4 ms·

I'm so done with this ridiculous techno-pessimism trend. > AI [is] costing a whole lot and providing, at best, dubious benefits A wild take. Technology like G

I'm so done with this ridiculous techno-pessimism trend. > AI [is] costing a whole lot and providing, at best, dubious benefits A wild take. Technology like GPT-4 being available today was unimaginable to us just 5 years ago. Our company saves hundreds of thousands of engineering-hours a month using generative AI. It has let me automate the humdrum boilerplate bullshit out of my workflows, both professional and personal. It's also essentially replaced Google for me. Just today I've already used GPT-4 at least 5-10 times. Immensely useful, the $20/mo is a drop in the bucket for the value it provides to me. > Ride-hailing services? Those flouted regulations, hooked users on cheap prices, drove down wages and made employment more precarious. Has this guy ever stepped foot outside a major city? Has he ever gotten drunk and needed a ride home without friends in the immediate vicinity? Uber/Lyft provide immense value that simply wasn't there before. Has he even ever spoken to any Uber drivers, or ex-taxi Uber drivers? Does he realize that people often prefer working for Uber as opposed to a "regular, stable job" and that customers actually like using it over taxis? Compared to taxis, Ubers tend to be cleaner, the drivers tend to be nicer, and it's just a easier, better experience. The taxi cartel is even more powerful and "extractive" than Uber in many cities, and they exert undue market power, especially at airports and resorts, not Uber. > streaming platforms that are actively rolling back up into something analogous to cable Spotify still provides me with far more value/$ than having to buy every single song from iTunes or whatever. Apple TV is still quite useful to me and I far prefer it to ad-riddled cable with set showtimes for what you want to see. Tale as old as time: people seeing the past with rose-tinted glasses so they can have a pessimistic "hot take" about today vs the good old days.

gorjusborg 3y ago
Where there is extreme hype, there is extreme skepticism (and often, it is well deserved). If you are tired of hearing the emperor has no clothes, getting mad at the crowd for saying it is not likely to help.
- xvector 3y ago
  > getting mad at the crowd for saying it is not likely to help Except the emperor does have clothes, this pessimism simply isn't based in reality, it's based on a rose-tinted view of the past and a misunderstanding of why people use these services over the older alternatives. The author seems to have such limited life experience that he can't even fathom why someone would prefer Uber over the taxis of old, or find great value in using generative AI every day, or prefer Spotify over something like the iTunes Store. The value proposition is so obvious and clear, and yet the author can't even see it.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    More often than not, we do not try to solve the problem, we go with a shiny new thing that bring its own issues to the table. While we can discuss about tradeoff, in the currently unregulated tech landscape, new things have destructive impacts on society because of their scale. Facebook has been ignoring the effects of social medias on teens for a long time and everyone knows that only a lucky few makes money on Spotify.
protocolture 3y ago
Bingo. Cabcharge and its associated monopolies in many cities is a blight that I am glad uber had a go at. "Flouted regulations" I hate when people associate words on paper, often well past their usefulness, with something physical or tangible or useful that can be damaged. AI is doing so much to help a lot of people. Give it 5 years and hating on AI is going to go from mainstream to the most boomer of takes.
timeforcomputer 3y ago
I would not like to think of "techno-" pessimism, just pessimism (we are past the point of making a sci-fi distinction between reality and computer-using reality, I think, especially since people walk around using a computer). I personally am not too focused on AGI or existential threats, or the loss of jobs, or the political changes, opportunity for exploitation, scams, AI grifting, misdirection of funding. It would be easy to name that as pessimism as it is just a little bit removed from daily life, you can go about your daily life and really forget about it unless you are ethically/politically or personally concerned. One thing is obviously immediately concerning though. It is unbelievable how fast ChatGPT has been normalized. Within a year the new people have come to expect something like ChatGPT to always be provided for them, for the rest of their life. Of course people are rushing in to define what that something is, and provide an AI service which people will use/misuse like the first page of Google results. I think almost certainly this new "first page of Google" component of people's thoughts will be abused. Do you think the first page of Google is good and formed by good incentives and empowerment of the user, considering how much of a cultural force it is (Googling something being just a normal part of your thought process)? (I do have limited life experiences. Anecdotally, I know a high school teacher who has been teaching for almost 40 years. Over time students went from hiding their phone in the back of the class to scrolling through it in class freely, vaguely attempting increasingly simplified homework, and have now jumped on the new cool AI website to complete even basic tasks. This is extremely normal, why would a kid not use it?)
- xvector 3y ago
  > Do you think the first page of Google is good and formed by good incentives and empowerment of the user, considering how much of a cultural force it is (Googling something being just a normal part of your thought process)? Yes. Google is an immensely useful everyday tool available to everyone for free. I think the negative externalities it causes are laughably trivial compared to the utility provided.
  - timeforcomputer 3y ago
    Ah yup I agree, I think I am wrong to make the comparison between Google and ChatGPT here. I am not nearly as concerned about the problems with Google as with potential problems with ChatGPT (or whatever the most popular equivalent is in the future). I do think an AI service will be as important as Google in the future. I think the negative externalities this time might not be trivial considering what ChatGPT promises the user (basic Google search still is in general just a way to find some webpages or immediate info, while an AI homepage is a way to create things or communicate with others...).

