6 ms·

I think that tech companies will soon have to grapple with the fact that the majority of people currently have, or will have, predominantly negative opinions of

I think that tech companies will soon have to grapple with the fact that the majority of people currently have, or will have, predominantly negative opinions of generative AI. We too often get lost in our tech bubble. Of course generative AI is useful for us. We also understand the nuances of the technology, so we can be more deliberative in its use. This is decidedly not what is happening with the typical person. To put it bluntly, for all of the fanfare last year, how has generative AI had a positive impact on the average person? And how has it had a negative impact? I think that I can make a stronger case for negative impact (or no impact) than I can for positive impact, as it currently stands. This is not inherent to generative AI; I can think of other technologies that followed a similar trajectory. But the difference is that generative AI leaders literally think that they are about to create a techno-utopia, and they may be sorely disappointed when others don't feel the same way.

Swizec 3y ago
> how has generative AI had a positive impact on the average person? Generative AI, for the most part, is a technology in search of a problem. For now. The tech is in a “demos well, productizes poorly” stage. Once you try doing anything at scale and with proper evals of success, you see that real world performance is pretty poor still. Yes yes we have lots of totally-not-cherry-picked papers where researchers achieved something fantastic. Then you look at the detail and it’s either “we ran this once because expensive” or “it achieved this great result almost 35% of the time so it’s state-of-the-art best-in-class” > create a techno-utopia, and they may be sorely disappointed when others don't feel the same way Every techno-utopia I’ve ever seen in movies, books, etc has always been a secretly dystopia. Looks nice and polished on the surface, but achieves this result through aggressive oppression and disenfranchisement of dissenting voices. Star Trek perhaps is the only one that didn’t follow that pattern. And even then you have groups outside the federation who are not super happy with how the federation does things.
- phillipcarter 3y ago
  Just to offer a counter-point, we had measurable success with this tech solving a direct problem it's designed to solve for: https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/we-shipped-ai-product https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/we-shipped-ai-product My take is that the tech isn't in search of a problem, we're just early. It solves a lot of problems. The challenge is getting the right data pipelines in place to allow it to do that. The good news is that in many cases, it's a good thing to have that in the first place.
  - Swizec 3y ago
    I agree! GenAI is great at solving lots of problems right now, but not all problems as many are hyping. And for many use-cases it's still too expensive/slow. I wasn't trying to say it's useless, I was getting at this sentence from your 2nd paragraph: "[did it work?] The short answer is... mostly." That "mostly" part is the cold reality many products have run into this past year. It's been the biggest problem in my experiments at least. The current tech requires a lot of babysitting.
    - phillipcarter 3y ago
      I would say that "mostly" is an incredible achievement. Most feature work done in software produces zero to middling desired outcomes.
andsoitis 3y ago
Agree with everything you say, except perhaps the last sentence: > But the difference is that generative AI leaders literally think that they are about to create a techno-utopia, and they may be sorely disappointed when others don't feel the same way. I would argue it is fairly common for people in tech to speak in messianic terms of the golden age our technologies will usher in. History is littered with this world view. Of course, there are also critics from within the tech sphere, but I would say the dominant mental model is one of naïve optimism that crosses over into arrogance.
- bmer 3y ago
  Is it the dominant mental model, or the dominant marketing model? After all, marketing must appeal to "techies" too, not just non-techies.
YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
>> We too often get lost in our tech bubble A lot of the criticism of generative AI comes from techies though. I am one of them. I know there's plenty of others, on HN certainly, I think also on Twitter. Personally, similar to your stronger case, I've now crossed a line where I find it more likely that generative AI will crash and burn and leave people shaking their heads at the misconceived notions of "making the world a better place" (the techno-utopias you say). We've had a year of crazy hype about GPT-4 and I still can't figure out what Gen AI is going to be good for, other than letting people rip off creatives, for fun or a very limited amount of profit; or for flooding academic venues with auto-generated work that will bog down the whole process of science.
- danielbln 3y ago
  You're a techie and can't find legitimate usecases for GenAI? That honestly says more about you than it does GenAI. From coding to chat-with-your-data to all sorts of general data/text transformations, there is so much there. Don't get me wrong, there are absolutely negative externalities, but if you can't see the useful cases as well then you're deliberately blinding yourself.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  There's a middle ground between utopia and scam-tech. Generative AI is a powerful tool this very second, and is accelerating at an incredible rate. It seems pretty obvious that its going to automate tons of the white collar workforce. The hype will crash, no doubt, but its not going quietly into the night, nor is it zombifying like some other hyped tech. Anyway, I view the whole AI vs anti AI debate as a distraction. Its coming, like it or not. The significant question is who will be in control... Will AI be local, distributed among small providers, or concentrated in a few pseudo monopolies?
- phillipcarter 3y ago
  > We've had a year of crazy hype about GPT-4 and I still can't figure out what Gen AI is going to be good for Natural language interfaces to perform business-specific tasks, in concert with a UI to tweak things after generation, is the current killer use case in enterprise software, and it's exactly what's been built (and is being built). OpenAI's 1B ARR isn't just from people who pay for ChatGPT+.
GaggiX 3y ago
If we are talking about the real world I have never encountered a person with a negative opinion about generative AI, and I'm not just talking about tech people but people that mostly use ChatGPT for stuff like "some ideas for hiking trails in X".
- CaptainFever 3y ago
  Same! IRL everybody I know is at least positive to neutral on gen AI, with a few who don't like it. In school, it is very very widely used for obvious reasons, and I've seen a few friends use it for emotional support as well. The most opposition I've seen is always from online strangers.
raincole 3y ago
> the difference is that generative AI leaders literally think that they are about to create a techno-utopia, and they may be sorely disappointed when others don't feel the same way. No, the difference is generative AI guys believe that the content generated by generative AI will soon be literally (literal literally, not figurative literally) indistinguishable from those made by humans. It's quite different from other techs. When people invented movie films, they (almost certainly) didn't think watching a movie will be literally the same experience as going to the opera. Are they wrong? I don't know. But so far I incline to agree with them.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > When people invented movie films, they (almost certainly) didn't think watching a movie will be literally the same experience as going to the opera. People were actually diving out of their seats during the debut of Lumiere's "The Arrival of a Train." It was real enough to them...
  - krapp 3y ago
    >People were actually diving out of their seats during the debut of Lumiere's "The Arrival of a Train." It was real enough to them... Actually, they probably weren't. This story appears to be an urban legend, and there's no evidence that it ever actually happened[0]. [0]https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/did-a-silent-film-about-a-train-really-cause-audiences-to-stampede https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/did-a-silent-film-abou...
xg15 3y ago
> But the difference is that generative AI leaders literally think that they are about to create a techno-utopia What honestly baffles me is that not even those are presenting a positive vision for AI. On the contrary, the main PR angle of "generative AI" leaders right now is the "AI is a critical danger for humanity" doomsday cult. The one "positive" spin on this seems to come from the e/acc faction of the cult who frame it as some sort of natural evolutionary progression: "sure, AI will wipe out humanity, but that's actually a good thing". But both the e/alt and e/acc legs of the cult seem to agree that a) AI is a threat to humanity, b) It's inevitable that AI will become more powerful than humanity and c) we nevertheless have to build it for some reason. If the two publicly visible mindsets of its thought leaders are "cold-hearted Manchester capitalist who wants to replace even more workers with machines" and "tech-pyromanic madman who fears his soul to be eternally tortured by an AI unless he brings that very AI into existence" then it's not exactly a surprise if the tech is received negatively.

