Comment by LoganDark
2 days ago
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.