Comment by gk1
2 days ago
That quote reads totally differently to me.
It seems if you already have negative feelings about AI or the speaker, you’re going to interpret their comments as something that reinforces your negative feelings.
2 days ago
That quote reads totally differently to me.
It seems if you already have negative feelings about AI or the speaker, you’re going to interpret their comments as something that reinforces your negative feelings.
What does it read like to you?
To me, the speech (as a whole) reads like: "don't assume AI is going to be as bad as the last technological revolution; embrace it". Computing is great and I love it; LLMs are great and I love them too. But computing is now used by corporations to harass and abuse us on a scale never seen before and AI is starting to be used for that too. So that is why I don't believe it's our responsibility to prevent the AI revolution from being as bad. All evidence points to it being worse exactly because of corporations like Google. I get that this guy is only the former CEO but the speech seems kinda tone-deaf to the reality here, and I bet that's why he got booed.
Was commenting on the quote in particular. It’s just a version of “the future is in your hands” which you can find in one form or another in many graduation speeches. Just seems odd to me to read a cliche line as something cynical.
Ali G’s version of it in his 2004 Harvard commencement speech:
> “You lot will become powerful people who can change de future — and you need to, coz de world at de moment iz totally f—ed up.”
Come to think of it… very appropriate today!
I was reading the quote in-context, so it makes sense that it'd read differently out of context.