer them not to. Why do they have to use it? Have standards gotten higher in schools such that they will be left behind if they don't? Is there peer pressure to use i…

Your conception of revealed preferences is highly mistaken. People don’t do things only because they want to. Do you think the existence of millions of trash pickers getting cancer combing through mounds of toxic waste across the world reveal a preference for getting cancer by combing through hazardous waste?

Enlighten me, why do young people use AI?

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#115

Post by bko »

palmotea wrote: post #95
bko wrote: post #67

Reminds me of the quote: No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded. These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. I'm sure most teachers and schools would prefer them not to. Why do they have to use it? Have standards gotten higher in schools such that they will be left behind if they don't? Is there peer pressure to use i…

> These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. I'm sure most teachers and schools would prefer them not to. > Why do they have to use it? Have standards gotten higher in schools such that they will be left behind if they don't? Is there peer pressure to use it? Is there some social aspect I'm unaware of? Did you not read th…

Yes I did read it. Here are the relevant sections:

> Many respondents did acknowledge that A.I. might make them more efficient in school and the workplace, he said. But they were concerned about how the technology would affect their creativity and critical thinking skills.

So it's hurting their creativity and critical thinking skills. I wonder if they the existence of cars are hurting their ability to stay in shape.

Revealed preferences from here:

> In the study, about half of young people reported using A.I. on either a daily or weekly basis, similar to the previous year. Just under 20 percent said they did not use A.I.

The rest of the article is mostly anecdotes or vague notions about social skills.

Why don't you contribute to the conversation instead of just telling me I don't understand the issue

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#116

Post by bko »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #87
bko wrote: post #67

Reminds me of the quote: No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded. These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. I'm sure most teachers and schools would prefer them not to. Why do they have to use it? Have standards gotten higher in schools such that they will be left behind if they don't? Is there peer pressure to use i…

> These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. When you're constantly being force fed the narrative that you must use AI or be left behind, using it is no longer a revealed preference it is a survival mechanism

Literally no one says this to young kids. Teachers are begging them not to use AI. And if you read the article young people are using it for things like deciding what school to go to or dating advice.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#117

Post by causal »

harmonic18374 wrote: post #38
justonepost2 wrote: post #4

We are, in the best case scenario, minting a lost generation in real time. This will become increasingly clear over the next 2 years. Meanwhile, simonw and his retiree friends are having the "time of their lives", so that's good I guess :)

Is that an actual quote from simonw? He seems an unbiased observer and reporter of progress, I'd be sad to see him cheering this stuff on so callously.

Eh it's not very charitable; he's an enthusiast but that's not the same as believing there are no downsides.

At most I've seen him overhype some stuff, but probably less than most in the the tech-influencer sphere.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#118

Post by causal »

beloch wrote: post #61

"Many respondents did acknowledge that A.I. might make them more efficient in school and the workplace, he said. But they were concerned about how the technology would affect their creativity and critical thinking skills." ----------------- Perhaps schools need to adapt to AI use and recenter the goals of education in the minds of students. If AI use impairs your development, you are only being efficient in your evas…

Probably but how do you adapt to something that changes faster than semesters. Revising your theory of learning, implementing, evaluating results, etc. takes years, not weeks.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#119

Post by palmotea »

bko wrote: post #115
palmotea wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. I'm sure most teachers and schools would prefer them not to. > Why do they have to use it? Have standards gotten higher in schools such that they will be left behind if they don't? Is there peer pressure to use it? Is there some social aspect I'm unaware of? Did you not read th…

Yes I did read it. Here are the relevant sections: > Many respondents did acknowledge that A.I. might make them more efficient in school and the workplace, he said. But they were concerned about how the technology would affect their creativity and critical thinking skills. So it's hurting their creativity and critical thinking skills. I wonder if they the existence of cars are hurting their ability to stay in shape.…

I don't think you understood it, because you seemed to read past the key findings to make some tired, tired points about "revealed preferences."

> The percentage of respondents ages 14 to 29 who said they felt hopeful about A.I. declined sharply since last year, down to 18 percent from 27. Young adults’ excitement about artificial intelligence dropped, too, and nearly a third of respondents indicated that the technology made them feel angry. [emphasis mine]

> ...

> In interviews, young adults cited a variety of reasons for their reservations about artificial intelligence, including the threat to entry-level jobs, the replacement of human interaction and the spread of A.I.-fueled misinformation on social media.

> Sydney Gill, 19, a freshman at Rice University in Houston, said she had been optimistic about artificial intelligence as a learning tool when she was in high school. Now, as she tries to select her college major, her outlook has become less rosy.

> “I feel like anything that I’m interested in has the potential of maybe getting replaced, even in the next few years,” she said.

A young adult can totally abstain from AI and be negatively affected by all of that. And those are the kinds of things that could make people angry at the technology.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#120

Post by lacy_tinpot »

justonepost2 wrote: post #4

We are, in the best case scenario, minting a lost generation in real time. This will become increasingly clear over the next 2 years. Meanwhile, simonw and his retiree friends are having the "time of their lives", so that's good I guess :)

Sure. But what's the solution?

Ban AI development?

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