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Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

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Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#401

Post by rayiner »

Barrin92 wrote: post #331
rayiner wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like do people think that these AI companies will create some superintelligence, suck up all the financial benefits of that, and then just decide to share it with the rest of us out of kindness? I don’t get this. It’s like worrying in 1960 that the companies that invented computers will hoard the benefits of computing. It doesn’t make any sense. There is no secret formula to any of this. The math underlying the mod…

>It’s like worrying in 1960 that the companies that invented computers will hoard the benefits of computing. It doesn’t make any sense. Not only is that exactly what happened, they weren't satisfied with accumulating most of the wealth produced by it, they've also taken it upon themselves to take over democracy and media and act like a state within a state. You only need one statistic to understand America today, tha…

> You only need one statistic to understand America today, that working class Americans without college degrees have had their purchasing power stagnate since the 1970s(https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/)

Having a college degree was a much more selective measure in 1970 (about 10% of the population) than today (almost 40%). Consider a large law firm. In 1970, the only 4-year degree holders would have been the attorneys. A lot of work would have been done by well-compensated paralegals with high school diplomas. Today, everyone down to the receptionist will have a degree and the non-degree holders would basically be the maintenance and cafeteria staff.

So using your math, the income of non-college workers at the law firm could be stagnant from 1970 to today, even if the income of each specific position had increased significantly.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#402

Post by rhipitr »

AngryData wrote: post #54
cryo32 wrote: post #2

The pushback I see everywhere outside of tech suggests the tech industry vastly overestimated the interest. The tech industry doesn't speak for the entire planet as much as it likes to think it does.

I think the tech industry is overestimating its value. Because it can code they think it can do anything else, but unlike code a lot of other work can't have a bunch of little bugs and mistakes because you can't open up real life and edit it after the fact. Plus it lacks actual reasoning to solve novel problems. Hiring an engineer to finetooth comb blueprints for mistakes before construction will take nearly as much…

I think also, just seeing non-technical friends and family interact with it, there’s a lot of massaging you have to do right now to get it to work that just goes over their heads. Until they gets pushed behind an abstraction layer I see adoption crawling at a certain point.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#403

Post by jimbokun »

autoexec wrote: post #214
jondlm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This... this... this! This resonates soooo deeply with me. The wild thing is that these tech "systems" (aka companies) are made up of ostensibly good people. It's often impossible to look at individual people and say, "they're the cause of this damage." I believe that some form of evil (this word feel inadequate) emerges amidst these large systems that is incredibly hard to pinpoint. It's why dissension is so fucking…

> The wild thing is that these tech "systems" (aka companies) are made up of ostensibly good people. I don't think that's the case. The people running these companies certainly aren't good people and everyone else in any position of power is either happy to hurt anyone and anything in exchange for a paycheck, or they're willing to take the money and turn a blind eye to the things they know are wrong. It's difficult t…

Most currently poor people would have the exact same failings if they suddenly found themselves with vast power.

One of the most important political developments in history was the realization that you can’t just replace a bad king with a good king. They all eventually go bad. Instead you need checks and balances to distribute power and make sure it’s not concentrated in only a few hands.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#404

Post by ben_w »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #391
ben_w wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they, though? Intel, IBM, DEC and Honeywell were big names, but they're not FAANG. Other than Nintendo, how many games companies today were around back then?

... so your argument is "no actually the second generation did that"? End result for 100-16 % of Americans is the same

Other than Apple, FAANG is fourth or fifth generation at least.

And my argument is straight assuming you're OK to say the financial PoV is a good PoV, I'm not arguing for or against that claim.

> End result for 100-16 % of Americans is the same

Yes, but FAANG got all the money without the hate AI has. Well, perhaps, I'm not sure when the public decided F had horns rather than a halo, so I can't be sure how much money they had at the time, but other than that the hate came long after the money.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#405

Post by jimbokun »

watwut wrote: post #314
jondlm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This... this... this! This resonates soooo deeply with me. The wild thing is that these tech "systems" (aka companies) are made up of ostensibly good people. It's often impossible to look at individual people and say, "they're the cause of this damage." I believe that some form of evil (this word feel inadequate) emerges amidst these large systems that is incredibly hard to pinpoint. It's why dissension is so fucking…

I think that CEOs of those companies are ethically challenged people, narcissists and sociopaths. They are not evil and there is no evil emerging in big systems. It is that in the above have advantage in winner takes all economy and use that advantage to gain more advantages. So they end up on top. And once they are high enough, law dont apply to them. Which makes them go even higher.

