Comment by lioeters

3 days ago

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 bullshit. Good on them, there may be hope for humanity after all.

>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!

  • This doesn't even work as a metaphor

    The whole speech was probably written by AI anyway </sarcasm>

  • 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.

The worst part was he was smirking.

At this point, people in tech are just as hated as bankers and the general public will see them as their enemies, taking away their job, but this time permanently.

Of course he knows there will be a crash in this, so its unsurprising to see this reaction. But the point is, Schmidt does not care either way as he stands to benefit and expects humanity to be paying for the tokens.

He is already prepared for the eventual backlash anyway.

Get to ride on one? Inside or outside? I see that as saddling oneself on the way to fast and inevitable doom...

> 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.

  • What question should S. Christa McAuliffe have asked?

    • I’m not going to play the game of speaking for a victim of a disaster. The fact that a civilian was on board Challenger is secondary. The point is that Schmidt has hindsight, as do we all. Challenger wasn’t the only disaster, we know these things can happen even when precautions are taken. When they aren’t, the risk is amplified.

      If BP had just built a rocket ship without testing, would you jump in it without asking questions? What about Phillip Morris? Some rando on the street? Because those are the equivalents of the people building these AI systems today. No care for safety or doing what’s right, only profit. Killing you and harming everyone around you is only as bad as the loss of revenue it may cause.

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