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Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

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Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#41

Post by classified »

float4 wrote: post #5

As someone who's in his late 20s and didn't (consciously) witness the dotcom crisis I want to ask the older people here: was this also part of the dotcom bubble era? Were people working in bookstores angry at Amazon, people working in retail fashion angry at fashion ecommerce stores, etc?

Consider this difference between today and the dotcom boom:

The software industry has shifted its entire value proposition from “we make tools that help you make or save money” to using political clout and the dollar hegemony to capture, control, and loot entire sectors of the various economies of the world.

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48147793)

That will make a hell of a difference between being all for it and booing the proponents of the new order.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#42

Post by CHB0403085482 »

hackable_sand wrote: post #36
stavros wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of AI were you expecting that wouldn't be "a chatbot"?

It's hard to say. Perhaps being at the epicenter of Silicon Valley's nouveau AI revolution tinted my glasses. But I remember a distinct air of optimism, that humanity was working towards some breakthrough in the fundamental secrets of consciousness. Let me be frank, it doesn't matter how well the machine works if it is weaponized against people. If it systematically degrades our humanity. I am a pacifist, so I believ…

AI on chess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz5EFsSbQ7U

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#43

Post by watwut »

foldr wrote: post #15
lioeters wrote: post #8

Ex-CEO of Google telling a crowd of young graduates entering society, "You will work for AI." Then trying to counter the boos with remarks like: "If you get offered a chance to ride on the rocket ship, you don't ask questions you just get on." This is not only about AI the technology, it's the deserved anger against the privileged and powerful for their utter mismanagement of society. The youth sees through the bulls…

>If you get offered a chance to ride on the rocket ship, you don't ask questions you just get on This doesn't even work as a metaphor. I absolutely would not jump on the chance to ride on a literal rocket ship without asking a hell of a lot of questions first!

Yeah, that was my first thought too. If I am character in a sci-fi book (and he is old enough to read those), I totally jump on it.

But here, back in the real world, with one life to live, majority of people will simply refuse because they have lives and sane interested person asks a lot of questions. I mean, was he one of early Titan submersible passengers? And that one guaranteed quick death rather then prolonged one or slavery or what have you.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#44

Post by watwut »

stavros wrote: post #4

Honest question, are people against AI, or against AI being solely in the hands of a few massive companies, thus concentrating wealth even more? Are people against local models as well? What if they could run Claude at home (maybe with the same power requirements as now, but maybe with much less upfront cost).

Imo, tech leaders managed to make themselves seem odious so much, that I am scared of any additional power they will get.

If I run Claude at home and it is now source of info and trained to be effective right wing propagandist (most subtle then grok) with no one except new CEO being able to change it, I am scared of it.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#45

Post by bigstrat2003 »

stavros wrote: post #35
hackable_sand wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one thing, we were promised AI and we got... a chatbot. So it pretty much starts with the lies and scams. You could argue this is the same cultural force behind NFTs for instance.

What kind of AI were you expecting that wouldn't be "a chatbot"?

For one thing, I would've expected it to actually have intelligence. All we currently have is a stochastic parrot without any intelligence or ability to reason.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#46

Post by sambapa »

potsandpans wrote: post #38
kevin948 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to be so dismissively pathological. If you disagree, that's one thing, but this reads as 'look at this sad, crazy fool' when this is a pretty understandable reaction to feeling alienated by the way in which LLMs are being forcefully pushed in both personal and professional domains and the oft ensuing breakdown in human to human communication. 'Who does this technology serve?' is a valid question and 'not us'…

I accept that the poster may be feeling these things, and I'm not interested in or making a value judgement around them. All feelings are valid. Instead, I'm pointing out that it's an extreme overreaction and histrionic viewpoint that is shared by a lot growing number of people, who have been living in this same world for the last 10 years. Now we've got generative AI all the sudden it's "I hate I hate I hate I hate…

What's the problem of not liking shit when it is shoved down your throat? It is not an extreme overreaction, it is a reaction, so maybe this technology is just really bad?