gorjusborg 3y ago

Where there is extreme hype, there is extreme skepticism (and often, it is well deserved). If you are tired of hearing the emperor has no clothes, getting mad at the crowd for saying it is not likely to help.

xvector 3y ago
> getting mad at the crowd for saying it is not likely to help Except the emperor does have clothes, this pessimism simply isn't based in reality, it's based on a rose-tinted view of the past and a misunderstanding of why people use these services over the older alternatives. The author seems to have such limited life experience that he can't even fathom why someone would prefer Uber over the taxis of old, or find great value in using generative AI every day, or prefer Spotify over something like the iTunes Store. The value proposition is so obvious and clear, and yet the author can't even see it.
- skydhash 3y ago
  More often than not, we do not try to solve the problem, we go with a shiny new thing that bring its own issues to the table. While we can discuss about tradeoff, in the currently unregulated tech landscape, new things have destructive impacts on society because of their scale. Facebook has been ignoring the effects of social medias on teens for a long time and everyone knows that only a lucky few makes money on Spotify.

protocolture 3y ago

Bingo. Cabcharge and its associated monopolies in many cities is a blight that I am glad uber had a go at. "Flouted regulations" I hate when people associate words on paper, often well past their usefulness, with something physical or tangible or useful that can be damaged. AI is doing so much to help a lot of people. Give it 5 years and hating on AI is going to go from mainstream to the most boomer of takes.

timeforcomputer 3y ago

I would not like to think of "techno-" pessimism, just pessimism (we are past the point of making a sci-fi distinction between reality and computer-using reality, I think, especially since people walk around using a computer). I personally am not too focused on AGI or existential threats, or the loss of jobs, or the political changes, opportunity for exploitation, scams, AI grifting, misdirection of funding. It would be easy to name that as pessimism as it is just a little bit removed from daily life, you can go about your daily life and really forget about it unless you are ethically/politically or personally concerned. One thing is obviously immediately concerning though. It is unbelievable how fast ChatGPT has been normalized. Within a year the new people have come to expect something like ChatGPT to always be provided for them, for the rest of their life. Of course people are rushing in to define what that something is, and provide an AI service which people will use/misuse like the first page of Google results. I think almost certainly this new "first page of Google" component of people's thoughts will be abused. Do you think the first page of Google is good and formed by good incentives and empowerment of the user, considering how much of a cultural force it is (Googling something being just a normal part of your thought process)? (I do have limited life experiences. Anecdotally, I know a high school teacher who has been teaching for almost 40 years. Over time students went from hiding their phone in the back of the class to scrolling through it in class freely, vaguely attempting increasingly simplified homework, and have now jumped on the new cool AI website to complete even basic tasks. This is extremely normal, why would a kid not use it?)

xvector 3y ago
> Do you think the first page of Google is good and formed by good incentives and empowerment of the user, considering how much of a cultural force it is (Googling something being just a normal part of your thought process)? Yes. Google is an immensely useful everyday tool available to everyone for free. I think the negative externalities it causes are laughably trivial compared to the utility provided.
- timeforcomputer 3y ago
  Ah yup I agree, I think I am wrong to make the comparison between Google and ChatGPT here. I am not nearly as concerned about the problems with Google as with potential problems with ChatGPT (or whatever the most popular equivalent is in the future). I do think an AI service will be as important as Google in the future. I think the negative externalities this time might not be trivial considering what ChatGPT promises the user (basic Google search still is in general just a way to find some webpages or immediate info, while an AI homepage is a way to create things or communicate with others...).