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The AI Hate Progression

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Re: The AI Hate Progression

#161

Post by clapthewind »

gonzalohm wrote: post #16
ragequittah wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Search engine AI summaries flat out lie and deceive people all the time. What was the alternative you were using that gave you 100% accurate information before? Search engines lied all the time as well. As did news sites and any other place you could go to for information. AI just makes it easier to get the information people were already consuming.

It's about the user of that information. As a programmer, I'm comfortable judging the coding output of an LLM. But now, anyone can go and start building without any knowledge, and at first it may look fine, but you are creating software using a pretty weak foundation, bad maintainability, etc. I think LLMs allow everyone to skip an important step of building anything, which is understanding how things work.

Why is that (framed as) a bad thing? We don't go around life understanding everything that we do because it would be exhausting.

Sometimes all you want to do is use something and it works.

Re: The AI Hate Progression

#162

Post by neonstatic »

spencerflem wrote: post #46
neonstatic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This endless moaning about "capitalism" is lamentable. You are looking at an oligopoly, degenerated through the mechanisms of American-style democracy, but you attribute it all to capitalism, an economic system, not ideology, because it became fashionable to hate on it during the financial crisis of 2007.

The core idea of capitalism is that you spend money to make more money. Rich get richer is the basic idea, you invest and those investments make you more. It very necessarily leads to oligarchy when left unchecked.

The core ideas of capitalism are private property and free market, not "rich getting richer".

> It very necessarily leads to oligarchy when left unchecked.

Great, let's not leave it unchecked. Unlike other -isms, capitalism does not need to be treated like an ideology to work. Also, maybe let's not attribute obvious failures of the political system to the underlying economic system.

Re: The AI Hate Progression

#163

Post by neonstatic »

pesus wrote: post #51
neonstatic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This endless moaning about "capitalism" is lamentable. You are looking at an oligopoly, degenerated through the mechanisms of American-style democracy, but you attribute it all to capitalism, an economic system, not ideology, because it became fashionable to hate on it during the financial crisis of 2007.

> it became fashionable to hate on it during the financial crisis of 2007. Is it because it's "fashionable", or is it because million of people started directly feeling the adverse effects of it and saw the perpetrators get off scot-free?

It's been 19 years. Since then an entire generation has been conditioned to think that saying something bad about capitalism earns them social points. I have seen it so many times - people, who don't even know what capitalism is, saying they are "fighting to bring it down" just because they think it sounds cool. They should read a bit about bureaucracy (Kafka) and gulags (a variety of authors) to get a hint what "bringing it down" leads to. The very same people are happy to be participants in capitalism if it earns them money.

> and saw the perpetrators get off scot-free?

And your argument is that the reason for that is free market and private property? I would suggest it might be corruption in the political system, which happens to be "a federal republic" (since we are discussing the US).

Re: The AI Hate Progression

#164

Post by neonstatic »

happytoexplain wrote: post #134
neonstatic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This endless moaning about "capitalism" is lamentable. You are looking at an oligopoly, degenerated through the mechanisms of American-style democracy, but you attribute it all to capitalism, an economic system, not ideology, because it became fashionable to hate on it during the financial crisis of 2007.

One man's "fashionable" is another man's "popular for concrete reasons".

Resentment, projection, and scapegoating are all time favorites for concrete reasons.

Re: The AI Hate Progression

#165

Post by mvdtnz »

Drakexor wrote: post #18

Just a reminder that only the west hates AI. China has 87% of the populace viewing AI favorably. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/11/19/trust-in-ai-far...

Ah yes "the west" and "China", the two populations of earth.

Re: The AI Hate Progression

#166

Post by benterix »

pibaker wrote: post #152
Varelion wrote: post #37

I, and everyone in my social circle, go out of our way to not touch anything that was had AI significantly involved in the creation process. Hypocritically, I use AI a lot at work. I see it as using it a lot more than I am paying for, to actively sink OpenAI/Claud's bottom line. I have a coworker that does the same. His logic was sound -- when something is heavily subsidized, abuse it.

> actively sink OpenAI/Claud's bottom line Considering that hyperscalers are effectively funded by hype, you can also make the argument that by using AI you are helping their business by adding one to their active user number and making their business look ever so slightly better to investors. Not to say your original argument is wrong. Just want to point out that the economics of AI is a mysterious mess.

OTOH... We know these plans are heavily subsidized, and we're happy to use them to the limits. At some point they will run out of investor money and will have to readjust. Do you think people using the existing plans will switch to per-API-call payments? Or, how many of them will?

Given enormous competition and good progress on the part of the Chinese and open models, I'd say let's enjoy the situation while it lasts. It's like chap Uber drives a decade ago subsidized by Saudi money. I have no sympathy neither for sama/amodei nor people who invest in their companies, and happy to use their resources in this crazy show where everybody pretends something and pushes their own agenda.

Re: The AI Hate Progression

#167

Post by benterix »

munk-a wrote: post #80
btouellette wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your work is using personal subscriptions? If not a corporate client is probably paying per token via the API and you're just feeding money to them not sinking their bottom line.

The per token costs are still dramatically subsidized. The major AI models are priced below cost especially when accounting for depreciation. We live in the time of Uber Eats letting you pay 50 cents to hire a limousine that will deliver a burrito to your stoop.

> The per token costs are still dramatically subsidized. The major AI models are priced below cost especially when accounting for depreciation.

Not sure if we can confidently say that unless the first of these companies goes public.

Re: The AI Hate Progression

#168

Post by benterix »

empath75 wrote: post #59
pesus wrote: post #5

Good write up, and I think it accurately sums up many people's feelings about AI. One thing I would disagree with is the idea of AI getting a do over. Even if they somehow managed to do that, the idea of AI is fundamentally tainted for whole generations of people, and its reputation only gets worse every day. There's no coming back from that any time soon.

Statements like this are just totally detached from reality. AI products are incredibly popular, even amongst people who say they dislike “AI”. Maybe that acronym is tainted, but the technology isn’t going anywhere.

One of the problems is that the term itself got muddled to the point of becoming almost meaningless. It covers anything from pattern recognition, classification, to diffusion models. But the fact remains that many people have a love/hate relationship with LLMs.

Re: The AI Hate Progression

#169

Post by benterix »

runarberg wrote: post #155
jorvi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"AI" to most laypeople means LLMs and imagegen. They have no clue that anyone with an iPhone has been using "AI" since iOS 15(?) when it got stuff like photo object selection, instant OCR and voice isolation.

AI is a terrible name anyway and I am glad people have stopped calling stuff like supervised learning, or Markov Chains AI . I think it is better if it just sticks to this awful technology of LLMs and imagegen and will be dropped everywhere else for a better term. We can readopt Machine Learning for the other algorithms, which is significantly better, but still not without flaws. I hope we go further down and just sa…

It would be nice but I have no illusions, it won't happen.

Re: The AI Hate Progression

#170

Post by bpavuk »

Varelion wrote: post #96
flax wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Exactly. I'd be a fool to refuse that first free hit of heroin.

All of the American workforce will feel it when that 'heroin' stops flowing.

Ukrainian, too :)

(saying that as a Ukrainian who observes the same vibe-coding-at-job mess)

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