Swizec 3y ago

> how has generative AI had a positive impact on the average person? Generative AI, for the most part, is a technology in search of a problem. For now. The tech is in a “demos well, productizes poorly” stage. Once you try doing anything at scale and with proper evals of success, you see that real world performance is pretty poor still. Yes yes we have lots of totally-not-cherry-picked papers where researchers achieved something fantastic. Then you look at the detail and it’s either “we ran this once because expensive” or “it achieved this great result almost 35% of the time so it’s state-of-the-art best-in-class” > create a techno-utopia, and they may be sorely disappointed when others don't feel the same way Every techno-utopia I’ve ever seen in movies, books, etc has always been a secretly dystopia. Looks nice and polished on the surface, but achieves this result through aggressive oppression and disenfranchisement of dissenting voices. Star Trek perhaps is the only one that didn’t follow that pattern. And even then you have groups outside the federation who are not super happy with how the federation does things.

phillipcarter 3y ago
Just to offer a counter-point, we had measurable success with this tech solving a direct problem it's designed to solve for: https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/we-shipped-ai-product https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/we-shipped-ai-product My take is that the tech isn't in search of a problem, we're just early. It solves a lot of problems. The challenge is getting the right data pipelines in place to allow it to do that. The good news is that in many cases, it's a good thing to have that in the first place.
- Swizec 3y ago
  I agree! GenAI is great at solving lots of problems right now, but not all problems as many are hyping. And for many use-cases it's still too expensive/slow. I wasn't trying to say it's useless, I was getting at this sentence from your 2nd paragraph: "[did it work?] The short answer is... mostly." That "mostly" part is the cold reality many products have run into this past year. It's been the biggest problem in my experiments at least. The current tech requires a lot of babysitting.
  - phillipcarter 3y ago
    I would say that "mostly" is an incredible achievement. Most feature work done in software produces zero to middling desired outcomes.

andsoitis 3y ago

Agree with everything you say, except perhaps the last sentence: > But the difference is that generative AI leaders literally think that they are about to create a techno-utopia, and they may be sorely disappointed when others don't feel the same way. I would argue it is fairly common for people in tech to speak in messianic terms of the golden age our technologies will usher in. History is littered with this world view. Of course, there are also critics from within the tech sphere, but I would say the dominant mental model is one of naïve optimism that crosses over into arrogance.

bmer 3y ago
Is it the dominant mental model, or the dominant marketing model? After all, marketing must appeal to "techies" too, not just non-techies.

