Comment by rdtsc
2 days ago
> “If you’d let me make this point, please —” Schmidt said amid boos. “The point I’d like to make is choose a diversity of perspectives, including the perspective of the immigrant who has so often been the person who came to this country and made it better. America is at its best when we are the country that ambitious people want to come to. Let us not lose that.”
How does that tie in? You have to like AI because of immigrants? AI is like an immigrant, you have to accept it? What’s the logic here, or he’s just throwing random phrases around, it seems.
It's a rhetorical attempt to tie "those who dislike AI" to "those who dislike immigrants, and we all know they're super-duper evil".
It's a relatively cheap trick, badly executed.
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While as argument, it may work, it does not seem to be conservatives that are afraid of AI ( at least in public fora ). But that is separate from your point on class type ( the rich ), which seems to be reason why it does not land well ( for me at least ).
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Conservatives loves AI because they see it as it is: not a technology, but a political framework to force their ideology on everyone
AI is first and foremost a political artefact: https://tante.cc/2026/04/21/ai-as-a-fascist-artifact/
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Political conservatives are generally all in on AI. There is some resistance from the “crunchy momma” wings of the conservative movement, but overall political liberals are putting up far more resistance to AI.
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I think his train of thought is "young graduates generally aren't anti-immigration, so if I insinuate they're anti-immigration if they disagree with me they will be convinced by my argument". I don't think we need to read much more than that into it.
this is how i took it as well. he’s creating a false equivalency between AI and immigrants, and attempting to justify it with “diversity of perspectives” and trying to tell you that to remain intellectually consistent you must embrace or reject both.
You know, I am usually one to immediately jump to "to hell with that" when someone brings up Hanlon's razor, but I think it may apply here.
He certainly is creating a false equivalency between AI and immigrants, but with how tone-deaf this speech is, it may not be deliberate. He likely already has this association.
So then the question would be: why would he have this association?
My only guess is he has a fairly shallow view of both as cheap labor. Which is pretty malicious after all.
I agree. I think it's telling that AI leaders need to rely on fallacious reasoning and trickery to promote their product.
A good product should sell itself.
I feel that AI leaders have been shoving their product down our throats for the last two years (at least).
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He's just trying to meet the graduates at their intellectual level, since the graduates' boos operate at about the same level of depth.
What would a crowds more sophisticated, intellectual, form of answer be?
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> What’s the logic here
Tenuous connection between unrelated topics to fit them into larger ingroup/outgroup dynamics is the junkfood of persuasion tactics. Bad for you but addictive anyway. If you look for it you'll see it all the time.
"If you don't like AI, you're a nazi."
And remember: they don't call you a nazi because they think you are. They call you a nazi to make you a valid target.
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"This AI was built by a woman, don't you support their cause?.."
It's a pretty classic move. "My political party stands for freedom and prosperity; you can't be against those things, can you?"
It means nothing, as you imply. He is improvising and deflects with a point that he thinks will land with his audience and detract from the issue.
Utterances that come out of executive’s mouths don’t have truth values. They’re sounds meant to irritate people’s nervous systems to achieve the exec’s goals.
Relevant Kendall Roy quote: "Words are just uh, what? Nothing. Complicated airflow."
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Actual generous interpretation: The adaptation required as workplaces adopt AI is the same as the ones immigrants have to go through in a new country. There's new modes of thinking, new workflows and an expanded surface of responsibility. Those that expect an easy definable role they can plug themselves into, to get the comfortable jobs (tm) of yesterday will not find those readily. They are there though, they just look different. The working immigrant (usually) doesn't find a spot for them to plug into, they have to hustle and adapt to find such a spot.
Corporate bosses have been screaming for more "hustle-y" employees for decades so that is nothing new.
That's a pretty good steelman.
I do think there's a gestalt (esp. among younger folks) of "AI is bad", to put it bluntly. An anecdote I saw today was:
parent: we're having dinosaur meat for dinner tonight.
kid: oh, that's just AI.
(i.e. "that's made-up" or "that's silly" or "that's just lies") -- none of which are a positive sentiment)
I think he is saying that if you are against AI you are against progress and so "America will no longer be the country that ambitious people want to come to". I don't think there was a point there about immigration being somehow equivalent to AI, that would come out of nowhere.
That seems like a really tenuous connection for him to make if that's what he's doing. I find it difficult to believe that ambitious people outside of a certain niche would refuse to come to the US because of perceived lack of AI progress. They'd refuse/are refusing to come because of the US's increasing hostility to outsiders, cutting of research funding, and subpar living conditions.
there is no logic - just fallacy. it is a red herring, wrapped up in equivocation. he commits appeal to emotion, non sequitur, false equivalence along the way.