The vast majority of people suddenly become ethically challenged narcissists and sociopaths if given too much power.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#406

Post by shric »

Silamoth wrote: post #365
olalonde wrote: post #347

Stated preferences vs revealed preferences. People say they don't like it but they still use it.

Do they? And if so, by choice? I don’t like “AI”, and I don’t use it. I read lots of stories where people are forced to use it at work but don’t use it otherwise. Do you know of people who don’t think “AI” will have a positive impact on society but still choose to use it?

> Do you know of people who don’t think “AI” will have a positive impact on society but still choose to use it?

Yes. Per your previous statement, those people who are “forced” to use it at work. While it might be a requirement of their job, what job they do is usually a choice.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#407

Post by rybosworld »

JoBrad wrote: post #199
slg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of American society will get to share in the benefits of those new biological and medical discoveries when we don't have any health insurance because we lost our jobs to AI?

An optimistic view is that the jobs displaced by AI will be like the jobs displaced by industrialization: while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required. At least one data point in favor of this view is the middling success of the AI rollout so far. Of course it’s eclipsed in the short run…

> An optimistic view is that the jobs displaced by AI will be like the jobs displaced by industrialization: while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required.

At this point, it's condescending to keep rehashing the "this is just the next industrialization era". It's been beaten to death as an invalid comparison more on this website than maybe any other.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#408

Post by Perseids »

ben_w wrote: post #319
slg wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just to summarize, it seems like the most optimistic outcome that the collective of HN could come up with in the hour since my original comment was that medical care would improve and you might be able to pay for it if you retrain yourself for some yet unknown new career that might suddenly appear at some point in the future. That's the optimistic vision we're asking society to buy into? No wonder it's only 16%.

The upper limit for biomedicine is halting aging, ending all illnesses including cancer and congenital genetic illnesses, and being able to bioprint replacement parts not only in the event of trauma but also as a free choice for e.g. a fully functional gender swap. Given present culture wars, that last one may cause a lot of drama all by itself no matter how good it gets. But hopefully you get the picture about how t…

You are very conservative with the upper limits, probably because you are limiting yourself to medicine. With bioengineering the upper limits are hard to grasp. Why build a house, when you can grow one. Re-imagine all machines as custom-made biology. Why upload your conscience to silicon, when your body can be anything, your brain can experience anything, you brain can be reshaped to be anything.

How much is possible there, is only constrained in our understanding of biology. How difficult that turns out to be for a super intelligence… who knows? If we are actually on the cusp of the AI singularity, the future is going to be weird and/or wonderful and/or horrible, but definitely unimaginable different than today.

My mind is kind of shooing away from this intuitively. Too hard to believe. My whole life experience has been living in a different world. But imagine if "we" could actually create human level intelligence, say, for the price of a 100k USD/EUR/GBP. It could only do knowledge work, of course, but it would easily pay for itself and thus be mass produced. What is the market cap for cheap knowledge work? I would be surprised if it is only a billion human-equivalents, given humans find new creative ways to pay for themselves all the time. That explosion alone is mind-boggling and it does not rely on super-intelligence.

All of this should make one point clear: At no other point in history has it been more important to have our power structures be aligned with the interests of society.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#409

Post by slg »

fluoridation wrote: post #353
slg wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s like worrying in 1960 that the companies that invented computers will hoard the benefits of computing. Isn't that what happened? There was enough competition among computing companies that they weren't able to completely monopolize all the productivity improvements, but the financial benefits were mostly captured by the capital class in one way or another.[1] TVs might be cheaper today and we all like watching…

>I'm skeptical of the idea that the financial wellbeing of the average American has been improved by computers. Really? Even with all the new avenues of education and communication that they opened up? You think the positives and negatives balance out to close to zero?

The stats I linked above show that those “new avenues of education and communication” didn’t actually benefit the average American financially in at least the relative sense. Do you have something to counter that evidence?

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#410

Post by zuzululu »

vanuatu wrote: post #395
zuzululu wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chinese people have much more faith in their govt than Western countries, but you know why that is right (really hoping you know the difference and where this comes from and its not culture)

the govt helped lift many, many millions out of poverty since opening to the rest of the world?

polls/census/surveys mean absolutely nothing when publicly expressing distrust or criticism of the government carries severe penalties.

especially when the "poverty lift" is basically 600 million Chinese people struggling to make more than $140 USD / month

so you can't really hear anything bad about it when its illegal to say anything bad

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