Comment by cj
2 days ago
> Schmidt then drew a parallel between artificial intelligence and the transformative impact of the computer — and was immediately met with boos.
That's a shame.
I assume the reason for the "deep distain" is rooted in fear of change, fear that LLM will make it harder to have a successful career.
That's a pretty negative mindset to have as a college grad just entering the workforce.
I'm not an AI fan boy, but we can't cover our eyes and cover our ears and pretend the world isn't changing.
This is a tortured line of reasoning. There's nothing confusing about what's happening - people can have every reason to hate something without it meaning that they are "pretending" nothing is happening or not preparing for it (which may mean fighting to protect people in some way, and planning for losing that battle, in equal measures).
It's strange that your comment puts "fear of change" right there next to one of the actual concrete reasons. Usually the people disparaging negative attitudes about AI say "fear of change" to avoid talking about the obvious reasons.
For college graduates, LLM tech is an existential threat to their livelihoods by making it so much harder to start a career without connections or pedigree.
If no one is hiring, connections or pedigree need to get extraordinarily elite before you can leverage them to get an entry-level software developer job.
Exactly! Thats a complimentary problem for new grads
Disliking AI for that reason harms you more than helps you.
It's very unclear what you're trying to say. Disliking something that is going to harm your future is going to harm you? You might as well say "don't care about your future". But if your dislike was for a different reason, it wouldn't harm you? Both implications seem nonsensical.
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Do you think that protesting that X is happening is the same as pretending that X is not happening? Or are you saying that X is happening anyway, so you might just as well learn to like it? That's some highly dubious rhetoric.
> I'm not an AI fan boy, but we can't cover our eyes and cover our ears and pretend the world isn't changing.
You imply that the change is inevitable. AI isn't inevitable.
It requires governments to allow the construction of datacentres and for companies to be able to spend vast amounts of money they don't have for the hope of future return, which will inevitably result in a too-big-to-fail cascade which gets money dragged out of the middle/lower class via slogans like "we're all in this together".
None of this is required. The idea that humanity is stuck on this future pathway is frankly bunk.
What’s truly astonishing is that all of that money could be spent on bettering real people’s lives, but instead it gets spent on hubris.
You’re wrong to assume that
While I disagree on the assumption, I do agree on the pragmatism of the proposed approach. It is important to see things as they are. The tech is genuinely neat.
However, this is not the issue. The issue is that the tech is being hijacked by corps and already on the verge of being annoying. I my corner of the world, I get high level company message of 'use AI' ( which include goals that say so ), but also -- already -- ridiculous sets of limits on how much I an use it ( our context recently got nearly zeroed ; we no longer can upload unsanctioned files ). And if you want something beyond email summarization machine, you need special approvals. This thing is already being neutered at multiple levels and it barely even started to blossom.
Add to this clear indicators that our dictators have no intention of being benevolent and it is not exactly a surprise why younger generations are not exactly thrilled. I like this tech and I hate the retardation I am subjected to daily resulting directly from its outputs.
> I'm not an AI fan boy, but we can't cover our eyes and cover our ears and pretend the world isn't changing.
Why not? Most people do. There are still about 10,000 working blacksmiths in America.
Unironically I think we need more lifestyle and technological diversity in the world. End the monopolies that make running your own X harder. More Amish adjacent microcommunities and less monoculture. Federalism for tech / lifestyle creep.
The only reason these things seem inevitable is because our shared delusions make it so. We would have more power if we weren’t all so afraid to exercise it.
It's it fear or anger?
> but we can't cover our eyes and cover our ears and pretend the world isn't changing
I don't think people are pretending the world isn't changing. I think people are right to be deeply skeptical about the direction we're headed in. More powerful tech companies dug in deeper into our lives, more government surveillance, harder times for small companies and more influence from mega-corps.
Lying, cheating and game-rigging at industrial scale powered by machine intelligence. He's lucky all he got were boos.
Why would a bunch of folks studying for white collar work, be happy with a technology that a bunch of capitalists (literally) keep selling as eliminating white collar workers?
notably, I haven’t seen any ACTUAL technical improvements from LLMs, just a massive amount of slop. The ‘improvements’ are in volume of slop, not quality.