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Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

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Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#141
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they take your jobs for a fraction of your worth, and drive up the cost of living, while extracting massive subsidies from your taxes? You love the people who destroy your quality of life? For the record, I love real diversity, I grew up in home where we have exchange students from abroad (to help pay the bills), but in Canada, the last 10 years or so has soured my opinion because my standard of living has de…

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Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#142
post #55

> “If you’d let me make this point, please —” Schmidt said amid boos. “The point I’d like to make is choose a diversity of perspectives, including the perspective of the immigrant who has so often been the person who came to this country and made it better. America is at its best when we are the country that ambitious people want to come to. Let us not lose that.” How does that tie in? You have to like AI because of…

Generous interpretation: instead of pearl-clutching over ethnicities and traditionalism America invited the world to immigrate and encouraged diverse ideas and industries. Other societies have shunned even foreign food and music (most countries barely have different races), never mind porn industry ('burn the degenerates'), space travel ('why waste money on the moon'), nuclear power, computers etc. Is AI not yet anot…

Isn't that generous interpretation, like, profoundly idiotic if he meant it? Major multiracial feature of America happened due to slave trade at the time when genocide of native Americans was also going on. Other countries have porn industry, actually a lot of it. Other countries have nuclear power, but America is just in one war claiming it wants to stop the other country from the nuclear power.

Other countries typically have tons of foreign music and entertainment, most notably American music. America is the one that seems to be looking inwards here (due to being dominant on an international market - I am not saying it is sinister).

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#143
post #55

> “If you’d let me make this point, please —” Schmidt said amid boos. “The point I’d like to make is choose a diversity of perspectives, including the perspective of the immigrant who has so often been the person who came to this country and made it better. America is at its best when we are the country that ambitious people want to come to. Let us not lose that.” How does that tie in? You have to like AI because of…

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Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#144
post #97
post #8

> Schmidt urged graduates to embrace freedom, open debate, equality and the willingness to engage with those they disagree with. I think it was a great embrace of freedom and open debate to boo him for only asserting predictions that benefit him.

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Oh yeah, "for talking" if you ignore what those words were. Just like J6 was "talking".

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#146
post #6
post #3

Kind of goes to show how out of touch and insular the tech exec sphere can be. Almost everyone I interact with in reality has a deep distain for LLMs and their touted trajectory.

> Schmidt then drew a parallel between artificial intelligence and the transformative impact of the computer — and was immediately met with boos. That's a shame. I assume the reason for the "deep distain" is rooted in fear of change, fear that LLM will make it harder to have a successful career. That's a pretty negative mindset to have as a college grad just entering the workforce. I'm not an AI fan boy, but we can't…

While I disagree on the assumption, I do agree on the pragmatism of the proposed approach. It is important to see things as they are. The tech is genuinely neat.

However, this is not the issue. The issue is that the tech is being hijacked by corps and already on the verge of being annoying. I my corner of the world, I get high level company message of 'use AI' ( which include goals that say so ), but also -- already -- ridiculous sets of limits on how much I an use it ( our context recently got nearly zeroed ; we no longer can upload unsanctioned files ). And if you want something beyond email summarization machine, you need special approvals. This thing is already being neutered at multiple levels and it barely even started to blossom.

Add to this clear indicators that our dictators have no intention of being benevolent and it is not exactly a surprise why younger generations are not exactly thrilled. I like this tech and I hate the retardation I am subjected to daily resulting directly from its outputs.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#147
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk what people you interact with, but my personal sample of “normal people” post AI generated pics and videos in their WhatsApp status and adorn their homes with AI generated imagery for christmas. They may not actively use LLMs or even know what they are, but they’re satisfied with Google’s AI overview and they love using voice assistants. These aren’t people from any particular sphere I sought out or which self-se…

I live in San Francisco, and my personal sample of “normal people” think AI generated imagery looks like shit, abhor the proliferation of slop, and are doing their best to avoid this stuff at all costs.

In my experience there's a bit of a generation gap here (particularly outside the SF tech bubble). Parents excitedly gave e.g. giclée prints of AI-generated art of their adult children's pets to them as gifts last Christmas, but were met with muted-to-negative responses.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#148
post #19
post #3

Kind of goes to show how out of touch and insular the tech exec sphere can be. Almost everyone I interact with in reality has a deep distain for LLMs and their touted trajectory.

So who has driven the 1000x increased usage of AI in the past year or two? My mother is in her 60s and uses Gemini every day. These data centers aren’t being built for no reason.

At least partially the usage is driven by free plans. I use Gemini and ChatGPT for free. I will not pay for them unless traditional web search will be killed (google quality is subjectively on a downward trajectory for the last few years). My employer pays for AI but IMHO it's driven by a panic level FOMO, not evidence.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo there's a priority you should have for the generation below you. Just like how you clean up for your next week's self, you clean up for the next generation. Make sure you don't leave the world on fire before you dip. Two generations have failed at this, now's your chance to break the streak. But maybe I'm just a hippie, who knows.

I see AI exactly as what will help future generations, the possibilities it provides in terms of learning, research, analysis are huge. It confusing to me how people complain about jobs - there is no guarantee that any job will be there forever, there is no guarantee that current social and economic model will be there forever, things always change, you have to adapt, there is no other way.

The AI marketing scheme is to devalue the labor of incoming college graduates. The proof of the power of AI is the number of unemployed 20-something losers that middle aged Americans have in their basements.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#150
The guy has been a stochastic parrot of A2Z talking points for years. What's new is we have reached the finding out phase of telling an entire generation of children who just spent 6 figures and 4ish years on education that they will be replaced by the irresponsibly deployed toy of the old white dudes who made college that expensive in the first place.

AI as a technology is amazeballs in precisely the same way AI thought leaders, executives and mid-level management are not. And yet, here we are poisoning its innovation with late stage capitalism and privatized panopticons. Yuck.

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