New expansion, AI = artificial immigrant
Somebody said "alien" she thought they said "illegal alien" and signed up!
P.S. I just couldn't resist, sorry
He's trying to virtue signal based on an understanding of young people's values that's so unsophisticated that he thinks throwing them the word "immigrant" will get them on his side. And they're obviously smart enough to see through it.
Wouldnt a "diversity or perpsectives" would include those that differ from that of Silicon Valley
Generous interpretation: instead of pearl-clutching over ethnicities and traditionalism America invited the world to immigrate and encouraged diverse ideas and industries. Other societies have shunned even foreign food and music (most countries barely have different races), never mind porn industry ('burn the degenerates'), space travel ('why waste money on the moon'), nuclear power, computers etc. Is AI not yet another industry that is easy to disregard yet potentially transformative?
Corporate interpretation: listen you filthy cattle, gen-AI is bottoming out all our pesky human labour costs and allowing me and my friends to milk every last drop out of this late-stage capitalist nightmare, you better get used to it because from now on 99% of you will just have to make do scraping by in the gig economy, selling your bodies or just generally being dancing monkeys for billionaires - we'll still hire some of you as nurses and waiters because we don't exactly want clankers looking after our kids
Isn't that generous interpretation, like, profoundly idiotic if he meant it? Major multiracial feature of America happened due to slave trade at the time when genocide of native Americans was also going on. Other countries have porn industry, actually a lot of it. Other countries have nuclear power, but America is just in one war claiming it wants to stop the other country from the nuclear power.
Other countries typically have tons of foreign music and entertainment, most notably American music. America is the one that seems to be looking inwards here (due to being dominant on an international market - I am not saying it is sinister).
I think thats missing the point. Being multiracial is a function of being open, not a means to the end. America is a can-do country that generally embraces new things, which includes 'new people' and new ways.
I'm not American but for all its faults I can see it is clearly miles ahead in terms of economics, innovation and generally being the worlds only "real" new-world diverse democracy.
Yes it is pretty much run by corporate interests and yes it has started almost every war in the Middle East in the past century for the benefit of AIPAC. Yes it has skipped almost all the benefits of socialism that I enjoy as a European, and of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world I think ~48 are in North and South America.
Other countries do not "typically have tons of foreign music" - China is 99% ethnic Chinese, black people are basically not even allowed in restaurants there. The same goes for India and much of Africa. Europe is closest and the UK probably bridges the attitudes of Europe and America the most - which is why the UK also pioneered things like computing and multiculturalism.
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> How does that tie in? You have to like AI because of immigrants? AI is like an immigrant, you have to accept it? What’s the logic here, or he’s just throwing random phrases around, it seems.
Maybe it ties in because, if you're not excited and enthusiastic about AI and our new Ways of Working, you're a racist. You don't want to be a racist, do you? AI is basically exactly like a black person getting chased by a lynch mob. Do you stand with the racist lynchers? Or with the civil rights movement (the billionaire AI promoters).
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You're not wrong. It's almost a religious fervor. And much like so many religious figures, you get a sort of Rorschach test on how you use/view it.
Is it a tool? Is it going to make humans obsolete?
Doesn't matter because if you don't praise and adore AI the [market|capital] will leave you behind.
It's pervasive as fuck. I go into stores with local artists and can't help but think what of this was made with AI. It draws me more towards physical things that cannot have been tainted.
Even the downvotes on my post are very telling of what the sentiment is in tech.
In this new age, getting any kind of enjoyment from something digital just feels icky now.
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What if they take your jobs for a fraction of your worth, and drive up the cost of living, while extracting massive subsidies from your taxes? You love the people who destroy your quality of life?
For the record, I love real diversity, I grew up in home where we have exchange students from abroad (to help pay the bills), but in Canada, the last 10 years or so has soured my opinion because my standard of living has decreased while my government has done everything to support new Canadians, and now I am close to homeless in a town where the new hotel is filled with government funded new Canadians.
I get your frustrations, but maybe the root of those issues is more complicated than "the outsiders".
Sadly I got nothing more to contribute. Good luck.
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Didn't we just put millions of immigrants in concentration camps for stealing our jobs (1 job per immigrant)?
With that in mind, what should we do with the bosses who stole thousands of jobs each and shipped them to India and Poland?
Do you have a source for your “millions” claim? Every source I can find says there are somewhere between 60 and 70 thousand immigrants currently in detention centers, based on internal ICE data. That’s still a fuck-ton of people to cage up, there’s no need to hyperbolize.
Yes they were literally genocided
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