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Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

nytimes.com

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Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#61

Post by beloch »

"Many respondents did acknowledge that A.I. might make them more efficient in school and the workplace, he said. But they were concerned about how the technology would affect their creativity and critical thinking skills."

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Perhaps schools need to adapt to AI use and recenter the goals of education in the minds of students. If AI use impairs your development, you are only being efficient in your evasion of education.

i.e. Students need to be taught that learning to efficiently pump out AI written essays isn't the same thing as learning to reason and express themselves. AI tools will evolve and become easier and easier to pick up and use. Using your own mind is a slower and more difficult skill to develop, but it makes the difference between going through life as a human being or a mere meat-puppet for AI. It will always be far easier for a human to pick up AI tools and learn them from scratch than it will for a meat-puppet to remedy their lack of human development.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#62

Post by enragedcacti »

angelgonzales wrote: post #26

[flagged]

It's quite interesting that your (presumably very representative) survey of young people has unanimously reported 'arbitrary amalgamation of bog-standard right-wing grievances' as the primary issue of our time

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#63

Post by warkdarrior »

disposition2 wrote: post #54
angelgonzales wrote: post #26

[flagged]

> At the same time I see young people frustrated when their cars get broken into or when they get robbed and criminals are not held accountable. My take on this is that legacy media refuses to address these issues or plays them down and at the same time they amplify concerns about AI probably because AI is supplanting the reach and their rhetoric and reducing their ad share. Maybe it’s just the legacy media I consume…

> And I’m not sure how you would expect media institutions to address petty crime. I guess they could ask local leaders and local law enforcement about it.?

Uh... yes? Journalists used to report on crimes and then ask police and town leaders questions on how they're addressing it. And then do follow-up stories weeks or months later, to report on (lack of) progress and again ask police and town leaders questions.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#64

Post by kjkjadksj »

disposition2 wrote: post #54
angelgonzales wrote: post #26

[flagged]

> At the same time I see young people frustrated when their cars get broken into or when they get robbed and criminals are not held accountable. My take on this is that legacy media refuses to address these issues or plays them down and at the same time they amplify concerns about AI probably because AI is supplanting the reach and their rhetoric and reducing their ad share. Maybe it’s just the legacy media I consume…

This “gotcha” just leads to the conclusion that reporting on car break-ins and such just isn’t that interesting. “Car window smashed in Pasadena” yawn, talk about a waste of airtime imo. Might as well talk about all the people not using their blinker every day.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#65

Post by angelgonzales »

wredcoll wrote: post #45
angelgonzales wrote: post #26

[flagged]

> pressures of high taxes This is something I never see mentioned so I'm curious what brought it up. Are you personally paying a lot of taxes or so much that you can't afford other things or is this a thing peers talk about? Is this a state or federal thing?

I totally am paying a massive amount of capital gains taxes! I’m also saving up for a house which means every dollar I don’t contribute to a down payment becomes principal and interest on a mortgage which equals even more money out of my pocket. For instance if I pay $37k in capital gains one year (which I did) and if my principal on a $500k house is $200k at 6% and $1500 monthly payments I’ll have to pay $33k in interest on just the $37k I didn’t pay up front!

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#66

Post by palmotea »

throwaway290 wrote: post #44
palmotea wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane. It will take time to adjust and some industries will go away and others will pop up. That's fallacious thinking. Technological developments aren't instances of some kind of repeating phenomena; they're distinct, unique events with their own characteristics. You need to consider those characteristics instead of gesticulating at…

> you could totally go up to someone in the middle of a genocide, as their community in the process of being murdered, and say "genocides have happened before, some people will go away, others will survive." Yeah. How many times I saw people here say oh yeah it's just the same as job loss during automaton-industrialization. How is that making things better? "Yeah just more mass poverty and more wealth inequality, wha…

> the only explanation for people saying this is that they don't understand they will be on the line later just like the people displaced now. but the dream of being the .1% who get to be on top and monetize everybody else is too tempting I guess.

I doubt most people who say things like that "dream of being the .1%". I think it's more typical they're just someone who thoughtlessly repeata propaganda memes, without considering the implications. I think that's something that software engineers are particularly prone to do, despite frequently having a self-image of being "intelligent."

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#67

Post by bko »

Reminds me of the quote: No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. I'm sure most teachers and schools would prefer them not to.

Why do they have to use it? Have standards gotten higher in schools such that they will be left behind if they don't? Is there peer pressure to use it? Is there some social aspect I'm unaware of?

Of course not. People find the technology useful. Social media I understand as it's harder to break away because friends use it to communicate. But that's not true for AI.

And then they have some doomer media telling them they should be concerned and scapegoat the technology. Gen AI will prevent you from being an artist or poet?

Yeah, I just don't buy it.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#68

Post by antonvs »

bogzz wrote: post #25
jesse_dot_id wrote: post #18

Yeah, no kidding, the tech bros have utterly botched the rollout of this technology. It's the pinnacle of human innovation. It should be revered as our greatest achievement. People should know about how its going to revolutionize scientific research. Instead, they opted for regulatory capture in lieu of addressing people's concerns, using robber-baron techniques to force data center construction in at-risk communitie…

> It's the pinnacle of human innovation. It should be revered as our greatest achievement. People should know about how its going to revolutionize scientific research. How so? Colloquially, AI currently means LLMs. Why would we revere LLMs as our greatest achievement?

Because we've built something that's (functionally) intelligent, comparable to humans in terms of its ability to exhibit (functional) understanding of complex topics, and produce novel correct output. There's nothing even remotely close to this in human history. This was all science fiction 10 years ago.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#69

Post by teachrdan »

wredcoll wrote: post #45
angelgonzales wrote: post #26

[flagged]

> pressures of high taxes This is something I never see mentioned so I'm curious what brought it up. Are you personally paying a lot of taxes or so much that you can't afford other things or is this a thing peers talk about? Is this a state or federal thing?

I hate to be uncharitable but the comment seems to simply be parroting conservative talking points, rather than being an accurate (or sincere) representation of young people's pessimism about the future.

> high housing costs which driven up by overregulation, entitlements to retirees and H1B/immigrant cases driving down wages

Anyone I talk to under 40 despairs at low wages, rising prices, and a political class that is incapable of going after blatant corruption, especially those identified in the Epstein files.

There is more anger at capitalism and billionaires (capitalists in the Marxist sense) than in any time in living memory. The notion that young people are generally upset about regulation, entitlement and H1B visas is laughably out of touch. It might be true for a tiny number of spoiled techies in the Bay Area! But outside SF, Seattle and NYC, young people are angry about a lot of things, and strong regulation and generous benefits are about the last of them.

Re: Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

#70

Post by guzfip »

nothinkjustai wrote: post #55
justonepost2 wrote: post #4

We are, in the best case scenario, minting a lost generation in real time. This will become increasingly clear over the next 2 years. Meanwhile, simonw and his retiree friends are having the "time of their lives", so that's good I guess :)

“Who cares about the immense harm AI is wrecking on our economy and society, it helps me create worthless throwaway software for myself and lets me be lazier at work.” - people on this forum

Crazy thing is before AI the same people spamming Show HN with stupid worthless SaaS products that went no where beyond the submitters GitHub account. “Hey check out my shitty CRUD app because I have minor annoyances with some other shitty SaaS that everyone hates yet remains the market leader”. “Now rewritten in foo.js and Rust”.

It wasn’t impressive when you wrote it by hand, it’s still not impressive when an AI does all the work for you.

Mocking the former is now culturally acceptable on HN, the latter not so much.

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