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Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

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Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#161

Post by ferguess_k »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #158
ferguess_k wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. So many people drinking the cool-aid dreaming oneself to be the 10%.

A lot of people in tech are probably in the 10%. But, the real problem is that AI doesn't even really help those in the top 10%. Maybe just barely, if you already accumulated your wealth. It's really closer to the top 5% who won't be particularly negatively affected.

Kinda top 0.1%, and all those who are directly integrating AI into the companies' workflow, so that they get richer temporarily.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#162

Post by bawolff »

happytoexplain wrote: post #109
bawolff wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view seems morally rephrensible. Basically everything you just said could be used to justify slavery or any atrocity you want.

Anything can be used to endorse anything if you twist the underlying implications enough. Good news: I promise I don't endorse those things. I don't think you're coming at this from a place of thoughtfulness (it's a tough, broad topic). Saying that people are correct to resist does not imply the endorsement of any actions , it just means that people are correct to resist against things that harm their lives and their…

> Anything can be used to endorse anything if you twist the underlying implications enough.

I don't think i'm twisting here in the slightest. Every moral choice involves weighing the harms vs the benefits at some level. Things that are 100% good or 100% bad don't exist in real life.

> I.e. it's OK for humans to behave in the interest of their own

Ok, as in morally ok? Always?

I do not subscribe to the view that it is morally ok for humans to act in their own interests in all cases.

Whether something is morally ok to do depends on a lot of factors. There is no blanket, X is always ok.

> Saying that people are correct to resist does not imply the endorsement of any actions

Typically the term "correct" is an endorsement. It is a value judgement saying someone is behaving in the way you think they should behave. Are you using the term to mean something else?

-----

Edit: i read a little too fast. I guess you are more claiming a moral relativism argument that everyone always thinks their own cause is just, not a moral nilihism argument. Personally i've never found moral relativism all that useful because at the end of the day decisions still have to be made, people are still going to be hurt as a result of those decisions. Somehow someone still has to make the choice and they still need some framework to ground their decision in.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#163

Post by breakpointalpha »

evil-olive wrote: post #51

> “I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you,” Schmidt responded as the boos continued. “There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating … and I understand that fear.” 71 year old man with a net worth of $64 billion [0] tells a bunch of 20-somethings (many of whom have tens of thousands of dollars in student…

U of Arizona graduated roughly 10,000 students this weekend.

Schmidt could have paid off every student loan for every graduate in full and not even noticed it as a rounding error in his net worth.

Would have done so much more for humanity that this vapid speech.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#165

Post by booleandilemma »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #33
jstanley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've done this dozens of times before. In the short term some people suffer and that is bad for them. In the long term everyone is much better off due to increased productivity.

What’s really baffling is the people in charge seem to just expect the suffering people to sit down and take it. That’s probably why they are pushing so hard for the surveillance state.

It's been too long since a revolution and they've gotten comfortable.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#166

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

dakiol wrote: post #44

People are not idiots. AI benefits only the ones at the top of the chain, and the 10% of the rest of us. Are you in the top 10%? No, you typically are in the bottom 90%. So we don't want AI, we don't want the top getting richer at our expenses. We just want a job to bring bread home and keeping pushing our store while being "happy". You take that away from us, just so you can double your net worth, and well, bad thin…

> "Are you in the top 10%?"

The answer is obviously yes for the majority of HN readers. Hacker News is a site maintained by a huge venture capital fund for startup founders and employees and other venture capitalists plus a lot employees of FAANG and other big tech. You are preaching against the 10% to the 10%.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#168

Post by krackers »

bryan0 wrote: post #35
ethanplant wrote: post #5

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

> Schmidt offered a similar message to graduates: Their fear is rational, but they have the power to shape how AI develops. This doesn't sound like being baffled by it. It sounds like they are trying to shake the students and say: "fine boo, but you need do something about it." You can't just wallow and complain about it. I mean you can but it's a path to failure.

>fine boo, but you need do something about it

Well they are doing something about it, just not the way the speakers had in mind.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#169

Post by tavavex »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #166
dakiol wrote: post #44

People are not idiots. AI benefits only the ones at the top of the chain, and the 10% of the rest of us. Are you in the top 10%? No, you typically are in the bottom 90%. So we don't want AI, we don't want the top getting richer at our expenses. We just want a job to bring bread home and keeping pushing our store while being "happy". You take that away from us, just so you can double your net worth, and well, bad thin…

> " Are you in the top 10%? " The answer is obviously yes for the majority of HN readers. Hacker News is a site maintained by a huge venture capital fund for startup founders and employees and other venture capitalists plus a lot employees of FAANG and other big tech. You are preaching against the 10% to the 10%.

Definitely not the majority. Looking at the US, which is probably home to the most users of this website, the threshold for top 10% net worth is at $1.8m, and the threshold for top 10% income is $210k. There's many rich people like that here, but I think the average person is just a standard tech worker, maybe a senior, but not someone from a top company. They're overrepresented here, no doubt about that, but most people just aspire to be in the top 10% and defend the rich and ultra-rich because they dream of being just like them one day.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#170

Post by archagon »

ethanplant wrote: post #5

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

Why? Because all these tech "leaders" are huffing each other's glue.
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