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The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

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Re: The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

#141

Post by curio_Pol_curio »

jdw64 wrote: post #44
htx80nerd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The irony is that AI is best at replacing the work of the upper classes. Synthesizing different opinions, summarizing them, and producing outputs based on statistics are things AI does well. AI just repeats whatever the prevailing opinion is at that time. I am a very heavy AI user (Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT) and have queried it on a variety of topics. AI is not thinking, it is repeating.

I agree with the view that AI does not truly think and cannot produce genuinely original opinions. It is difficult for AI to give answers that lie far outside the average distribution of its training data. In that sense, it is not very good at producing truly novel business insights. But that is not what most “work” usually means. Work is mostly repetitive. The actual moment of decision is brief. So what do I mean by…

LLM platforms are not fundamentally collaborative (think chatGPT vs stack overflow, or google DeepMind vs Bell Labs)

Otherwise they would

1. force humans to spend much more time on these decisions, and

2. Teach humans that the only way to save time on decision-making is to collaborate with other humans

I had a reply to your Asian take https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47970518

Re: The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

#142

Post by fatata123 »

isoprophlex wrote: post #20
anianz wrote: post #13

> Freystaetter and Gottlieb both say that instead of their own generation, they are more worried about Gen Alpha and other young people that come after them, who lose their chance to develop healthy relationships with technologies when they become mandatory and ubiquitous. I remember similar concerns from Millennials about Gen-Z with the Internet and social media. In the end the Internet and Social Media Gen-Z grew u…

I have three (gen A) kids, of which two are of the age to have opinions on this. They tell me I don't have a real job because I just tell the computer what to do, and I don't do the thing myself (to which I can't help but respond that they're absolutely right). If I try to spin them a bullshit story, they tell me how can that be true and maybe I got brainwashed by AI. Also they hate ads with a passion. If anything, I…

[dead]

Re: The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

#143

Post by make3 »

aj_hackman wrote: post #111
elmomle wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing that I haven't been able to resolve in my mind is that this is a cultural multi-party prisoners' dilemma among sovereign entities. From a power-centric point of view, if my neighbors intentionally cast off modern technology, they are ripe for domination, economic exploitation, etc. The history of human civilization from the age of city-states onward is about navigating the need for protection from hosti…

This doesn't account for the potential instability of modern technology. If you have an efficient electric range and your neighbors are still burning wood when the power goes out, you're in dutch. This is relevant to the AI discussion, as there is still a class of people doing things "the old way", and their skills might come in clutch for a society that's let itself atrophy in convenience.

no one pragmatic, realistic and grounded who uses the tools regularly thinks that "the death of AI" contingency is something worth planning your career around

Re: The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

#144

Post by make3 »

pocksuppet wrote: post #70
Lyngbakr wrote: post #40

> They are being told, on the one hand, that these tools are going to eliminate millions of jobs, and on the other that they have to use them if they don’t want to fall behind. I'm currently reading a fascinating book called Blood In The Machine° about the Luddites who opposed certain technologies in 19th century England and the parallels with the current state of affairs. It's important to remember that while histor…

Because history is written by the victors, the Luddites were painted as idiots who just hated machines for no reason or dumb reasons. This couldn't be further from the truth.

also, it was true that people could be retrained, so their point was less serious.

That won't be the case when AI can do almost every white collar jobs.

Re: The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

#145

Post by make3 »

kald145 wrote: post #6

Gen-Z is pretty cool. The problem is a small subset of Gen-X and Millenials who have too much money and power and treat AI as if it is the Dianetics bible from SciFi author Ron L. Hubbard (who according to James Randi knew exactly what he was doing). There are truly mentally unwell people in charge who would like get out the E-meter and audit everyone who does not follow their new Scientology knockoff. Yes, the adver…

You're delusional if you're implying that thinking AI is a threat to the existence of the middle class is coocoo.

The actual progressive thing to do is to accept that it is, and think of how to build the world in a way that protects people.

