Comment by tyleo
5 hours ago
Every one of these posts about boos at commencement speeches has one of these comments near the bottom. I feel like I’m failing some pop culture quiz. What does this mean?
5 hours ago
Every one of these posts about boos at commencement speeches has one of these comments near the bottom. I feel like I’m failing some pop culture quiz. What does this mean?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kids_Are_Alright_(song)
in contrast with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kids_Aren%27t_Alright
When we were young the future was so bright woahohh
The old neighborhood was so alive woahohh
2 replies →
It's a song by "The Who". Though given the controversy their lead songwriter (Pete Townshend) has been through, I personally would refrain from quoting him on the topic of kids.
As others point out, a song by the band, "The Who". But it's since come to be a phrase to suggest that the upcoming generation (the kids) are going to be okay.
As opposed to the more common refrain of "the kids these days…" (and then append some generational gripe like, "are just weed-smoking, lazy, game-playing, phone-staring, TikTok-headed, etc…"
Other than the TikTok-headed part, the phrase could easily be applied to at least as far back as the 80s (NES) depending on definition of game-playing. Before then, there was foosball and pinball. Nevermind the kids that play card/board games. Also, while not staring at a phone implying smart phone use, it was often said about teens having a phone growing out of the shoulder from them constantly being on the phone with friends.
So, yeah, kids these days...are just like the generations of kids before them.
And what is tiktok if not MTV on steroids
2 replies →
Which is a good thing.
AI is largely unpopular outside of the tech & business worlds. Most laypeople see it as falling on a spectrum between unwanted and annoying (google getting worse, AI chatbots proliferating in every app and site) to actively harmful (jobs being replaced by ai).
The fact that comments agreeing with this sentiment get downvoted here isn't a huge surprise, hn is firmly inside the tech/business world.
Most people will experience it as sludge, if they experience it at all. Countries that do not aggressively regulate AI out will see our already profoundly eroded customer service ecosystem disintegrate completely. The already opaque and awful systems that determine things like access to credit or access to healthcare will become even more opaque and inscrutable and produce measurably worse outcomes for actual humans.
This is kinda obvious to most people, who are already experiencing an enormous amount of sludge in their daily life.
Tech-bro optimism in the face of GenAI is so painfully decoupled from lived reality it's frightening. Tech has not made the world a better place for most people over the last fifteen years, and it is poised to make things much, much worse.
For what it's worth, you're probably downvoted way more for the whole "woe is me, I'm always downvoted for being right by people who are wrong" false martyrdom routine. Maybe leave that part off your post next time: it only detracts from the rest of it.
You might also refrain from generalizations like "hn is firmly inside the tech/business world". HN is not a single person, there are a variety of people here with a variety of experiences and opinions and biases.
HN, also renown for people with a compulsion to generalize generalizations.
What's this have to do with the thread you replied to?
And... anyway... Google just changed its homepage to make "AI Mode" / LLM responses the norm. LLM usage is just going to be the norm for the foreseeable future. Doesn't matter if a wary set of "laypeople" are reticent. They're still going to ask Google questions and be affected by it in their digital lives.
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