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Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

nytimes.com

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Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#181

Post by benterix »

guzfip wrote: post #70
nothinkjustai wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Who cares about the immense harm AI is wrecking on our economy and society, it helps me create worthless throwaway software for myself and lets me be lazier at work.” - people on this forum

Crazy thing is before AI the same people spamming Show HN with stupid worthless SaaS products that went no where beyond the submitters GitHub account. “Hey check out my shitty CRUD app because I have minor annoyances with some other shitty SaaS that everyone hates yet remains the market leader”. “Now rewritten in foo.js and Rust”. It wasn’t impressive when you wrote it by hand, it’s still not impressive when an AI do…

> Mocking the former is now culturally acceptable on HN, the latter not so much.

I have the opposite impression. In the past, I'd very often react "WTF who'd ever want to use it?" in my mind, whereas the comments were very kind and supportive.

Now, whenever someone submits their AI slop, they mostly hear some comments about this. The very fact that this whole thread is about bashing Simon speaks for itself. The HN community is split between those aggressively promoting it, those hating it, and the rest of us using it in one way or another, not yet sure about full-scale consequences for the future, and quite frankly powerless about it.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#182

Post by throwaway290 »

palmotea wrote: post #66
throwaway290 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you could totally go up to someone in the middle of a genocide, as their community in the process of being murdered, and say "genocides have happened before, some people will go away, others will survive." Yeah. How many times I saw people here say oh yeah it's just the same as job loss during automaton-industrialization. How is that making things better? "Yeah just more mass poverty and more wealth inequality, wha…

> the only explanation for people saying this is that they don't understand they will be on the line later just like the people displaced now. but the dream of being the .1% who get to be on top and monetize everybody else is too tempting I guess. I doubt most people who say things like that "dream of being the .1%". I think it's more typical they're just someone who thoughtlessly repeata propaganda memes, without co…

> I doubt most people who say things like that "dream of being the .1%".

I doubt people who just address one style choice and carefully not make any actual objections. Their comment adds no value and there is no way we can know if they even really understood what they are replying to.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#183

Post by mike_hearn »

justonepost2 wrote: post #4

We are, in the best case scenario, minting a lost generation in real time. This will become increasingly clear over the next 2 years. Meanwhile, simonw and his retiree friends are having the "time of their lives", so that's good I guess :)

No, no we are not. The average case scenario is that this time is not actually different to any of the other times new automation technologies were invented, and that the youngest will master the tech then find uses for it far better than their parents generation. The best case scenario is something like a new gold age of prosperity, and the worst case is an economic bubble and temporary recession as it bursts.

Computers have been automating things for decades. My father had a private secretary at work, something considered normal for a mid-career executive back then (he was an engineer!). I've done very well in my career but a private secretary is quite out of reach. That doesn't mean that we had a "lost generation" on our hands.

And yesterday a friend showed me what his 11 year old was vibing up with Claude Code. A whole web app he can use to help organize some stuff with his friends related to Roblox (I dunno what it was meant to be, you had to log in for most of it). The kid is amazed that his father understands all the mysterious symbols Claude generates. And he probably always will, the same way I listen to stories about how my father could fix car engines with mild amazement as well.

There's a huge market for doom stories out there and the NYT is a rag that was just yesterday reporting that Adam Back was Satoshi based on nothing deeper than the journalists gut feeling. "Studies" in social science can show whatever the author wants, and the authors want clicks from their AI-hating left wing readership. Stay skeptical!

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#184

Post by vizzier »

mike_hearn wrote: post #183
justonepost2 wrote: post #4

We are, in the best case scenario, minting a lost generation in real time. This will become increasingly clear over the next 2 years. Meanwhile, simonw and his retiree friends are having the "time of their lives", so that's good I guess :)

No, no we are not. The average case scenario is that this time is not actually different to any of the other times new automation technologies were invented, and that the youngest will master the tech then find uses for it far better than their parents generation. The best case scenario is something like a new gold age of prosperity, and the worst case is an economic bubble and temporary recession as it bursts. Compu…

> I've done very well in my career but a private secretary is quite out of reach.

This says more about how companies have chosen to allocate pay in the current era than anything about technology though, no?

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#186

Post by cindyllm »

metalman wrote: post #185

Everybody should be horrified by the idea of a gerntocracy/beurocracy/cleptocratic military industrial complex that is hidden behind an algorythim of exploitation, in a never ending techno feudalistic hell world.

[dead]

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#187

Post by sundaeofshock »

causal wrote: post #157
Teever wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think that we'll start to see a movement where people diagnosed with terminal illnesses like a brain tumour that leave them functional for a few weeks or months before dying within a year will start kamikazing against the ultra wealthy. People with nothing to lose will feel empowered by taking everything from the people who they feel are responsible for taking everything from them. There's a chance this ki…

That's a pretty extreme take on the current situation IMO, I don't think we're anywhere near things being that bad. But I certainly want to avoid that.

Someone just filmed themselves setting fire to a warehouse because they were underpaid.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#188

Post by ofjcihen »

Tangential to the worries of those surveyed: I noticed a drop in my critical thinking and skills very quickly. It makes sense, the easiest thing to do is just ask AI for the answer or ideas and then tell it to implement them.

I’m deliberately trying to understand things more deeply now to combat that. We’ll see how it goes.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#189

Post by Throaway199999 »

bogzz wrote: post #33
richwater wrote: post #8

AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane. It will take time to adjust and some industries will go away and others will pop up. I think a lot of people are conflating two ongoing things: the emergence of AI and stagnant (if not recessionary) economies across the globe. It appears as if AI is resulting in so much more negative externalities but in reality if not for AI, w…

The loom, the steam engine, or the airplane did not cause "captains of industry" to publicly salivate over anticipating being able to fire their knowledge workers who invested time, money, and effort into becoming qualified for the jobs they're now constantly in fear of losing. The social contract is being broken. Being broken just on paper, just on the hopes that it can be broken for good.

OH but they did. Captains of industry always are on the lookout to drive down labor (its their #1 cost).

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#190

Post by marcuskane2 »

goalieca wrote: post #154
causal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we come up with a serious plan for a post-labor future. In the USA you can't even get healthcare without a job. Meanwhile tech companies are dumping billions into the race to make humans unemployable. So yeah, until people feel like their leaders can be trusted to have their back, they're going to be anxious.

Post-labor? There’s a huge gap between slop and Star Trek that we have to bridge first.

That "huge gap" is probably 3-10 years.

A relatively tiny percent of mortgages not getting paid in 2007 & 2008 caused a global financial crisis. If even just 10% of current office workers lose their jobs and quit paying their mortgages, their car loans, their car insurance, etc things will go bad fast. And realistically, it's going to be more like 80% of office jobs gone in the next 10 years.

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