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#47

Post by zimpenfish »

ompogUe wrote: post #17
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Secretaries and typists aged out of the job market, Barnes and Nobles was still booming and attracted all the bookstore scorn, people still bought things in stores anyways.

What I remember is the big box book stores coming to town and putting the independent and smaller stores out of business. While I did appreciate having access to stacks of modern computer manuals, it didn't last long: once the mom-and-pops were out of business, the big box stores pivoted to converting half of their floor space to selling candles and pillows.

> What I remember is the big box book stores coming to town and putting the independent and smaller stores out of business.

Weirdly, in (central) London, that didn't happen - the smaller stores survived people like Borders et al. The only "big" stores there now are Foyles[0] and Waterstones (who own Foyles.)

[0] In its new soulless incarnation.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#48

Post by latexr »

lioeters wrote: post #8

Ex-CEO of Google telling a crowd of young graduates entering society, "You will work for AI." Then trying to counter the boos with remarks like: "If you get offered a chance to ride on the rocket ship, you don't ask questions you just get on." This is not only about AI the technology, it's the deserved anger against the privileged and powerful for their utter mismanagement of society. The youth sees through the bulls…

> Then trying to counter the boos with remarks like: "If you get offered a chance to ride on the rocket ship, you don't ask questions you just get on."

Perhaps Schmidt should Google “Space Shuttle Challenger” before making that analogy.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#49

Post by porknbeans00 »

float4 wrote: post #5

As someone who's in his late 20s and didn't (consciously) witness the dotcom crisis I want to ask the older people here: was this also part of the dotcom bubble era? Were people working in bookstores angry at Amazon, people working in retail fashion angry at fashion ecommerce stores, etc?

for a few years I was an HP Server Automation SME.

I flew around the US basically automating stuff with a network automation and operations orchestration team. This is before amazon really was a thing. So we were going into big old school data centers where the largest leap in tech since the 80s was VMWare ESX ( the new hotness ).

every site we went into we were by and large putting a lot of people out of work. these old telecom giants and industrial giants basically had a lot of folks who were like... the guy who reboots switches. Or the guy who maintains a specific bash script to take backups.

the stuff we did made most of these folks instantly obsolete. especially the CCNAs.

Now for those that don't know... 2000 or so... high schools started getting kids CCNA certifications to be top of rack switch kids so they could get a 'good job'. And it was a GOOD JOB. It paid VERY well. Better than most kids with a liberal arts degree.

Fast forward an almost a decade and we were wiping that entire career path out FAST. Datacenters went from having an army of CCNAs to a couple CCIEs and a couple CCNAs to do the physical labor. A lot of people who had only ever done one thing in their career for ten years were losing their cushy upper medium income salary and finding out their career path ended. They were as you might imagine... angry, afraid, prepared to sabotage... etc.

I didn't like that side of the work at all. But it really was inevitable.

Fast forward 15 years. The highest paid people in tech are CCIEs that can code. I know guys making 700k a year cause they know python and BGP inside and out.

We ripped the middle out of networking and EVERYONE paid the price. It's amazing to me that we never learn from our past.

Re: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI

#50

Post by porknbeans00 »

stavros wrote: post #4

Honest question, are people against AI, or against AI being solely in the hands of a few massive companies, thus concentrating wealth even more? Are people against local models as well? What if they could run Claude at home (maybe with the same power requirements as now, but maybe with much less upfront cost).

AI to me is very dangerous. And we're throwing it into mission critical shit with reckless abandon. And the operative word there is RECKLESS.

It's non deterministic by its nature. Without good frameworks and safeguards it's unpredictable. We know that much for certain.

But it's worse than that. We don't know all the attack vectors for prompt escapes yet at all. That's barely been figured out.

And the psychological toll of working in slop heavy environments is CLEARLY VERY BAD.

So ... we raced a technology out the door without even minimal research into how to do that safely or effectively. As an industry we just shot ourselves in both knees and made the case for a regulatory blow back of epic proportions. And like... That sucks. Complete failure of leadership across the entire industry. Short term gains for short term losses followed by long term losses.

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