Having seen the almost rabid and fearful reactions of product owners first hand around forcing AI into every product, it’s because all these companies are in panic mode. Many of these folks are not thinking clearly and have no idea what they’re doing. They don’t think they have time to think it through. Doing something is better than nothing. It’s all theatre for their investors coupled with a fear of being seen as falling behind. Nobody is going to have a measured and well thought through approach when they’re being pressured from above to get in line and add AI in any way. The top execs have no ideas, they just want AI. You’re not even allowed to say it’s a bad idea in a lot of bigger companies. Get in line or get a new job. At some point this period will pass and it will be pretty embarrassing for some folks.
The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
241–250 of 421 posts
Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
#242I’ve observed the opposite—not enough people are leveraging AI, especially in government institutions. Critical time and taxpayer money are wasted on tasks that could be automated with state-of-the-art models. Instead of embracing efficiency, these organizations perpetuate inefficiency at public expense. The same issue plagues many private companies. I’ve seen employees spend days drafting documents that a free tool…
Days to write a document, but you think that it'll only take 30-60 minutes to review AI slop that may, or may not, bear any relationship to the truth?
I'm talking boilerplate, not scientific research. It's crazy that we're starting to see research done by AI but a lot of boilerplate is still done manually.
Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
#243"Any sufficiently advanced AI technology is indistinguishable from bullshit."
- me, a few years ago.
I find the whole situation with regard to AI utterly ridiculous and boring. While those algos might have some interesting applications, they're not as earth-shattering as we are made to believe, and their utility is, to me at least, questionable.
Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
#244If people are stupid to fall for the subscribe model, they likely need AI.
Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok but TFA says only 8% of REGULAR PEOPLE want these features so if you're going to directly contradict the source material we all just read (right???) you should bring a citation because otherwise, in light of the data in the article you are ostensibly discussing, I don't know how that's "as far as you can tell."
It doesn't say that. The actual question asked was whether people would pay extra for AI features, which isn't the same thing as asking if they want them. If you look at the survey results, a few things jump out. Firstly, there's a strong age skew. The people most likely to benefit from AI features in their software are those who are judged directly on their computing productivity, i.e. the young. Around half of 18-3…
I pay for a subscription to a local news blog (because our local newspaper no longer covers local news). I would not pay for the same content delivered by AI. Does the blogger use AI to write his stories? I trust him when he says he does not but I guess I have no way to know for sure.
I will pay people for the value they create. I won't pay for AI content, or AI integrations. They are not interesting or valuable to me.
Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
#246The major issue with AI technology is the people. The enthusiasts that pretend issues don't exist, the cheap startups trying to sell snake oil. The AI community treats potential customers as invaders. If you report a problem, the entire thing turns on you trying to convince you that you're wrong, or that you reported a problem because you hate the technology. It's pathetic. It looks like a viper's nest. Who would wan…
Good point. Also, the fact that I’m adamant that one cannot fly a helicopter to the moon doesn’t mean that I think helicopters are useless. That said, if I’m inundated everyday with people insisting that one CAN fly a helicopter to the moon or that that capability is just around the corner, I might get so fed up that i say F it, I don’t want to hear another F’ing word about helicopters even though I know that helicop…
It's an unholy chimera. As militant as GNU, as greedy as Microsoft, as viral as fidget spinners. The worst aspects of each of those communities.
Actual promising AI tech doesn't even get the center stage, it doesn't get a chance to do it.
Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
#247Companies didn't ask your opinion when they offshore manufacturing to Asia. They didn't ask your opinion when they offshore support to call centers in Asia. Companies don't ask your opinion, they do what they think is best for their financial interest, and that is how capitalism works. Once upon a time, not too long ago, there was someone who would bag your groceries, and someone who would clean your window at the ga…
You're right but the knee-jerk response to this realization is to cut taxes and starve the government of its only legitimate fundraising mechanism.
While government sponsored monopolies certainly exist, monopolies themselves are a natural outcome of competition.
Deregulation would break some monopolies while encouraging others to grow. The new monopolies may be far worse than the ones we had before.
Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
#248"Any sufficiently advanced AI technology is indistinguishable from bullshit." - me, a few years ago. I find the whole situation with regard to AI utterly ridiculous and boring. While those algos might have some interesting applications, they're not as earth-shattering as we are made to believe, and their utility is, to me at least, questionable.
> Any sufficiently advanced AI technology is indistinguishable from bullshit
love this quote !
The whole sales-pitch for AI is predicated on FOMO - from developers being replaced by AI-enabled engineers to countries being left-behind by AI-slop. Like crypto, the idea is to get-big-fast, and become too big to fail. This worked for social-media but I find it hard to believe it can work for AI.
My hope is that: while some of the people can be fooled all the time, all the people cannot be fooled all the time.
Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
#249"There ought to be a law" is why we have nanny-state government. I imagine that is why there have been "no spitting" and "no chewing gum" laws on the books.
People going to lord it over others in the pursuit of what they think is proper.
Society is over-rated, once it gets beyond a certain size.
Along the same lines, I am currently starting my morning with blocking ranges of IP addresses to get Internet service back, due to someone's current desire to SYN Flood my webserver, which being hosted in my office, affects my office Internet.
It may soon come to a point where I choose to block all IP addresses except a few to get work done.
People gonna be people.
sigh.
Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
#250I also find these features annoying and useless and wish they would go away. But that's not because LLMs are useless, nor because the public isn't using them (as daishi55 pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44479578 ) It's because the integrations with existing products are arbitrary and poorly thought through, the same way that software imposed by executive fiat in BigCo offices for trend-chasing…
Couldn’t agree more. There are awesome use-cases for AI, but Microsoft and Google needed to shove AI everywhere they possibly could, so they lost all sense of taste and quality. Google raised the price of Workspace to account for AI features no one wants. Then, they give away access to Gemini CLI for free to personal accounts, but not Workspace accounts. You physically cannot even pay Google to access Veo from a workspace account.
Raise subscription prices, don’t deliver more value, bundle everything together so you can’t say no. I canceled a small Workspace org I use for my consulting business after the price hike last year; also migrating away everything we had on GCP. Google would have to pay me to do business with them again.