Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 405 posts

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#391

Post by spacechild1 »

DevDesmond wrote: post #307
analogpixel wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that must be a good message: - you all like music enough to go to a four year program and spend lots of money to study it. - you all probably have been creating music since you were a child and really love it. - well.... - people don't actually like music like you, and just want content; non-stop content. - we now have a magic button that can make content by ripping off every previous artist we've trained our models…

Music was already worthless. Here's Deadmau5 giving advice to aspiring producers in 2012: > You need to make a world. So you have a rollercoaster in your backyard. And it’ll be the hot thing in the neighborhood for about a week. But once everyone’s had a go… they’ll lose interest, go home n play Sega instead. What you need then, is a fuckin’ theme park… and you AND your music are the theme. People come into your them…

> Just like this guy[1],

For the readers who are not aware: John Philip Sousa is, of course, not just some random guy, but the most famous composer of US-American marching music ("The Stars and Stripes Forever", "Washington Post March", etc.) I didn't know that he wrote essays for magazines.

This is really a fascinating document of a bygone era! Thanks for sharing!

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#392

Post by mikestew »

lenerdenator wrote: post #367
mikestew wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as an oldster I’m constantly on the phone with mutual fund managers expressing my desire for CEOs to push more AI. :eyeroll: Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to conspiring with my fellow seniors to keep house prices up in my local area.

I know you're trying to reduce it to absurdity, but that's not what I'm saying you're doing, and I think you know it. I'm saying people chase returns. If you find out that one mutual fund is going to give you reasonably higher returns than your current mutual fund, you're likely to at least consider the option of switching to that competing mutual fund, regardless of how they get the increased returns. Multiply that…

I'm saying people chase returns.

And I’m saying that there’s so many dots to connect to reach your conclusion that it becomes no conclusion at all, let alone having much to do with the decision-making of oldsters.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#393

Post by lenerdenator »

mikestew wrote: post #392
lenerdenator wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're trying to reduce it to absurdity, but that's not what I'm saying you're doing, and I think you know it. I'm saying people chase returns. If you find out that one mutual fund is going to give you reasonably higher returns than your current mutual fund, you're likely to at least consider the option of switching to that competing mutual fund, regardless of how they get the increased returns. Multiply that…

I'm saying people chase returns. And I’m saying that there’s so many dots to connect to reach your conclusion that it becomes no conclusion at all, let alone having much to do with the decision-making of oldsters.

It's almost as if this is a complex system of human behavior and incentives that spans an entire society. That being said, if you pay attention to what's going on, it's fairly obvious to see.

Gens Y and Z make up the largest population cohort in the US by size, but hold only 10.5% of total wealth in the US. Baby Boomers hold about half. [0]

Baby Boomers are of retirement age. That means that many of them are drawing off of retirement accounts. Since you can't save for retirement without compensating for inflation, you have to find ways to grow the money. Most people do this through investments backed by stocks and bonds.

Stocks and bonds derive their value from the labor of the people working at the organizations that issued the stocks and bonds. More and more, those people aren't Baby Boomers. They're retired.

So that money is coming from people who are still working: Gens X, Y, and Z.

To increase returns on those stocks and bonds, you have to reduce the amount of money going to the people doing the work so that they can go to shareholders. Those shareholders are often people with retirement accounts.

[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/americas-wealth-distriution...

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#394

Post by ElevenLathe »

mxuribe wrote: post #376
ElevenLathe wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's much less about generation than about material conditions. It's easier to convince someone that AI is going to be good for their bottom line if they are already retired, or at least have a significant chunk of savings (and therefore investments) and a job higher up the food chain/org chart than a new college grad does. For most working class people, age is a necessary but not sufficient condition to have…

Yeah, i agree that there might be older folks also fearing AI - i'm one of them! :-) As to your point about likely being more due to material conditions rather than age, perhaps you're right....but, then again, on average I'd say the older generation tends to have better material conditions/positions, tends to have at least some savings (maybe retirement, or at least will have more solvent social security, etc.?)...t…

Yeah, I didn't mean to be argumentative, but I hate that issues like this are frequently framed as generational conflicts when they're really class conflicts. There are a lot of people that benefit from erasing the whole concept of class conflict from the public consciousness (though there are many many more that would benefit from the opposite!).

