Comment by ah1508
8 hours ago
Don't you think that AI hate will limit the general use and then revenues so it will slow down by itself while the niche (AlphaFold for instance) will remains ?
Origins of AI hate:
* "my boss wants me to use AI but he does not understand my job nor how AI works"
* "AI will kill all of us"
* "AI will destroy my job (or my colleague's job if I use AI better than him)".
* I cannot pay my electricity bills because of AI labs.
* ...
See also the mixed feelings about benefits of AI ("harder to justify" according to Uber COO).
I cannot remember a technology that arose so much hate, and for good reasons given how it is presented. I am tempted to think that AI hate or reasonable skepticism (vs unreasonable propaganda) can, maybe, reduce funding and will keep specialized AI for real problem solving (producing tons a LOC per day is not one of them, I think).
Banking on public sentiment to reduce adoption of a profitable technology could be dangerous. There's also a lot of hate for fossil fuels, gambling, health insurance, etc.
Those are all arguably bad things though? I don't think mob mentality should dictate the policy, that can lead to historically bad outcomes (i.e. fascism) since popular opinion can be manipulated through propaganda, but the criticism of the average person against AI ("they will take our jobs", "it will increase my electric bill", etc) are very valid and should weight on the pace we are developing this technology. AI mostly benefits corporations and capital, not the average person. I like the technology from an engineering standpoint and appreciate it can be a force multiplier, but I also agree with the complaints about it.
I do not think hate alone usually slows things very much if they have economic utility (or people strongly believe they do)
It's the byproducts of hate (usually regulation, but occasionally things like boycotts or PR disasters) that do so. In the absence of those things, they just keep on truckin'
See: Bitcoin, Tesla