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The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

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Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#341

Post by Starman_Jones »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #306
Starman_Jones wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> People hate AI because AI is on a trajectory to replace them and become better than a human. That is the fundamental reality. Let’s explore this fundamental reality a bit. The “and” necessitates both parts of the clause be true, but would people hate AI if it became better than them but didn’t replace them? That’s an easy no; Big Blue and AlphaGo didn’t cause mass hatred, and machines have been broadly better than…

>but would people hate AI if it became better than them but didn’t replace them? That’s an easy no; Yes they will. Jealousy. But they'd never admit it. What are you proud of? What skill do you value and identify yourself with? Say AI did it 1000x better than you but some law was in place to prevent it from replacing you. You'd love that law, and you'd make up some excuse to to hate AI. >Big Blue and AlphaGo didn’t ca…

I don’t think your argument around jealousy holds as much weight as you think it does. I’d encourage you to revisit your logic and work through the implications for yourself. Does it need to be AI to provoke this response? Would another human being better provoke this same response? What conditions actually trigger it?

I’d also recommend you read more about Lee Sedol’s matches against AlphaGo. I don’t think your description of it syncs up with the actual event, and certainly isn’t supported by his post-AlphaGo performance.

Finally, most of your post isn’t really supporting the point you’re trying to make. In particular, “Ai will be directly attacking a business skill you use to pay the rent” is just restating what I’m arguing. If you misunderstood my position that badly, it would be good to take stock of your own position, because I really think that the core of it - people hate AI because it’s threatening their livelihood - is pretty obviously correct, and you just need to remove the breathless hyperbole from your thesis to get something that most people already agree with.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#342

Post by insane_dreamer »

jhack wrote: post #90

To a lot of people AI is just image and text generation. And yes, these uses alone aren't worth the time, money, and energy. But there are a lot of areas where AI is helping that people don't see, like in medicine. Drug development, cancer research and early detection, CT and MRI analysis, just to name a few. These uses cases are vastly more important but rarely get discussed. It's important to know that AI isn't thi…

The problem is, it's not being pushed as just a tool that helps you or your subordinates do your jobs better -- that's nice but not going to generate $Ts in revenue -- but rather as a tool that replaces your subordinates, so your company can increase their quarterly profits -- that's the golden ticket.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#343

Post by insane_dreamer »

simianwords wrote: post #333
happytoexplain wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usage != positive feelings.

why? I think both generally track. And I won't appreciate category errors such as calling it similar to smoking

That's your experience, perhaps. I use it extensively in my work, and some in my personal life. I also think it's a net negative for society, will likely be highly destructive, and I would be happy to give up my use of it in exchange for its elimination.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#344

Post by keybored »

schoen wrote: post #67
cortesoft wrote: post #44

I feel like their are (at least) three main critiques of AI, and I wish we could debate them separately, because I think they each have different resolutions. The first is the fear of job loss, and I feel like this is the most straightforward to deal with. Personally, I think the solution should be to share the productivity of AI with society at large, in particular since AI owes most of its abilities to training on…

The concern I hear the most (which I don't think is common among the general public) is the existential risk one (that an AI may be created that drastically exceeds human intelligence, and that it may accidentally be incentivized to take actions that destroy most or all of human civilization).

In that sense the general public is less superstitious than many technologists. Some of the general public might anthropomorphize too hard. Which is pretty tame compared to the belief of the alien AI intelligence sprouting and killing us accidentally or intentionally.

As far as the paperclip problem is concerned, we’ve already had that problem for a long time now in the form of good old fashioned human institutions.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#345

Post by hettygreen »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #274
ip26 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If companies are faced with the choice between: - employ you at 60k/yr - replace you with a machine that costs a lot of money, and also send you UBI of 60k/yr It should be obvious the latter is not an option that is ever going to happen.

What if the machine in this context is 3x as productive as you?

Then it replaces 3 people's jobs, requiring paying 3 UBI's in this thought experiment.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#346

Post by keybored »

happytoexplain wrote: post #159
cortesoft wrote: post #44

I feel like their are (at least) three main critiques of AI, and I wish we could debate them separately, because I think they each have different resolutions. The first is the fear of job loss, and I feel like this is the most straightforward to deal with. Personally, I think the solution should be to share the productivity of AI with society at large, in particular since AI owes most of its abilities to training on…

No, you're backwards. The first point is definitely the most important and most tricky. UBI is a dangerous distraction in this context. It's a mammoth cost to achieve an impoverished quality of life. It may be worth implementing in general, but it absolutely must stay out of the conversation about AI. It's like if the ruling class started announcing that they would like to imprison us all, and your "discussion" about…

It is quite telling that so many comments here are about UBI as a solution. UBI is a billionaire proposed solution, or distraction. Yeah, of course they want to keep control of the surplus and just have a sustenance spigot for the former workers.