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

>> We too often get lost in our tech bubble A lot of the criticism of generative AI comes from techies though. I am one of them. I know there's plenty of others, on HN certainly, I think also on Twitter. Personally, similar to your stronger case, I've now crossed a line where I find it more likely that generative AI will crash and burn and leave people shaking their heads at the misconceived notions of "making the world a better place" (the techno-utopias you say). We've had a year of crazy hype about GPT-4 and I still can't figure out what Gen AI is going to be good for, other than letting people rip off creatives, for fun or a very limited amount of profit; or for flooding academic venues with auto-generated work that will bog down the whole process of science.

danielbln 3y ago
You're a techie and can't find legitimate usecases for GenAI? That honestly says more about you than it does GenAI. From coding to chat-with-your-data to all sorts of general data/text transformations, there is so much there. Don't get me wrong, there are absolutely negative externalities, but if you can't see the useful cases as well then you're deliberately blinding yourself.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
brucethemoose2 3y ago
There's a middle ground between utopia and scam-tech. Generative AI is a powerful tool this very second, and is accelerating at an incredible rate. It seems pretty obvious that its going to automate tons of the white collar workforce. The hype will crash, no doubt, but its not going quietly into the night, nor is it zombifying like some other hyped tech. Anyway, I view the whole AI vs anti AI debate as a distraction. Its coming, like it or not. The significant question is who will be in control... Will AI be local, distributed among small providers, or concentrated in a few pseudo monopolies?
phillipcarter 3y ago
> We've had a year of crazy hype about GPT-4 and I still can't figure out what Gen AI is going to be good for Natural language interfaces to perform business-specific tasks, in concert with a UI to tweak things after generation, is the current killer use case in enterprise software, and it's exactly what's been built (and is being built). OpenAI's 1B ARR isn't just from people who pay for ChatGPT+.

GaggiX 3y ago

If we are talking about the real world I have never encountered a person with a negative opinion about generative AI, and I'm not just talking about tech people but people that mostly use ChatGPT for stuff like "some ideas for hiking trails in X".

CaptainFever 3y ago
Same! IRL everybody I know is at least positive to neutral on gen AI, with a few who don't like it. In school, it is very very widely used for obvious reasons, and I've seen a few friends use it for emotional support as well. The most opposition I've seen is always from online strangers.

raincole 3y ago

> the difference is that generative AI leaders literally think that they are about to create a techno-utopia, and they may be sorely disappointed when others don't feel the same way. No, the difference is generative AI guys believe that the content generated by generative AI will soon be literally (literal literally, not figurative literally) indistinguishable from those made by humans. It's quite different from other techs. When people invented movie films, they (almost certainly) didn't think watching a movie will be literally the same experience as going to the opera. Are they wrong? I don't know. But so far I incline to agree with them.

jstarfish 3y ago
> When people invented movie films, they (almost certainly) didn't think watching a movie will be literally the same experience as going to the opera. People were actually diving out of their seats during the debut of Lumiere's "The Arrival of a Train." It was real enough to them...
- krapp 3y ago
  >People were actually diving out of their seats during the debut of Lumiere's "The Arrival of a Train." It was real enough to them... Actually, they probably weren't. This story appears to be an urban legend, and there's no evidence that it ever actually happened[0]. [0]https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/did-a-silent-film-about-a-train-really-cause-audiences-to-stampede https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/did-a-silent-film-abou...

xg15 3y ago

> But the difference is that generative AI leaders literally think that they are about to create a techno-utopia What honestly baffles me is that not even those are presenting a positive vision for AI. On the contrary, the main PR angle of "generative AI" leaders right now is the "AI is a critical danger for humanity" doomsday cult. The one "positive" spin on this seems to come from the e/acc faction of the cult who frame it as some sort of natural evolutionary progression: "sure, AI will wipe out humanity, but that's actually a good thing". But both the e/alt and e/acc legs of the cult seem to agree that a) AI is a threat to humanity, b) It's inevitable that AI will become more powerful than humanity and c) we nevertheless have to build it for some reason. If the two publicly visible mindsets of its thought leaders are "cold-hearted Manchester capitalist who wants to replace even more workers with machines" and "tech-pyromanic madman who fears his soul to be eternally tortured by an AI unless he brings that very AI into existence" then it's not exactly a surprise if the tech is received negatively.