Comment by mikeocool
10 hours ago
I dunno, I think in the past year “AI” has gone from meaningless buzzword to having a negative connotation amongst the non-tech population.
“That’s so AI” is legitimate slang and it does not mean “that’s so cool and automated!”
All people I know hear when they hear AI is - they are automating art, there are layoffs incoming, they want to build a data centre next to me that will make my electricity costs go up, they are automating the consumer help call center.
The positive views of AI are really increasingly concentrated amongst some of the tech heavy population.
Honestly, what are the positive viewpoints of generative AI in the end? Are there others major ones than the following?
* My vibe coding machine goes brrrrt and that's all I care about
* My college essay cheating machine goes brrrt and that's all I care about
* My custom waifu/porn-generating machine goes brrrt and that's all I care about
* The concept of AI is drawing all the investor money and that's all I care about
The common factor being self-centeredness and/or being part of a small ingroup that benefits, possibly at the expense of others.
The positive viewpoint is basically like the Industrial Revolution or the post-WWII consumer/convenience boom.
If productivity can increase significantly per worker, the result will be major overall economic growth.
It might be sold to consumers the way vacuums and washing machines were. With these automated modern conveniences you'll spend less time working and have more time for leisure.
Of course the reality for the actual workers on the line is that their job and industry may be disrupted and the overall benefits of that economic growth may not reach them during their lifetime. The Industrial Revolution was followed by a century of major and sometimes violent disputes over the relationship between corporations and labor and the rights of workers.
The post-WWII promises of convenience and leisure were replaced by the reality of the baseline adjusting and households needing to work the same or even more combined hours to make ends meet.
Even if the optimistic levels of economic growth occur, the benefits are unlikely to be evenly distributed.
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The funny thing is most of the evangelists aren’t really in the in group and will be just as exposed to the results as the rest of us.
Here's one: AI democratizes the ability to produce software, which has mostly been an arcane craft wielded by a priestly class. Now anyone, if they know what they want and it isn't too complex, can talk to AI and get working (if not also janky) software in a very short amount of time. Hopefully this breaks the grip that platforms/large corporations have on personal software and the internet.
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It's an incredible search, research, and learning tool, and far better than a search engine. You can get almost anything explained at any level up to undergrad, with the option to ask questions if you don't understand, and with links to references, so you can check that what you're learning is correct.
The low-quality content machine angle is one of the least interesting things about it.
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> The positive views of AI are really increasingly concentrated amongst some of the tech heavy population.
A peculiar way to call VC vultures with neck deep vested interests.
who, to put a finer point on it, presumably stand to benefit from the AI
> having a negative connotation amongst the non-tech population.
It has an equally negative connotation to a rather large portion of the tech-savvy population as well.
Isn’t that the case for tech outside of AI as well. My friends that work in tech mostly eschew it when at home. They aren’t connecting their light bulbs to the internet nor buying WiFi enabled fridges.
It seems half of them spend their spare time woodworking or gardening.
also, if you haven't heard someone refer to something as _-slop, you don't get out much