Live data from Hacker News

Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

apnews.com

31–40 of 207 posts

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#31

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

Why aren't grads more pumped about an exciting career as an organ donor?

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#32
post #18

Those kids are crazy. We're finally close to realizing the dream of making labor obsolete, how could they not be excited and enthusiastic about the future? Most of them will no longer needed, and thankfully those that are still needed can be paid more reasonable wages (i.e. lower ones). It's a win-win for everyone. The lower prices enabled by automation allow them to stretch their savings or inheritance further befor…

how do you... earn those savings in the first place? (or am I missing a /s somewhere?)

i read it as sarcastic, too cheeky not to be

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#33

There is nothing about AI that seems like it's going to have a net positive for humanity. Faster code? Sure. Better chatbots? Sure. Textual analysis? Sure. But the downside, and it's huge, is massive unemployment and societal collapse. Nothing AI brings to the table is worth having an unemployment rate of 25% (or more). Our society is simply not ready for this. We need to rework things from the ground up, not proceed…

We've done this dozens of times before. In the short term some people suffer and that is bad for them. In the long term everyone is much better off due to increased productivity.

What’s really baffling is the people in charge seem to just expect the suffering people to sit down and take it. That’s probably why they are pushing so hard for the surveillance state.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#34
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is the productivity showing up?

If productivity doesn't increase then you don't need to worry about displaced workers.

And if productivity does increase, how are we supposed to force the recipients of this productivity to care about the rest of us? It's not like investment has panned out with its promises of general return in any of our lifetimes

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#35

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

> Schmidt offered a similar message to graduates: Their fear is rational, but they have the power to shape how AI develops.

This doesn't sound like being baffled by it. It sounds like they are trying to shake the students and say: "fine boo, but you need do something about it." You can't just wallow and complain about it. I mean you can but it's a path to failure.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#36

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

> And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?”

I don’t see why the people being booed should be responsible for answering this question. How many such questions did the inventor of the tractor have to answer?

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#37

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

One thing I've observed in general that certain peoples jobs are to be out of touch. If they were fully in touch with societal opinions they'd probably self censor. By being out of touch they do things that others would consider taboo and create business opportunities for the company.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#38

There is nothing about AI that seems like it's going to have a net positive for humanity. Faster code? Sure. Better chatbots? Sure. Textual analysis? Sure. But the downside, and it's huge, is massive unemployment and societal collapse. Nothing AI brings to the table is worth having an unemployment rate of 25% (or more). Our society is simply not ready for this. We need to rework things from the ground up, not proceed…

We've done this dozens of times before. In the short term some people suffer and that is bad for them. In the long term everyone is much better off due to increased productivity.

> In the long term everyone is much better off due to increased productivity. reply

Do people still believe in these fairy tales lmao? Most of the productivity gains don't go to the workers, pretty much everywhere in the developed world working hours and retirement age are going up, housing affordability is going down. You're not "much better off"

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcX...

Politicians were selling us the 3 days workweek like 40+ years ago, while shilling for more automated factories, it never happened, it didn't happen with computers, it won't happen with AI

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#39

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job. And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” Of course people are going to react negatively when they hear, “the machines are going to take your jobs from you. No, we don’t care how you’ll be able to pay your re…

The problem here is more capitalism than AI. If AI ends up being truly as beneficial as all the enthusiasts are predicting, that value could go to making all our lives better, but we have created an economic and political system that ensures it won’t. That extra value will be captured by stockholders of the AI companies and go mostly to people who are already rich. So why should anyone who isn’t already invested in AI be optimistic about things? Even the ideal use case doesn’t benefit them.

Re: Graduates are booing pep talks on AI at college commencements

#40

There is nothing about AI that seems like it's going to have a net positive for humanity. Faster code? Sure. Better chatbots? Sure. Textual analysis? Sure. But the downside, and it's huge, is massive unemployment and societal collapse. Nothing AI brings to the table is worth having an unemployment rate of 25% (or more). Our society is simply not ready for this. We need to rework things from the ground up, not proceed…

We've done this dozens of times before. In the short term some people suffer and that is bad for them. In the long term everyone is much better off due to increased productivity.

> We've done this dozens of times before.

No, we really haven't. Every previous wave of automation has targeted human labor.

The thing that makes human's unique in the animal kingdom is our intelligence. From an economic stand point, that's the thing that makes people valuable.

When that's automated, what is there left? Onlyfans?

Post reply on HN