Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society • Hacker News Board

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#241

Post by nrightnour » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

lwhi wrote: post #105

gortok wrote: post #29

When I use a computer to do work I want the computer to be right. I want to be able to trust the computer. With the inherit non-determinism and probabilistic nature of generative-AI, that fundamental reason why I engage a computer is lost. If the spreadsheet is wrong, it’s because the math is wrong, it’s because I made a mistake. It’s not because all of a sudden the computer decided the nature of algebra should be di…

I'm not sure I fully agree with this. We can use the computer to build a deterministic system. People aren't fully deterministic either.

Correct.

Also, the better one gets at using AI, the better they can predict where AI might fail.

This allows you to both work 10x faster and prevent many mistakes, which puts you far ahead of not-using-AI.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#242

Post by irishcoffee » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

JoBrad wrote: post #199

slg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of American society will get to share in the benefits of those new biological and medical discoveries when we don't have any health insurance because we lost our jobs to AI?

An optimistic view is that the jobs displaced by AI will be like the jobs displaced by industrialization: while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required. At least one data point in favor of this view is the middling success of the AI rollout so far. Of course it’s eclipsed in the short run…

> while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required.

“The task”

You really did not answer the question.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#243

Post by cryo32 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

JoBrad wrote: post #229

cryo32 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue the economy is propped up on pointless work providing employment. If you throw AI in that it'll contract and it'll either collapse entirely or move to a social care model that no one will foot and rapid class division. You'll end up with burning or unused datacentres that is all. Any economic model that I've seen leads to failure. The only reason it's popular now is that numbers are going up. People are jus…

I’ve never seen these style arguments pass the “show me a good example” phase, at the scale that would be needed to “prop up the economy.”

Well look at my 500 seat company. We laid off 200 people with no measurable productivity impact. And we didn't embrace AI in the process.

We were just keeping the unemployment figures down.

Also look at the large tech companies. Same story.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#244

Post by SimianSci » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

vanuatu wrote: post #91

It's interesting that many developing and Asian countries have a more positive view of AI: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/15/people-around-the-w... How much of this is due to AI vs. the government and corporate structures in society? (Saw elsewhere that Chinese people were also much more optimistic)

Asian countries have governments that are at least seemingly vested in the interests of their populace. They have significant political and economic safety nets in place that can assure their populations that the government is at least somewhat aligned with the populace.

Instead for many western countries, chiefly The USA, You have a society that very blatantly is restructuring itself to service capital holders and not the population. These Governments are not aligned with their people, and are instead trying to solidify Stratified Economies where the entire engine of the country moves in service of its rich.

If the promise of AI is to provide intellectual labor in exchange for capital, the population loses its only remaining middle class made up of knowledge-workers which still hold a semblance of political power. If the middle collapses like this, the only means of social mobility will become high-risk gambles or crime.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#245

Post by hk__2 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:52 PM UTC

ElijahLynn wrote: post #193

It'd be interesting to see how many people thought cars would have a positive impact on society back in the day.

Cars are not something that didn’t exist and then was suddendly invented; it has slowly evolved over centuries.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#246

Post by ctoth » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:52 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #150

ctoth wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are jobs for? Should we have them? Should they be mandatory? What does it mean to have to work to eat, is this a good setup? Does everyone have to work? Should they?

Who do you think will be answering these questions in a future in which these AI companies visions become a reality? Because they already have a huge influence on society and that will only increase as the tech improves. The most optimistic answer I can think of is that they will eventually agree to share their wealth under credible threats of violent revolution. That's the most optimistic outcome I see, they concede…

> Who do you think will be answering these questions

Yes, this is the conversation we should probably be having! Thoughts?

Given that this is what is happening, given that we aren't going to stop physics, getting a handle on this indeed seems like one of the more important things we can do. If it will have any chance of working at all. If we don't get paperclipped.

But this is at least a much ... (forgive me) less wrong conversation to have compared to the one where everybody assumes we've already lost.

What do you think we should do? What powers do we still have where we is general humans who just want a pretty good life?

What do we do about the inherent centralization that big models seem to require, but how do we trade that off at the same time from everybody being able to synthesize the next Covid by asking their cell phone a question? What does it mean when most if not all white collar work actually can be automated?

Do we all end up playing VCs in our underwear swiping left/right on ideas our agents have to make money? Are we still competing in the market with the AIs?

Is there a class war? Is there some other weird thing? I don't know but man ... I sure would like to have those conversations.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#247

Post by cryo32 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #226

cryo32 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally helped create the situation they are in. No sympathy!

Anthropic, in particular, made a good-faith effort to meet the government halfway. You're seeing the (entirely predictable) result. Right now Sam Altman is sitting at Trump's literal right hand, while Amodei is exiled to the kids' table: https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1u8gg19/anthrop...

Yep. He'll go down with them and your 401k's.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#248

Post by Jtarii » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #4

> Pew writes that 44 percent of U.S. adults now say they use OpenAI’s chatbot, a figure that’s more than doubled since 2023. > The next most popular chatbot is Gemini (24 percent), followed by Copilot (17 percent) and MetaAI (14 percent), with Grok (8 percent), Claude (6 percent) and Character.ai (3 percent) lagging behind. Claude in 6th place, behind Gemini and Copilot and MetaAI and Grok? No wonder the general publ…

Yeah, I'm sure the public will totally 180 on AI as soon as the newest model release rolls out lmfao

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#249

Post by Terr_ » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #35

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so) The loneli…

> The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s

Anecdotally, my optimist and disappointment has a lot less to do with flaws in the technology, versus outcomes that rested on the social / political / power-dynamic side of things.

For example, instead of everyone being able to command the digital factory of capital-equipment on their desk (or in their palm) to pursue their personal interests and welfare, the devices feel like tools of someone else who considers you a resource to be exploited, and they can command people to beat you up if you use "your" property "wrong".

To cast things out in a future-direction, imagine being excited about the dawn of practical spaceships, and the disappoint when--somehow--there are no limits on launch pollution, monopolies abound, and the average migrant to cleaner worlds must enter into multi-generational indentured servitude.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#250

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

andrewmutz wrote: post #206

everdrive wrote: post #35

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so) The loneli…

It's beyond tech. Optimism in general is out of fashion, and pessimism is pervasive. The technology for delivering bad news and highly-engaging outrage-bait has developed much faster than our society has been able to adapt to it. Just as americans don't trust AI or the tech industry, they don't trust any public institutions. The fundamental problem is not AI or tech or institutions being bad. The fundamental problem…

It's scrollable algo video. This is at the root of essentially all of our current cultural woes. I was in denial about this for a long time, but atp it's undeniable.