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Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

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Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#131

Post by breezybottom »

baron816 wrote: post #12
cryo32 wrote: post #2

The pushback I see everywhere outside of tech suggests the tech industry vastly overestimated the interest. The tech industry doesn't speak for the entire planet as much as it likes to think it does.

I really think there’s a concerted effort by the media to demonize AI though. Every third story I see on my news feeds is some sensationalist story about how AI/data centers are bad. The media does have an interest in doing this—writers are fearful that they’ll be first on the chopping block.

The media is largely owned by tech billionaires, so why would they be against their own products?

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#132

Post by odo1242 »

rozap wrote: post #56
silisili wrote: post #10

Because the writing is on the wall already. Who hasn't been annoyed with "AI customer service", we already read about AI in the military, then you have the envisioned huge loss of jobs. People generally seem to like using it as a chatbot, or answer questions, on their own terms. But anywhere it's been forced against the user asking for it has been a disaster.

Very true. I work for an AI company, I use it every day, it's a huge value add for certain problems. My heat pump died the other day and I called an HVAC place and got an AI agent, which was frustrating and not helpful. So I called a different HVAC place and spoke to someone who could actually help, then I gave them lots of money.

Similarly: was calling apartments to ask about them / schedule a tour before I moved in, rejected the second best option specifically because they only had AI agents on the phone

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#133

Post by josefritzishere »

Most of what AI is visibly used for is very unwelcome for American consumers: spam, propaganda, bad art, bad memes, marketing calls, bad phone support... Then the future promise is mass unemployment... of course Americans are negative on it. What is the upside for them?

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#134

Post by operatingthetan »

munk-a wrote: post #103
operatingthetan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's to the point where if you drop an AI meme or screenshot of text in chat people will mock you. I don't see that getting better?

Memes have associations, connotations, subtleties in how they're used in different contexts - they're a communication medium. A well applied meme is like (it isn't - but it can be viewed similarly to) poetry where you've matched your idea with an evocative statement to a perfect degree and the subtleties and implications in your head are well and fully transferred to the reader. An AI meme is like a dry technical pap…

I mean I can make a good meme with AI but it requires effort to ensure it is indistinguishable from a homegrown meme.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#135

Post by svara »

slg wrote: post #93
everdrive wrote: post #35

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so) The loneli…

>The only hope we have is that they're wrong, and their power to change things will be minimal. What even is the optimistic outcome if they are right? What are we all working towards? Like do people think that these AI companies will create some superintelligence, suck up all the financial benefits of that, and then just decide to share it with the rest of us out of kindness? Because I legitimately can't see a realis…

I'm legit pretty excited about applying AI to accelerate biological and medical discovery.

It's already happening right now, still in relatively mundane ways, but there's so much to do.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#136

Post by shadowtree »

It's a shame, as AI will improve healthcare on an unprecedented scale.

I cannot get a specialist without referrals and endless appointments to spend more than 30min to discuss how to fix a serious issues. Claude? Hours and hours of back and forth. Public models now beat the specialized ones like OpenEvidence. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04431-5

Diagnostics is getting blown apart by AI, the best cancer screening will be available in even remote corners of this world.

We were constrained by the available brain mass of highly trained specialists - and this bottleneck is getting removed.

Hard not to be optimistic on AI if you're in healthcare.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#137

Post by ori_b »

ctoth wrote: post #113
slg wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only hope we have is that they're wrong, and their power to change things will be minimal. What even is the optimistic outcome if they are right? What are we all working towards? Like do people think that these AI companies will create some superintelligence, suck up all the financial benefits of that, and then just decide to share it with the rest of us out of kindness? Because I legitimately can't see a realis…

What are jobs for? Should we have them? Should they be mandatory? What does it mean to have to work to eat, is this a good setup? Does everyone have to work? Should they?

Maybe figure out the answers to that before forcing everyone into an economy where they still need to work to make money, but any worthwhile jobs have been automated away.

The other question, of course, is what happens to the political power of the newly disposable?

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#139

Post by aspenmartin »

cyanydeez wrote: post #60
aspenmartin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frontier model companies aren’t banking on the general public “wanting” AI. They are on a path to a product that won’t need to be wanted because the entire economy will need it.

~~economy~~fascism

Absolutely, you are right even though many may consider this too snarky. But herein lies the fork in the road.

- consider that right now autonomous drones operate in Ukraine using the latest and greatest frontier models

- consider that fascist or authoritarian governments will now have a kind of access to their citizenry’s deeply personal lives that they’ve only dreamed about before. “Show me everyone who has insulted me” is now feasible to do at scale, today. A system that can monitor, in real time, a global sigint network on every single person equivalent or better than having a dedicated person or team of people monitoring them. Every home has microphones, every square inch of street has satellite imagery, security cameras, etc.

Now, given today where we are: what do we do? Do we regulate ourselves into a situation where people feel better about things like data center construction but that impact our ability to compete, ceding these technologies to other countries that would gain an incredible amount of leverage and power over us? Do we continue unabated, damaging communities and industries in a fervor to be at the top that later down the road we realize is not worth the tradeoff?

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#140

Post by [deleted] »

everdrive wrote: post #35

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so) The loneli…

[deleted]
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