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The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

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Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#111

Post by nmeagent »

samrus wrote: post #84
somesortofthing wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think AI companies have actually broadly adopted the right strategy. There's no way to sugarcoat or hide that your company's pitch is "your salary is our TAM, btw our product is so powerful it might cause human extinction". Deploying as widely as possible while steamrolling opposition before it can get its bearings is the only viable option for the technology as they describe it.

I call bullshit. They got greedy. The right way would have been to work with both knowledge and culture workers instead of making it an antagonistic relationship. These are the people ai companies need to operate their agents. Its stupid to threaten them and foment resentment Also dont be ridiculous. We didnt go extinct from the nuke, we wont go extinct from a next token predictor

> We didnt go extinct from the nuke

Yet. We've come very close (see e.g. Daniel Ellsberg's The Doomsday Machine or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_close_calls). A catastrophic mistake or miscalculation could trigger a massive exchange at any time; it could happen on any given Thursday.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#112

Post by customguy »

hcurtiss wrote: post #39

While the west clutches their pearls, China roars ahead on manufacturing, energy, and AI. Unqualified military supremacy will soon follow. I weep for my children.

So you want your children to be rightless cogs in the belly of a machine so that machine can be in an eternal struggle with another machine running on slaves? What for?

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#113

Post by dinfinity »

heavyset_go wrote: post #75
soundworlds wrote: post #59

1. So AI companies royally screwed over artists and other culture workers. 2. Culture workers are a big part of who sets the narrative for the general population - especially young people. 3. Less than 1/5 of Gen Z are optimistic about AI and the number is falling: ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/708224/gen-adoption-steady-skep... ) The current wave of AI companies did this to themselves. Had things moved more slowly…

> The current wave of AI companies did this to themselves. Had things moved more slowly and actively worked with all the affected industries, I suspect people would be far less interested in seeing the technology fail. The goal was to raise as much money as possible as fast as possible before the curtain is pulled back to reveal the Wizard's empire of lies.

> The goal was to raise as much money as possible as fast as possible before the curtain is pulled back to reveal the Wizard's empire of lies.

There may be some lies, but a big part of the backlash against AI is that it is too effective. The backlash is growing precisely because people are finally getting out of the "it's just a tool and there will always be a place for humans!"-denial phase and into the "they took our jobs!"-anger phase. They're seeing the writing on the wall many (although surprisingly not all) in the tech sector saw long ago.

Additionally, I'm quite sure it's not backlash against slop, as some might think. People have disliked spam and ads forever, but all in all they'll happily stomach loads of it just to watch some badly written Hollywood or Netflix human slop.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#114

Post by soundworlds »

userbinator wrote: post #94
soundworlds wrote: post #59

1. So AI companies royally screwed over artists and other culture workers. 2. Culture workers are a big part of who sets the narrative for the general population - especially young people. 3. Less than 1/5 of Gen Z are optimistic about AI and the number is falling: ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/708224/gen-adoption-steady-skep... ) The current wave of AI companies did this to themselves. Had things moved more slowly…

[flagged]

You may be the first person I've heard argue that artists are the oppressor class

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#115

Post by Sparkyte »

gofreddygo wrote: post #80
Sparkyte wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tactic is wearing thin on investors. All companies doing layoffs as of recent have started to lose share value. AI or not. I think investors are starting to see stress on the market for fewer working people contributing back as customers and investors themselves. This creates depreciation in share value as no one is willing to invest.

It helps to think of investors in tiers. The lower tiers mimic higher ups. Each tier has two orders of magnitude deeper pockets than the lower tier. At the very top are the big investment banks and fund houses, berkshire. Second are smaller institutions and third retail/individual. The top two layers demand a steady return, never losing money on average in any 36 month window. Otherwise it triggers a selloff top down…

Also to add investors know stock can't keep winning. They will diversify before too long and doing more splits does not ensure more value as it depreciates.

Nvidia is worth so much if it fails it takes investments with it. The risk is too high.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#116

Post by customguy »

userbinator wrote: post #89
Ifkaluva wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Content”

Yes, memes and the like. Lots more than before. Entertainment is far better than it was before AI, when it was controlled by the big media companies.

Memes were never controlled by "big media".

But I'm sure some people LOVE that video generation is no longer "controlled" by there having to be a real thing to take videos of. You can just make shit up, and retreat even harder into bubbles. No need to interact with "the enemy" to even mock them, no need for source material to even twist or lie about; just generate whatever. There is a rift between "AI" and people, and one between those people vs. those who take having a society, culture and public spaces seriously.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#117

Post by IShotTheSherrif »

Job losses are being fueled by cost cutting, not realized business transformation. There are early indicators of massive productivity gains in certain roles, coupled with a pervasive belief that the technology is advancing at a rate that means we must all evolve to survive in this new landscape, both people and organizations.

Executive teams are under pressure to cut costs now to fund AI investment and capture efficiencies they believe competitors are already realizing, fueled by an echo chamber that inflates small AI advancements (relative to impact) into evidence of sweeping transformation. My gut says offshore is benefiting from, and accelerating through, this transition because it remains the most familiar and defensible path to immediate cost cutting for most organizations.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#118

Post by rsanek »

hydroplane wrote: post #6

I often wonder how different AI sentiment would be today if all of the layoffs that were opportunistically blamed on AI by the company CEOs were instead blamed on the real reason (likely pandemic related over hiring). The root of the backlash started as a result of all those “AI” layoffs and the hyperscaler CEOs gloating how everybody was going to lose their job due to AI. So in the end, they reap what they sow. A gr…

Pandemic-related over-hiring was corrected by end of ~2023, if you look at employment growth rates pre-pandemic. [1] I'm more inclined to believe that it is AI (or, at least, the expectation by CEOs of what AI will be).

[1] https://robulka.com/employees/

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#119

Post by customguy »

dyauspitr wrote: post #58
nozzlegear wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm not convinced by pro-accelerationism arguments. Why shouldn't technical progress be hard? Why shouldn't the inevitable be held back as long as possible? What does it mean to have someone else eat our lunch in terms of AI?

It’s because you live in a world with competitors now this isn’t the 60s and the 70s anymore. There are legitimately quite a few countries that can effectively compete. Someone else eating your lunch in this case means you’re poor, have no global power and life for all of us will be worse than what we currently enjoy.

What's the competition about? If you can generate more value from less, why should that make anyone else poorer?

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#120

Post by hcurtiss »

customguy wrote: post #112
hcurtiss wrote: post #39

While the west clutches their pearls, China roars ahead on manufacturing, energy, and AI. Unqualified military supremacy will soon follow. I weep for my children.

So you want your children to be rightless cogs in the belly of a machine so that machine can be in an eternal struggle with another machine running on slaves? What for?

Is that your experience with AI? It’s made my work vastly more efficient and valuable. And have you been to modern Chinese cities? Prosperity is awesome. Stop listening to the Luddites and eco-nihilists. There’s a way to have all that AND civil rights. But if we continue to outlaw development and energy intensive industries, then yes, the West will be Chinese slaves.
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