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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

#121

Post by rob74 »

librasteve wrote: post #81
rob74 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason is "make number go up". A few years ago, you showed the stock market (or your investors if you weren't listed yet) how amazing a company you were by hiring people like crazy, even if you didn't need them, and giving them all sorts of perks, including (but not limited to) home office. Now, the stock market wants to see blood, so you have to sacrifice people - not because you're actually losing money, b…

this “square wave” effect is driven by interest rates … when the bank rate is very low investors will tolerate high level of gambling on growth (ponzi-like). as soon as money will grow anyway in the bank, then investors demand actual RoI

[dead]

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#122

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

rsanek wrote: post #118
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/

> I'm more inclined to believe that it is AI

So for the Mag7 it's kinda AI, in that they want to maintain margins and invest loads more into capital for AI infrastructure. Those layoffs clearly have AI associated with them.

For lots of other tech, I'm not sure. I do believe that productivity can increase in a bunch of places with AI tooling, but you need to build that tooling first, then monitor and ensure that it continues working. Like, the vast majority of tech companies already outsourced a lot of what AI tooling would/could do, so I'm somewhat sceptical of the rationale (AI is so good we can cut 20% of our staff).

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#123

Post by [deleted] »

hcurtiss wrote: post #120
customguy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#124

Post by otterley »

heavyset_go wrote: post #101
otterley wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t lump GenX in with boomers. We are the first generation not to have lifetime employment and pensions, the first generation to pay through the nose for higher education, and many of our peers are just barely scraping by at 50 alongside our Millenial and GenZ friends.

Stop the Boomerification of Gen X's voting record and the comparison will go away.

Unfortunately every generation has a plurality that votes “the wrong way.” This includes Millennials: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/age-generati...

It seems to start happening when people hit 30 years of age. Maybe it’s because that’s when they start having children; I’m not sure.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#125

Post by customguy »

hcurtiss wrote: post #120
customguy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Stop listening to the Luddites and eco-nihilists.

Stop telling me to stop beating my wife, I'm not even married. You don't know what Luddites are, and I don't know what eco-nihilists are.

> we continue to outlaw development

Again, I have no idea what this is even referring to. I'm sure you mean something with that, but expressed in such a hyperbolic, all-or-nothing way I just don't know what to do with it, sorry.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#126

Post by GolfPopper »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #8

I'll just keep repeating this: There are three options: 1. AI owned by everyone 2. No AI 3. AI owned by billionaires If you can make the masses fight for 2 instead of 1, then you guarantee that you don't get 1. If instead, the masses fight for 1, they've got a chance of getting it. You present AI as a false dichotomy: no AI or AI for billionaires. But 2 is a fantasy. There will be AI. Any of us arguing for (1) get sh…

If there are no billionaires, you don't have to worry about option 3.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#127

Post by JohnFen »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #97
JaakkoP wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magnificent 7, the new FAANG where Netflix got swapped to NVIDIA and Tesla got added.

Jeez, we could have chosen a less, erm, crassus-reminiscent acronym

Yeah, it's a term I won't use because of how awful and obsequious it is.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#128

Post by zombot »

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 looting began with how they trained their models and now they want to continue the looting with how the models are being used. You can't loot entire industries by cooperating with them.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#129

Post by nozzlegear »

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.

But in terms of AI, what does that actually mean? If the Chinese are ahead of us and have "eaten our lunch," what are the actual effects? Cheaper AI for everyone with the existential threat that they may shut off access whenever they like? We're not building weapons here, there's no end goal unless you believe in the myth of AGI that these companies are pushing. US companies won't suddenly take their LLMs offline if China's become sufficiently advanced.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#130

Post by hcurtiss »

customguy wrote: post #125
hcurtiss wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Stop listening to the Luddites and eco-nihilists. Stop telling me to stop beating my wife, I'm not even married. You don't know what Luddites are, and I don't know what eco-nihilists are. > we continue to outlaw development Again, I have no idea what this is even referring to. I'm sure you mean something with that, but expressed in such a hyperbolic, all-or-nothing way I just don't know what to do with it, sorry.

You are doing the left-wing, pretending not to understand meme. Those are the principal objections in the linked article. Data centers are not an environmental catastrophe. And AI isn’t coming to take all of our jobs. There will be change, for certain, but if we don’t embrace it, the West is doomed. That is not hyperbole. History bears this out repeatedly.
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