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My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

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Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#211
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have mechanical muscles, and the human strength that was needed before the industrial revolution is no longer important; weight lifters still strength train, but it's a hobby, and nobody needs to do it. The amount of strength required for the median job may have decreased, but that doesn't mean that nobody needs to do it. The health ramifications of not strength training are constant, and the same can be said fo…

You can say that, but check how many people are going to the gym regularly, let alone training up to the standard of strength of an average manual laborer from before the industrial revolution. If AI fills its promise, some people will be telling others they should think more, but people will get lazy.

I'm specifically calling out the wording "nobody needs to do it." That is patently false.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Order of magnitude? It's 10x more expensive now?

That’s honestly plausible with RAM and SSDs, the same kits of RAM I spent around $50 on years ago were being scalped for $500+ because there was absolutely no supply.

A normal RAM kit went up a lot but it's still more like 6x. SSD, more like 2.5-3x.

But what percent of your PC price is RAM? When it was cheap it was probably less than 10%. I assume a long-planned upgrade means a mostly new build, and it's a pretty rare setup where that has gone up more than 50-100%. If this long-planned upgrade is just new RAM then the price could skyrocket, but it's still not that much of the overall build.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#213
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say that, but check how many people are going to the gym regularly, let alone training up to the standard of strength of an average manual laborer from before the industrial revolution. If AI fills its promise, some people will be telling others they should think more, but people will get lazy.

I'm specifically calling out the wording "nobody needs to do it." That is patently false.

If AI fulfills its promise and we get superintelligence, humans will not be capable of contributing anything of economic value via thought, possibly outside of small, comstrained niches.

You may as well try to outlift a crane.

Either this whole AI thing fails, and we never make the last small number of breakthroughs (or scaling) that gets us intelligent machines, or the obsolescence of the human brain is inevitable.

I'm betting that machines are going to end up intelligent, at least in the moderate future.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#214

Reasons why I currently dislike AI: - it is not as accurate and good as advertised - being forced to use and care about it - it is bad for the environment at the scale and competition that exists in this economy - it is a mirror, and augmentation and reveals really inhuman takes and thought processes from people who are on the longer lever in society - it is already in use for very unethical things (spying and war) -…

I don't disagree but I don't think this one is a reason we should ever restrict or condemn a technology > it is a mirror, and augmentation and reveals really inhuman takes and thought processes from people who are on the longer lever in society When someone uses their keyboard to search for CSAM or write hate speech we can't blame the keyboard instead of the individual

In times of industrial scale killing since ww2, this take is just insult to injury

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw I enjoy AI. but it is extraordinarily dangerous and does not belong in the hands of most people, and definitely not in the hands of most companies. it is a munition.

If considered a munition, it certainly belongs in the hands of citizens to defend themselves against corporations and governments.

> it certainly belongs in the hands of citizens to defend themselves against corporations and governments.

this strategy is only employed by one country in the planet.

the goverment used illegal funds to start a paramilitary border police that has murdered multiple legal citizens on camera. No ICE agent has been shot by anyone defending themselves against goverment overreach

Companies like Flock have deployed swarms of survaillance with no civillian uprising, companies like Palantir and Meta are openly in bed with the goverment while they pass patents like "facial recognition in all their glasses and its not opt out"

That country even saw a bunch of insurrectionists enter its capitol and the traitors werent shot on sight by patriots.

Idk man, the whole "we need guns to defend ourselves" doesnt seem to work when morons crave the boot in their neck more than freedom. It mostly seems to just escalate minor disagreements, facilitate self harm, and making schools into increasingly dangerous institutions for children. I guess it also gives insecure men an incredibly dangerous tool to try and hide their feelings of irrelevance.

Maybe therapy is cheaper than an AR-15 to hide the fact that 50% of the population cant read at a 6th grade level and feel dumb, scared and unimportant

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If considered a munition, it certainly belongs in the hands of citizens to defend themselves against corporations and governments.