Re: The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

#146

Post by make3 »

htx80nerd wrote: post #34
jdw64 wrote: post #2

The irony is that AI is best at replacing the work of the upper classes. Synthesizing different opinions, summarizing them, and producing outputs based on statistics are things AI does well. But AI is actually not very good at replacing an entire lower-level worker’s job as a whole. It works well only when that work is broken down into smaller and smaller tasks. The core problem is this: the coercive force of AI use…

>The irony is that AI is best at replacing the work of the upper classes. Synthesizing different opinions, summarizing them, and producing outputs based on statistics are things AI does well. AI just repeats whatever the prevailing opinion is at that time. I am a very heavy AI user (Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT) and have queried it on a variety of topics. AI is not thinking, it is repeating.

I'm sorry but AI generalizes on various takeaway sets of reasoning benchmarks about a variety of subjects, and if you ask it complex philosophical questions in an argumentative back and forth, it does really pretty well most of the time.

I'm progressive, but this is just not helpful. Progressives should focus less on trying to argue that AI sucks actually (it obviously doesn't), we should focus on thinking about how to transform society to still protect human quality of life and dignity even when strong AI exists.

Re: The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

#147

Post by make3 »

pllbnk wrote: post #103

I think a lot of people have already experienced that LLMs are useless by themselves. Ultimately what can make them useful are humans who are directing them, who understand their work and have concrete goals, who know how to verify LLM outputs which always contain at least a few hallucinations that can steer entire session off the cliff. And the hatred comes from the fact that their bosses whose AI usage is for the m…

I think that comments like this are not helpful for humanism.

Us pogressives should stop trying to argue that AI actually sucks, it obviously doesn't and will continue to improve.

We would start organizing and thinking about ways to build a society where the average human can still have a solid, interesting quality of life even when solid AI is everywhere.

Re: The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

#148

Post by pocksuppet »

make3 wrote: post #143
aj_hackman wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't account for the potential instability of modern technology. If you have an efficient electric range and your neighbors are still burning wood when the power goes out, you're in dutch. This is relevant to the AI discussion, as there is still a class of people doing things "the old way", and their skills might come in clutch for a society that's let itself atrophy in convenience.

no one pragmatic, realistic and grounded who uses the tools regularly thinks that "the death of AI" contingency is something worth planning your career around

Meaning that if AI dies I'll get rich and if AI doesn't die I'll die? I agree - that would be a stupid bet to take.

Or meaning that if AI dies I'll be one of the ones who knows how to do things? That's not so stupid.

Re: The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

#149

Post by pllbnk »

make3 wrote: post #147
pllbnk wrote: post #103

I think a lot of people have already experienced that LLMs are useless by themselves. Ultimately what can make them useful are humans who are directing them, who understand their work and have concrete goals, who know how to verify LLM outputs which always contain at least a few hallucinations that can steer entire session off the cliff. And the hatred comes from the fact that their bosses whose AI usage is for the m…

I think that comments like this are not helpful for humanism. Us pogressives should stop trying to argue that AI actually sucks, it obviously doesn't and will continue to improve. We would start organizing and thinking about ways to build a society where the average human can still have a solid, interesting quality of life even when solid AI is everywhere.

AI still sucks where it truly matters. Ask any SOTA LLM about medications for your child for example. Now that you got the answer, ask again - it might be subtly or not so subtly different. Push back slightly, you will get "I am sorry I was wrong...". Now which version to believe? Neither. You need a competent human being to either figure it out from trusted sources or just know the answer. Maybe LLM actually gets it right, but you will never know unless you are an expert in that particular field and just use it as assistant. For all other cases, its value is negative, which it expertly spins as positive.

From the software engineer's standpoint, I do a fair amount of vibe coding for personal projects. If the result meets my narrow goal, I am happy. At work I can't let a single line of generated code be left unread and unverified because that's where it matters.

Re: The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It

#150

Post by wduquette »

adampunk wrote: post #133
wduquette wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that in this case, the other students thought they had done the work. They put the time in, but in a different way than my daughter.

You don’t know that to be true. It doesn’t sound believable to me. It sounds like someone saying they thought they studied because they brought the book home and it was heavy in their backpack. What I know is true is that neither of us has any insight into the interior life of those students. Even you have it secondhand from your daughter. You don’t know if they said that sheepishly, embarrassed at having been in exp…

I know that to be true because the other group members talked about it with my daughter, and were honestly surprised at how much difference not using AI made. She has another group member who’s a slacker. But not all of them.
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