> We are allowed to regulate businesses. We simply don't.

If workers are defunct, what are businesses? Also defunct. Business owners can’t gloat about not needing workers while at the same time claiming that their businesses have a right to life. What is a business owner sitting on a completely automated set of assets? Smaug sitting on his cache of gold.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#347

Post by florisuga »

masijo wrote: post #56

AI has automated my favorite part of the job: coding. Gone is all the experience in clean code, good idioms, etc. All replaced by easily generated shitty code that can be removed and generated again as we please, until it works. No thought about the quality of code itself. Some companies are straight up forcing programmers to live in Claude Code and never even see the code, just write the spec. It’s disgusting. And t…

I've experienced myself that even if you explain to your AI-loving boss in a well reasoned manner that an LLM is not the right tool for the job he wants you to use it for, you simply get labeled as anti tech and your chances of advancement plummet (he was explicit about that). But I still do it, because dammit I'm still a human with a brain. The thought of being a corporate drone who just falls in line with any demand no matter how asinine is worse than the thought of being unemployed.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#348

Post by zenethian »

cortesoft wrote: post #44

I feel like their are (at least) three main critiques of AI, and I wish we could debate them separately, because I think they each have different resolutions. The first is the fear of job loss, and I feel like this is the most straightforward to deal with. Personally, I think the solution should be to share the productivity of AI with society at large, in particular since AI owes most of its abilities to training on…

You forgot the part where they stole literally everyone’s copyrighted works and trained on it and have not been sanctioned at all for it.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#349

Post by neonstatic »

happytoexplain wrote: post #286
neonstatic wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is never going to happen. Is something can be done, it will be done.

>If something can be done, it will be done. What does this mean? It's obviously false on its face.

It means that if something is physically possible, someone will be doing it, regardless of legal, moral, or social barriers. False on its face? Not that long ago, global public opinion was mortified at the news, that newborn twins in China have been genetically modified. I am old enough to remember the outrage in the late 90s as the world watched the first cloned sheep grow up, get sick, and die. It was possible to do, so someone had done it.

The point is - with the use of law, morality, social pressure, we can moderate the frequency and scale of some phenomena, but we cannot stop it. I think this idea is what prevents some bans. "If the Chinese can do it, and we stop ourselves from doing it, they will gain an advantage and we would lose". Substitute "the Chinese" with whoever is the opponent at any given point in time and you have a rather plausible explanation for why things were the way they were.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#350

Post by greggoB »

poly2it wrote: post #155
greggoB wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you know what "mobilized" means - at least, it implies an actor with ulterior motives is driving this response in people. Usually political actors or the media are accused of this. What you're describing on Reddit sounds like a broad-based antipathy to AI, which is just... how a lot of people are feeling? You can criticise their motivation being based in emotions or vibes instead of facts and thoughts,…

Of course I know what mobilised means, but with these social medias, the platforms themselves are at play in shaping the conversations. To clarify, I think this type of anti-AI sentiment should be studied as part of a the baseline social culture of the platforms. I do not have a good answer to why it flourishes on them, other than the generic framing. Perhaps its a new type of technological conservatism?

Some ideas for why people might be feeling this way:

1. People are naturally scared of major change.

2. AI has been pretty aggressively thrust on people, whether they like it or not.

3. There is a legitimate concern about widespread job loss, some companies have already claimed AI is the reason for mass layoffs.

4. Deepfakes, scams, cyber security risks, people AI psychosis or using it to commit suicide, etc - no doubt none of this helps with general public opinion.

5. Cannibalisation of the rest of the economy, e.g. RAM and GPU prices making gaming machines unaffordable, non-AI startups unable to get funding in this environment.

6. Hype fatigue - we've recently been through this with crypto.

So to me the evidence points to anti-AI sentiment being more of a reactionary response to the current status quo, rather than some proactive effort to negate the technology.

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