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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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think it's telling that AI leaders need to rely on fallacious reasoning and trickery to promote their product. A good product should sell itself. I feel that AI leaders have been shoving their product down our throats for the last two years (at least).

It's important to realize that those people are sociopaths. They delight in the suffering of the common man through their complete lack of empathy. Also, just because they are very good at climbing the corporate ladder (which is a skill on its own), it doesn't necessarily translate to them being particularly smart on fields beyond their expertise.

> It's important to realize that those people are sociopaths. They delight in the suffering of the common man.

> Also, just because they are very good at climbing the corporate ladder (which is a skill on its own), it doesn't necessarily translate to them particularly smart on fields beyond their expertise.

I couldn't agree more. Thank you for your comment!

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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While as argument, it may work, it does not seem to be conservatives that are afraid of AI ( at least in public fora ). But that is separate from your point on class type ( the rich ), which seems to be reason why it does not land well ( for me at least ).

The reason why this seems weird to you (and many other people for sure) is that current "conservative" politicians are actually more neoliberals than conservatives. So of course they will push cheap labour, offshoring, outsourcing and eventually AI. But it shouldn't be hard to understand actual conservative ideology here, since, like, it's already in the word.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#203
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a rhetorical attempt to tie "those who dislike AI" to "those who dislike immigrants, and we all know they're super-duper evil". It's a relatively cheap trick, badly executed.

[flagged]

Political conservatives are generally all in on AI. There is some resistance from the “crunchy momma” wings of the conservative movement, but overall political liberals are putting up far more resistance to AI.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#204
post #103
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.

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 guess this just shows how divided the world is right now (in a lot of ways), but for me this sounds like one of the creepier episodes of Black Mirror or Twilight Zone.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#205
It feels also this speech was not really in any way related to AI per se.

It was the Ayn Rand-esque hero, an Übermensch, who of course formed Google out of nothing proclaiming that individualism and egoism are the way to go, that they have a small alcove at best in between the productive assets of the factory owner who wields the materials to his will and creates his perfect city of perfect design that needs none of your contribution. That these graduates aren't be be valued by their creativity or self-worth but by the marginal contribution they may have towards his empire, to be discarded once they don't have anything to give. He's the ultimate factory owner, the owner of the factory that makes everything and brings light to all, and the masses just don't appreciate his brilliance and the brilliance of the other tech bros.

None if it is particular to AI, it's just that AI is the latest tool with which the workers of the world are deprived of the means of production. They know that capitalism is healthiest when the wealth is distributed, and here the Randian hero tells them not that the wealth will be distributed, but only the labour and the AI will do most of the labour, and that the human contribution is a penny for themselves and 99 cents to those that already have a hundred billion, and excited with an incomparable glee Eric expresses that the datacenter that powers the AI will be the panopticon through which the factory owner will judge the productivity of his workers.

It is such a horrifyingly dismal picture he painted right on their faces and if they would just allow that data center and stop booing him they'd understand, surely they must understand that he's the hero, that he and his Rearden Steel will make them the shining city that the unwashed masses for their utter collective incompetence cannot.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#206
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…

[flagged]

Let me guess. Anyone who hasn't been avoiding AI isn't "truly smart"?

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Political conservatives are generally all in on AI. There is some resistance from the “crunchy momma” wings of the conservative movement, but overall political liberals are putting up far more resistance to AI.

Political conservatives (at least in the US) have very little left in common with actual conservatism. They are more like neoliberals, primarily catering to the rich for accumulating wealth. So of course they are in on yet another scheme for cutting costs by screwing over normal workers.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#208
post #190

Can someone in this thread who says “the kids must be wrong” give an actual optimistic case for AI? Because as far as I understand it, the “optimist” case for AI is that LLMs become God and wipe out human life as we know it entirely, and replace it with a transcendent post-human intelligence. And in the meantime, we’ll have a permanent underclass that will be kept alive on some kind of subsistence UBI. That seems to…

>Can someone in this thread who says “the kids must be wrong” give an actual optimistic case for AI? The optimistic case is technological deflation. Where goods and services become so cheap, you don't need a lot of money to afford them. If you can have a robot sort packages like, https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/articles/human-intern-beats-figure... Why have a human do that? I don't think there's a person alive whose life g…

OK, and in a world where this technology is broadly available and not controlled by 4-5 companies with an unassailable capital moat, I can see how this could be a good outcome. But that’s not the situation we’re in.

For me to understand this as an “optimistic” case, I need to understand why people believe that absent a need for human workers, there will be any incentive for the people who control all of the capital to keep people alive.

Re: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Nobody's gonna bother with the subsistence UBI. This is what bugs people. We can tell the part they're bullshitting about is the promise of a subsistence UBI. No wonder people boo.

I’m know it’s better in some other countries, but in the U.S., we can’t even agree that all people with jobs should have health insurance.

That’s even a bit optimistic. We can’t agree that all people with full time jobs should be able to afford the basics for their own survival.
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