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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

#351

Post by HighGoldstein »

happytoexplain wrote: post #182
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…

They do see those use cases. It's not surprising that they focus on the enormous number of other, negative use cases. It's misleading to describe the medical use cases as "more important" - yes, they are, in the same way that healing a person is "more important" than ruining their lives. That's not what you're implying by your usage of the term, though. A person having a negative attitude about AI doesn't mean that t…

> They do see those use cases. It's not surprising that they focus on the enormous number of other, negative use cases. It's misleading to describe the medical use cases as "more important" - yes, they are, in the same way that healing a person is "more important" than ruining their lives. That's not what you're implying by your usage of the term, though.

This comment could just as easily apply to a conversation about computers in general, it's just that people whose lives have been "ruined" by now-established technologies have been largely forgotten by society.

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

#352

Post by guyomes »

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…

> How do we handle AI doing creative work? How do we treat AI creative work? How much creative work do we feel comfortable handing over to AI?

Just as a good for thought, looking back into history, during the late 1920s, mass production had a critical impact on Art Deco [1]. Artists were divided on the question if mass-produced art (using new industrial methods) could have a quality similar to hand-crafted art. It is clear that different people will have different opinion on the subject.

The technology is not there yet, but one example of mass production from AI would be book adaptation into movies. I'm sure that there are many other examples hard to predict that might: empower people, degrade art quality, improve art quality, divide people or maybe gather people.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco#Late_Art_Deco

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

#353

Post by baal80spam »

abakker wrote: post #164
animegolem wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if you did get the 60k and never can find work again are you gonna be happy about the next door neighbor working for 120k and getting his 60k on top?

All the proposals I’ve seen would set the marginal tax rate on the 120 so high that his earnings would end up more like 40k from the 120k job and then he gets his 60. So, still some benefit to working, but a very progressive tax rate on higher earnings. Not sure I agree with this, but that is what I’ve seen.

> 40k from the 120k job

I would not get up in the morning in such case.

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

#354

Post by neonstatic »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #283
neonstatic wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There were historical worries about whether a ban would be feasible, but frontier AI research as we understand it today requires large amounts of specialized compute. Even if we couldn't or wouldn't destroy the chips, we could imprison anyone who tries to start a large training run, the same way we imprison anyone who tries to buy enriched uranium.

Yes, that is true, but it's not my point. I am not saying it'd be impossible to find people who are doing it. My point is that there will always be a group of people, who'd be willing to do potentially dangerous things as long as those things are possible and are believed to provide some sort of advantage. For that reason, those people would either be in decision making positions or have a good enough offer to decision makers. Speaking of uranium - I don't think AI is anything like it (although the AI industry propaganda really wants us to believe that), but even there we have examples of countries that were pursuing nuclear weapons both successfully and unsuccessfully as well as countries that could have them, but choose not to. So the ban itself isn't necessarily the main point here.

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

#356

Post by fireflash38 »

JeremyNT wrote: post #310
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.

The solution to the subsequent devaluation of labor, and ability for tech oligarchs to pocket the cash instead, will not be found in capitalism. Unless we are all to become serfs, a new way to distribute resources needs to be on the table. UBI is a salve, offered to keep victims of the system out of abject poverty. It is too little, too late.

We are returning to feudalism, with a cyberpunk spin on it.

You will not own anything. You don't even really own your tech now.

The writing is on the wall: you will not be allowed to modify what you own.

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

#357

Post by sph »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #213
rtdq wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask anyone who is a gamer what they think of AI. I guarantee you'll get a universally negative reaction because of RAMageddon.

Not just that, they go absolutely fucking ballistic if they in so much as find a single AI generated texture in a game.

See the terrible DLSS 5 fiasco.

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

#358

Post by sph »

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

How many of those billion users are using it because they keep being told to become proficient with AI or risk being left behind? I guess a decent enough slice, as the FUD campaign is getting more persistent everyday.

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

#359

Post by sph »

zmmmmm wrote: post #160
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 think you do a good job capturing an actual microcosm of the real problems here at an emotional level - why people "hate" it. (a) loss of fulfillment (b) lower quality of output and nobody will care so the world will just "degrade" and (c) a perceived lack of autonomy ("forcing", "you can't opt out") around how adoption itself is executed

(d) making you feel like an idiot because you care about the craft and intimate knowledge of the software you're working on

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

#360

Post by mplanchard »

fidotron wrote: post #119

The group that really hate AI are the media and journalists, which makes perfect sense given what generative AI is doing to those industries. As it stands though the whole "the public hates AI" is about as credible as that phase from a decade ago where random tweets were used to justify any position they wanted to.

I work remotely, so most of my social sphere is non-tech people. I live in a pretty liberal area, where the average level of education is high.

I don’t know a single non-tech person who has positive feelings about AI in that sphere.

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