The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by keybored » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:52 PM UTC

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…

> 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 the works of society.

This is straightforward? This is a colossal task. Monumental. Billionaires own it. That’s the political status quo. You could build something to counter those centers of power. But from what base?

Well-paid software developers have scoffed at or been ignorant of worker organizing for, maybe forever? But I have good paycheck and equity... Now what?

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

#82

Post by guzfip » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

troosevelt wrote: post #60

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…

If you lost your $60,000 a year job due to this, do you really believe a basic income funded by it will make up that loss? It won't. Basic income in the US is usually proposed at $12k per year, which would add another $3 trillion to the budget. Do you think you can even get that just taxing these companies? I don't. People who bring up basic income need to get serious about the numbers involved because I never see it…

[flagged]

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

#83

Post by ori_b » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

devindotcom wrote: post #62

certainly people are finding everyday uses... but a lot of those uses are necessitated by enshittification of search and other commonplace tools. so although I think many see the usefulness of the technology here and there, their experience of it is one of being forced to adopt a thing they never asked for by companies with few or no sincere or articulable values. billions use windows and gmail but have a poor opinio…

We keep setting houses on fire so that we can roast marshmallows, and wonder why the people living in those houses are unhappy.

As we do this, we promise that if we set enough houses on fire, we'll build hell. And imagine how rich we'll be if we sell fuel to keep the hell we built running.

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

#84

Post by MBCook » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #63

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…

There are a few other issues. Like copyright. All modern LLMs are built on troves of copyrighted material that was used in their training. AI companies are claiming this is fair use, while pretty much all of the copyright holders would strongly disagree. This is going to get litigated for years, but regardless of what various legal systems decide, morally , people can be against this. And people are already sick and…

And we’ve seen the cases of people trying to use the AIs to train new AIs!

OpenAI: We’re allowed to steal everything to train our AI and you can’t complain

Developer: Ok, I’ll use your AI to train mine

OpenAI: NO NOT LIKE THAT, UNFAIR

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

#85

Post by mcphage » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

DocTomoe wrote: post #70

Some perspective ... I really do not see 'the public hating AI' outside of a very specific demographic (17-30 year old artsy types, generally left-leaning). Average everyday people in my area either don't care about AI at all, or like it, using it as a better search engine. The situation might be different in the States, but I'd wager Joe Sixpack, brass fisher in Montana, couldn't care less about GPT-5.5 or whatever…

> I'd wager Joe Sixpack, brass fisher in Montana

I don’t think Montana fishermen have a broad impact on society, or its decision making. There’s just not that many of them.

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

#86

Post by autaut » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

I don’t think the public hates ai. I think AI needs a lot of money so it loudly only pursued the light-bendingly rich by leveraging the only two emotions they have: 1) greed: you will be able to fire all your employees 2) fear: if you don’t buy it someone else will and that is too dangerous for you

Of course normal people found this incredibly off putting.

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

#87

Post by spwa4 » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

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…

In my opinion the main, and really only, issue: AI is a necessity. Everything from war (including defense departments), to jobs, to rental advertisements, to food packaging, to restaurant reviews, to news, to education, to programming, to architecture, to politics ... will have to change due to AI. Not changing them is not really an option. Everything needs to be figured out here.

A lot of this will both cost money AND require people to change their jobs, their investments, their equipment, ... And they hate it.

Everyone, including governments will have to adapt.

And to add insult to injury, everything comes from the US and it's really expensive.

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

#88

Post by greggoB » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

poly2it wrote: post #30

greggoB wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobilized by who, and how was that achieved?

Have you been on Reddit recently? Anti-AI sentiment isn't limited to technical communities, but engaged with platform-wide. The hate is the content; apart from the rampant anti-intellectualism there is very little engagement with any material discussing the technologies in and of themselves.

I don't think you know what "mobilized" means - at least, it implies an actor with ulterior motives is driving this response in people. Usually political actors or the media are accused of this.

What you're describing on Reddit sounds like a broad-based antipathy to AI, which is just... how a lot of people are feeling?

You can criticise their motivation being based in emotions or vibes instead of facts and thoughts, but unless you have evidence to the contrary, it sounds like this is just where people are at on this topic.

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

#89

Post by cortesoft » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #63

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…

There are a few other issues. Like copyright. All modern LLMs are built on troves of copyrighted material that was used in their training. AI companies are claiming this is fair use, while pretty much all of the copyright holders would strongly disagree. This is going to get litigated for years, but regardless of what various legal systems decide, morally , people can be against this. And people are already sick and…

I feel like this is covered by the last question about how we deal with AI and creative works.

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

#90

Post by jhack » Sat, Apr 25, 2026, 9:55 PM UTC

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 this one singular thing or else we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.