> it certainly belongs in the hands of citizens to defend themselves against corporations and governments. this strategy is only employed by one country in the planet. the goverment used illegal funds to start a paramilitary border police that has murdered multiple legal citizens on camera. No ICE agent has been shot by anyone defending themselves against goverment overreach Companies like Flock have deployed swarms…

> Maybe therapy is cheaper than an AR-15

¿Por qué no los dos? "We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills without being overcome by them."

> to hide the fact that 50% of the population cant read at a 6th grade level and feel dumb, scared and unimportant

If you must remain in the jurisdiction, manage your risk with the tools available to you. If you do not want to remain, leaving is an option. Do what is best for you. "It is what it is."

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it certainly belongs in the hands of citizens to defend themselves against corporations and governments. this strategy is only employed by one country in the planet. the goverment used illegal funds to start a paramilitary border police that has murdered multiple legal citizens on camera. No ICE agent has been shot by anyone defending themselves against goverment overreach Companies like Flock have deployed swarms…

> Maybe therapy is cheaper than an AR-15 ¿Por qué no los dos? "We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills without being overcome by them." > to hide the fact that 50% of the population cant read at a 6th grade level and feel dumb, scared and unimportant If you must remain in the jurisdiction, manage your risk with the tools available to you. If you do not want to remain, leavi…

> ¿Por qué no los dos?

Bugdet and also because convincing idiots with guns to go see an expert who is going to trigger their fear of irrelevance is a quick way to get them to use that gun, either on the therapist or themselves.

> If you must remain in the jurisdiction, manage your risk with the tools available to you.

Great quote to support my initial point. The jurisdiction is the country and the tool availeble is the prohibition of guns.

Thus managing the provable increased risk of death against the unrealised potential of civilian uprising to fascism. Which came with claps and no shots

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all tech people here, but the regular people meet AI when they try to take a picture with their phone and Gemini pops up instead, because a button has been repurposed to do that. Or simply calling an energy provider to clarify something makes them talk to a robot voice until enough effort and words have passed so a human finally comes around. These are very shallow and small things where it already creeps in a…

Thanks for the candid response. Do you think that many of these examples were issues before, but now have become associated with AI? I can relate to many of them, but they seem to predate AI for me. I feel like Google search has been nearly useless for several years now, flooded with fake advertising results, even without AI. I'm happy that AI gives me an alternative to Google search, which is one of my top use cases…

I see how you are trying to level the playing field and justifying that LLMs are not a product of the broader pattern and road we are going down to, but really, put the hand on your heart and pull up the same argument while recognizing how they belong to the same reality and purpose that produced all these dark patterns we are starting to have to work with these days

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the candid response. Do you think that many of these examples were issues before, but now have become associated with AI? I can relate to many of them, but they seem to predate AI for me. I feel like Google search has been nearly useless for several years now, flooded with fake advertising results, even without AI. I'm happy that AI gives me an alternative to Google search, which is one of my top use cases…

I see how you are trying to level the playing field and justifying that LLMs are not a product of the broader pattern and road we are going down to, but really, put the hand on your heart and pull up the same argument while recognizing how they belong to the same reality and purpose that produced all these dark patterns we are starting to have to work with these days

I'm not sure I follow your comment, but I don't think that's what I was saying.

I was suggesting that perhaps people feel so strongly about AI because it has become the lightning rod for and face of these pre-existing frustrations.

Of course llms belong to the same reality that produced dark patterns that frustrate us. There's only one reality, the one we live in. Any improvement over existing frustrations will also come from that reality.

Re: My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup

#220
post #187
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't know anyone who's life was made worse by it, and I strongly doubt you do either. I do: students who use it to do their thinking for them. And everyone who uses it to do their thinking for them, for that matter.

Like calculators do math for you? It’s a tool like any other. If that’s how they use it, those students weren’t doing much thinking before either.

Once you grok a process, like addition, then the calculator is not a loss.

So once you grok programming, debugging, and software engineering, then using the AI is not a loss.

But students aren't doing that for the latter if they just punt to AI.

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