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#395

Post by spacechild1 »

brimwats wrote: post #390
spacechild1 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think the last sentence was necessary? It's a good answer otherwise.

it's a great last line; when trying to explain something to someone it behooves someone to ask a follow-up so they can clarify anything not yet answered.

Thanks for the tip! I will immediately try this line in my next professional e-mail. I am sure they will appreciate my courtesy.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#396

Post by mxuribe »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #394
mxuribe wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, i agree that there might be older folks also fearing AI - i'm one of them! :-) As to your point about likely being more due to material conditions rather than age, perhaps you're right....but, then again, on average I'd say the older generation tends to have better material conditions/positions, tends to have at least some savings (maybe retirement, or at least will have more solvent social security, etc.?)...t…

Yeah, I didn't mean to be argumentative, but I hate that issues like this are frequently framed as generational conflicts when they're really class conflicts. There are a lot of people that benefit from erasing the whole concept of class conflict from the public consciousness (though there are many many more that would benefit from the opposite!).

You did not come off as argumentative at all; no worries! Apologies if my reply was defensive! :-)

Your point about folks perhaps framing it as generational as opposed to class is quite interesting. I wonder if maybe in the past both of these dimensions (generation and class) overlapped alot more...and now, maybe things skew more towards one generation being more of one class, and so maybe data either getsd hidden, or in many cases the folks in one generation happen to be members of a specific class level? I ask this as a rhetorical question, and not a statement, because i have no idea on a wide scale. For example, if maybe a few generations ago, there were class conflicts across the different generational categories...but nowadays, most (but not all) older folks might identify more with only one side of the class aspect? Anyway, all questions that can't be answered without tons of data and evidence gathering! Good discussion!!!

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#397

Post by aiisjustanif »

RIMR wrote: post #131
dylan604 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to wrap my head around how one can still be around someone in 2023 after what happened in 2021. This confusion no way justifies what happened nor am I blaming anyone. I just don't understand it.

It turns out that rapists like to enter relationships with damaged people, and damaged people have trouble leaving violently abusive relationships. I know understanding isn't a strength of yours, but hopefully this helps. >nor am I blaming anyone Saying this doesn't immunize you from valid criticism of victim-blaming. Your question is basically "Why would the victim let it happen again?". I know you're "just asking q…

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#398

Post by aiisjustanif »

gruez wrote: post #316
romaniv wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article we're commenting on lists several examples of the dynamic and it aligns with my personal experience offline and online. There are also stats like these: https://on.substack.com/p/the-substack-ai-report "Publishers 45 and over were more likely to use AI than those under 45." I can, of course, dig up more supporting data, but that is not as important to me as making sense of what I'm actually seeing. https:…

>"Publishers 45 and over were more likely to use AI than those under 45." There's probably some skew here where old people in general aren't typically on substack, and therefore of the old people who are on substack, they're more "on the cutting edge" than younger publishers, which don't have such skew. >"Younger Americans are generally more likely than older Americans to think the increased use of AI will worsen hum…

> Right but what about actual usage? Young believe social media is bad for them, but nonetheless use it.

The topic was about sentiment, not usage. And the Pew Article has broad sample sizes ranging from 5,000 to 28,000.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#399

Post by skrebbel »

chadgpt3 wrote: post #156
bluefirebrand wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why they booed the mention of AI specifically, surely. It's because they're bored of the speech, not because they're angry at the hearing praise for the technology that is poised to fuck up their careers and futures You can be pissed off about AI without being an "activist luddite" you know

The word "Luddite" is no longer such an insult as it once was, by the way, now that everyone realises they had a point.

yep I meant it positively.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#400

Post by steelkilt »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #285
steelkilt wrote: post #119

If I were an adversary of the U.S. I would encourage anti-AI sentiment among young people, to my strategic advantage.

That assumes that there is benefit to be had in all this AI craze. So far, none has yet materialized.

Yesterday I needed to create an SDS (material safety data sheet) for one of my products. This would usually take me a few hours, maybe half a day. An agent did it for me in 5 minutes. This example isn’t unique; for a small business owner, AI is a quality of life improvement.
Post reply on HN