Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cost of goods and services drops by orders of magnitude at every point in the supply chain. That being said we already have relative superabundance and we're more miserable than ever, so it's not clear that more of it will cheer us up.
Unemployment rampant. All production remains in the hands of a few. All power (tokens) remains in the hands of a few. Goods are cheaper but no one can buy them. Path to the upper class now guarded closely by tokens, potential avenues for entrepreneurs diminish rapidly. Own an AI or compute, get someone to give you tokens, or live in poverty. Distribution of abundance in current time is close to evil, America reducing…
Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
231–240 of 242 posts
Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you try reading their second paragraph? The one where they claim we already have an abundance of said goods?
Yes they said "relative superabundance". Relative to history there is an abundance of most good and services (including food and housing). As a Gen Z or Gen A I'm sure it doesn't feel this way, but that's mostly because they are comparing themselves to what they see on social media instead of comparing themselves to how people actually lived 100 years ago, or how people in developing nations lived 20 years ago. I thi…
Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes they said "relative superabundance". Relative to history there is an abundance of most good and services (including food and housing). As a Gen Z or Gen A I'm sure it doesn't feel this way, but that's mostly because they are comparing themselves to what they see on social media instead of comparing themselves to how people actually lived 100 years ago, or how people in developing nations lived 20 years ago. I thi…
The material abundance is largely present, the social fabric is destroyed. Only one of those turned out to be important for sanity.
Maybe social fabric breaking down is a consequence of phase transitions, maybe it's a natural part of collective lifecycles.
Either way I suspect it has more to do with change than absolute state, and it's probably natural (and unpleasant to live through).
I feel mostly like an outsider these days in my optimism that the future will be better, especially in the medium to long term.
Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
anecdotally, I have noticed the same thing. The most affluent people are afraid of the moat being bridged methinks.
Investing in a skill for a craft isn't a moat. Anyone can pick up a pencil and practice for hours a day! You can look out a window for inspiration! There is no "gatekeeping" art, only people upset it doesn't come as easily to them as B2B SAAS and confusing real effort and introspection as "gatekeeping". The AI art people were so happy to rub it in artists face, that finally, without effort or appreciation, they no lo…
Companies and consumers don't give a damn about how much hard work went into an art piece typically. Sorry to say.
Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Investing in a skill for a craft isn't a moat. Anyone can pick up a pencil and practice for hours a day! You can look out a window for inspiration! There is no "gatekeeping" art, only people upset it doesn't come as easily to them as B2B SAAS and confusing real effort and introspection as "gatekeeping". The AI art people were so happy to rub it in artists face, that finally, without effort or appreciation, they no lo…
Respectfully, agree to disagree. If you had to spend time and effort to learn something, and now you can do something that "meets economic requirements" in a 30 second prompt, the moat to your income is gone. Companies and consumers don't give a damn about how much hard work went into an art piece typically. Sorry to say.
Your view on the world makes me sad. You and a few million like yourself will never be satisfied. You will strip anything that is good in life to sell back a shallow clone to people, never understanding the medium in the first place.
Go read a book, talk to god, see a play, or something.
Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't fully agree with the hollow part, when AI resonate with me about real-life issues (I understand it's just a machine without thoughts) it's pretty expressive and spot-on, and genuinely useful. I don't really see why it couldn't be the same with music, it can already write completely unique pieces that are very entertaining and full of emotions (even tho they are "fake")... The brain perceiving sounds a certain…
The difference is the indelitable reality behind it. You are confusing the topography of it with the substance, what's the point of something that is without substance? Without meaning? It's just fake, whenever you point to someone that an image that brought them joy is fake, generated by AI, it immediately changes the feeling they had. It doesn't bring the same awe anymore, awe is reserved to what is real. It might…
A nice crystal, a nice rock (something devoid of emotion or feeling) is used as art, it's also triggering emotions in individuals, this thing doesn't have a consciousness, nor understand anything, but still, it's able to change humans brain chemistry. AI that acts as a therapist, let say saying the EXACT same thing as a real therapist would, let even bring it further where the therapist is on vidcall to have a proper representation, and let say now it's 1:1 AI generated as in zero flaws (exact same, you'd think it's a human with exact same speech as that therapist), why would the experience not be transmitted? Ton of people say things that they don't really mean as well right, and those thoughts are transmitted successfully, felt or not.
AI can incur pain, emotion, distress, happiness and so-on. I genuinely try to think about what's behind, but what I feel is that in the end, humans aren't so magical, it's like watching a beautiful woman being all "fake" with heavy make-up, most humans can still appreciate it, despite knowing it's all BS. People lie as well, this is very deceptive, let say someone is saying he is so happy but in reality, he just isn't, you just felt something for him that were just false (a mimick), and this is kinda our normal.
What if you never knew, let say you are so fond of an artist/person but in the end, you discover it's 100% AI without human supervision, then what, those were real emotions you felt, not entertainment, you RELATED with that "person", you felt his pain.
And one more thing, why couldn't I teach an AI to transmit my own knowledge, speak to it for decades, write to it for decades, then just mimick everything, mimicking the "truth" about my innerself, why would that not be valid? Isn't exactly what the bible is doing (I'm not religious), people seem to find it valid.
Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
#237Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
#238Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
By stopping integer counts do you mean not collecting upvotes and downvotes at all or just not displaying them? If it is the later, I think it can be an interesting experiment, although I doubt it matters that much because you can still gauge the "engagement" based on how your posts rank. But there is absolutely no way HN could work if posts and submissions stop being sorted based on their votes. Community moderation…
Is moderation truly accomplished via votes, though, as opposed to flagging? You say "spam", but unpopular comments are rarely promotional. They lack any one unifying quality. They might be naive, and/or they might be difficult.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341705
I especially appreciated dang’s reply, quoted here out of context as a teaser:
> We're going to add that.
Re: Students boo commencement speaker after she calls AI next industrial revolution
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting that I'm only seeing this kind of anti-ai tendency only in American/Western art circles. Anywhere else in Middle East/Asia, artists are having fun experimenting with it.
> I'm only seeing this kind of anti-ai tendency only in American/Western art circles Hmm, how would we measure and confirm this hypothesis?
> First reported in the 2023 AI Index, significant regional differences in AI optimism persist. A large majority believe AI-powered products and services offer more benefits than drawbacks in countries like China (83%), Indonesia (80%), and Thailand (77%). In contrast, only a minority share this view in Canada (40%), the United States (39%), and the Netherlands (36%).
Source: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2025-ai-index-report/publi...