The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it • Hacker News Board

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#121

Post by animegolem » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

troosevelt wrote: post #60

cortesoft wrote: post #44

I feel like their are (at least) three main critiques of AI, and I wish we could debate them separately, because I think they each have different resolutions. The first is the fear of job loss, and I feel like this is the most straightforward to deal with. Personally, I think the solution should be to share the productivity of AI with society at large, in particular since AI owes most of its abilities to training on…

If you lost your $60,000 a year job due to this, do you really believe a basic income funded by it will make up that loss? It won't. Basic income in the US is usually proposed at $12k per year, which would add another $3 trillion to the budget. Do you think you can even get that just taxing these companies? I don't. People who bring up basic income need to get serious about the numbers involved because I never see it…

And even if you did get the 60k and never can find work again are you gonna be happy about the next door neighbor working for 120k and getting his 60k on top?

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#122

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

fluoridation wrote: post #109

pydry wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as hyperloop was designed as a techbro pie in the sky notion to kill high speed rail, basic income as an idea is designed to kill more realistic attempts to shore up welfare, e.g. * A job guarantee like we had during the great depression * Lowering retirement age * Raise minimum wage * Expanding medicare to everyone It's worth remembering that if AI really can do everyone's jobs then it'll be wildly deflationary…

Job guarantees and higher minimum wages are just UBI with extra steps, while lowering retirement age is just conditional UBI by another name. If you're giving people more money in exchange for nothing (or nothing of any value to anyone, as in the case of a job guarantee), it's effectively indistinguishable from UBI.

> Job guarantees and higher minimum wages are just UBI with extra steps, while lowering retirement age is just conditional UBI by another name

The extra steps reduce costs and encourage offsetting production. Those are important steps!

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#123

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

jhack wrote: post #90

To a lot of people AI is just image and text generation. And yes, these uses alone aren't worth the time, money, and energy. But there are a lot of areas where AI is helping that people don't see, like in medicine. Drug development, cancer research and early detection, CT and MRI analysis, just to name a few. These uses cases are vastly more important but rarely get discussed. It's important to know that AI isn't thi…

[deleted]

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#124

Post by garganzol » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

AI is precise. People are not. AI calculates things. People manipulate them to their benefit. AI precision demands people's accountability. Some people feel threatened by that, fearing that their shady games will no longer be working. Deceivers cannot stand seeing their own reflection in the mirror, so they project their own pathological traits onto it. The whole thing turns into aggression. Psychology 101, inspired by the works of Carl Jung.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#125

Post by smeej » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

guzfip wrote: post #82

troosevelt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you lost your $60,000 a year job due to this, do you really believe a basic income funded by it will make up that loss? It won't. Basic income in the US is usually proposed at $12k per year, which would add another $3 trillion to the budget. Do you think you can even get that just taxing these companies? I don't. People who bring up basic income need to get serious about the numbers involved because I never see it…

[flagged]

It didn't even occur to me that this might not be sarcasm until I read the other comments. Still fighting to hold onto that assumption.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#126

Post by Tyrubias » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

nayroclade wrote: post #68

Bear in mind, in the same survey this article is talking about, nothing and nobody had an overall positive rating amongst those polled. So yeah, AI is unpopular, but it's just one more thing that people hate amongst a broader cultural movement of generalised hate.

What you term “a broader cultural movement of generalised hate” is just a reflection of people’s dissatisfaction and fear regarding the state of the world. They’re seeing wages stagnate and prices go up. They hear news about how well the stock market is doing, but they don’t see any of those benefits. They see their politicians spend money on war and destruction but refuse to spend money on social programs. At the same time, the rise of the Internet paradoxically makes it both easier and harder for people to question the narratives they’ve been taught. Amidst all this confusion and worry, is there any wonder people are dissatisfied and looking for someone or something to blame?

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#127

Post by bwhiting2356 » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

DocTomoe wrote: post #70

Some perspective ... I really do not see 'the public hating AI' outside of a very specific demographic (17-30 year old artsy types, generally left-leaning). Average everyday people in my area either don't care about AI at all, or like it, using it as a better search engine. The situation might be different in the States, but I'd wager Joe Sixpack, brass fisher in Montana, couldn't care less about GPT-5.5 or whatever…

Joe Sixpack from Montana is thinking about whether he wants a data center in his town, and increasingly they are saying no https://www.wsj.com/us-news/maine-governor-vetoes-bill-to-te...

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#128

Post by fnoef » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #114

> Even within tech and coding, one of the areas where AI is reported to have the most promise, there’s the question of whether the productivity gains reported can be trusted. I wish articles like this would at least acknowledge the massive adoption AI has among programmers. It's not comparable to stuff like helping you write the occasional email, which I presume is the baseline for most people outside tech. Making it…

Many of these developers adopted the tools against their will, as means to bring home salary while they still can. In the mean time, the AI folks are working hard to just eliminate their job.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#129

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #44

I feel like their are (at least) three main critiques of AI, and I wish we could debate them separately, because I think they each have different resolutions. The first is the fear of job loss, and I feel like this is the most straightforward to deal with. Personally, I think the solution should be to share the productivity of AI with society at large, in particular since AI owes most of its abilities to training on…

There is also a likeability problem. Altman and, shockingly, to a lesser degree, Musk have terrible brands. When folks see those people at the top of these companies, folks who have been publicly saying they're going to cause massive job losses and cause human extinction or whatnot, they're going to hate the companies irrespective of the actual risk of job losses or environmental impacts.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#130

Post by cortesoft » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

Tyrubias wrote: post #80

cortesoft wrote: post #44

I feel like their are (at least) three main critiques of AI, and I wish we could debate them separately, because I think they each have different resolutions. The first is the fear of job loss, and I feel like this is the most straightforward to deal with. Personally, I think the solution should be to share the productivity of AI with society at large, in particular since AI owes most of its abilities to training on…

I understand your points, but I think what scares people is that the solutions you propose are disregarded by our politicians. At least in the US, both politicians and the large donors funding them seem to be more and more allergic to anything resembling an universal basic income, and they do their best to scare people away with fearmongering about “communism”. The US is also doing a hard U-turn away from environment…

I completely agree that governments and power brokers will disregard these solutions unless forced.

However, they will also disregard any attempt to slow down or halt AI progress in general, so it isn't like the people wanting to end AI in general are any more likely to succeed than those wanting to do what I propose.

I personally feel my suggestions would be slightly more feasible to gain support for than trying to stop AI completely. The power brokers in control of AI currently certainly aren't going to stop developing and pushing AI, but they might be convinced that sharing the wealth is the only way to avoid massive revolt in the long run. While it is conceivable that the wealthy wouldn't need the masses for labor like they do now in the AI future, they still need to not be killed in a massive uprising when 90% of the population is unemployed and starving. While I know a lot of people think the plan is just to kill off that part of the population, that is not that easy to do even with an army of AI robots, and would likely be cheaper and easier to just share a bit of the productivity. I don't think it will be trivial, but I don't think it is impossible.