7 ms·

I will go meta into what you posted here: That people are classifying themselves as "AI skeptics". Many people are treating this in terms of tribal conflict and

I will go meta into what you posted here: That people are classifying themselves as "AI skeptics". Many people are treating this in terms of tribal conflict and identity politics. On HN, we can do better! IMO the move is drop the politics, and discuss things on their technical merits. If we do talk about it as a debate, we can do it when with open minds, and intellectual honesty. I think much of this may be a reaction to the hype promoted by tech CEOs and media outlets. People are seeing through their lies and exaggerations, and taking positions like "AI/LLMs have no values or uses", then using every argument they hear as a reason why it is bad in a broad sense. For example: Energy and water concerns. That's my best guess about the concern you're braced against.

techblueberry 1y ago
I mean, it is intellectually honest to point out that the AI debate at the point is much more a religious or political than strictly technical really. Especially the way tech CEOs hype this as the end of everything.
HardCodedBias 1y ago
It seems like there is a very strong correlation between identity politics and "AI skepticism." I have no idea why. I don't think that the correlation is 1, but it seems weirdly high.
- pimeys 1y ago
  Yep. Same for the other direction: there is a very strong correlation between identity politics and praising AI on Twitter. Then there's us who are mildly disappointed on the agents and how they don't live their promise, and the tech CEOs destroying the economy and our savings. Still using the agents for things that work better, but being burned out for spending days of our time fixing the issues the they created to our code.
- tech_ken 1y ago
  The adoption and use of technology frequently (even typically) has a political axis, it's kind of just this weird world of consumer tech/personal computers that's nominally "apolitical" because it's instead aligned to the axis of taste/self-identity so it'll generate more economic activity.
- wmf 1y ago
  AI hating is part of the omnicause because it overlaps with art ho socialism, degrowth environmentalism, and general tech skepticism/ludditism.
- Libidinalecon 1y ago
  IMO this is a Rorschach test for the politically obsessed because I can't stand politics and have no clue what you are talking about. You have just trained your brain to be so obsessed with politics you can't but help to see it everywhere.
Flavius 1y ago
Expecting a purely technical discussion is unrealistic because many people have significant vested interests. This includes not only those with financial stakes in AI stocks but also a large number of professionals in roles that could be transformed or replaced by this technology. For these groups, the discussion is inherently political, not just technical.
- tracerbulletx 1y ago
  I don't really mind if people advocate for their value judgements, but the total disregard for good faith arguments and facts is really out of control. The number of people who care at all about finding the best position through debate and are willing to adjust their position is really shockingly small across almost every issue.
  - Flavius 1y ago
    Totally agree. It seems like a symptom of a larger issue: people are becoming increasingly selfish and entrenched in their own bubbles. It’s hard to see a path back to sanity from here.
    - lukan 1y ago
      Well, I share your pain .. but was it ever really better in reality? Unfortunately it is not like human society in history had truth as the highest virtue.
      - keeganpoppen 1y ago
        yeah maybe around the time of Archimedes it was closer to the top, but societies in which people are willing to die for abstract ideas tend to be one... where the value of life isn't quite as high as it is nowadays (ie no matter how much my inner nerd has a love and fascination for that time period, no way i'm pressing the button on any one-way time machines...).
        1y ago
lkey 1y ago
| Drop the politics Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources. Most municipalities literally do not have enough spare power to service this 1.4 trillion dollar capital rollout as planned on paper. Even if they did, the concurrent inflation of energy costs is about as political as a topic can get. Economic uncertainty (firings, wage depression) brought on by the promises of AI is about as political as it gets. There's no 'pure world' of 'engineering only' concerns when the primary goals of many of these billionaires is leverage this hype, real and imagined, into reshaping the global economy in their preferred form. The only people that get to be 'apolitical' are those that have already benefitted the most from the status quo. It's a privilege.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- eucyclos 1y ago
  There are politics and there are Politics, and I don't think the two of you are using the same definition. 'Making decisions in groups' does not require 'oversimplifying issues for the sake of tribal cohesion or loyalty'. It is a distressingly common occurrence that complex problems are oversimplified because political effectiveness requires appealing to a broader audience. We'd all be better off if more people withheld judgement while actually engaging with the nuances of a political topic instead of pushing for their team. The capacity to do that may be a privilege but it's a privilege worth earning and celebrating.
  - grokgrok 1y ago
    The negatively coded, tribal/political speech can be referred to as 'Polemic' which stems from 'warlike' expression.
    - dontlaugh 1y ago
      And polemic is an entirely legitimate form of political action. Would you rather starve or never lie about those that would starve you?
magicalist 1y ago
> I will go meta into what you posted here: That people are classifying themselves as "AI skeptics" The comment you're replying to is calling other people AI skeptics. Your advice has some fine parts to it (and simonw's comment is innocuous in its use of the term), but if we're really going meta, you seem to be engaging in the tribal conflict you're decrying by lecturing an imaginary person rather than the actual context of what you're responding to.
- pweezy 1y ago
  To me, "Tip for AI skeptics" reads as shorthand for "Tip for those of you who classify as AI skeptics". That is why the meta commentary about identity politics made complete sense to me. It's simply observing that this discussion (like so many others) tends to go this way, and suggests a better alternative - without a straw man.
  - tbrownaw 1y ago
    I read it more as a claim that people who advocate against AI are picking arguments as a means to an end rather than because they actually believe or care about what they're saying.
hamdingers 1y ago
> IMO the move is drop the politics, and discuss things on their technical merits. I'd love this but it's impossible to have this discussion with someone who will not touch generative AI tools with a 10 foot pole. It's not unlike when religious people condemn a book they refuse to read. The merits of the book don't matter, it's symbolic opposition to something broader.
- Capricorn2481 1y ago
  Okay, but a lot of people are calling environmental and content theft arguments "political" in an attempt to make it sound frivolous. It's fine if you think every non-technical criticism against AI is overblown. I use LLMs, but it's perfectly fine to start from a place of whether it's ethical, or even a net good, to use these in the first place. People saying "ignoring all of those arguments, let's just look at the tech" are, generously, either naive or shilling. Why would we only revisit these very important topics, which are the heart of how the tech would alter our society, after it's been fully embraced?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - nasmorn 1y ago
    The environmental argument is frivolous as long as people fly to Vegas for the weekend or drive a F150 to the office. Why is this as special domain?
    - zzzeek 1y ago
      debating the environmental and public health effects of AI negates the possibility of debating those same things with respect to cars/trucks ?
      - ineedasername 1y ago
        Charitably, I think you can read into that a not-unreasonable (if unproven) assertion that there are many lower hanging fruits on the tree that would do endlessly more good for the cause to pick than data centers, and AI at least has the arguable potential upside of alleviating some of those specific burdens-- better health care and less environmental pollution through various improved forms of automation. Or at least when addressing the stub claim of the sort in the GP comment, you should assume these fairly straightforward subclaims pre-emptively and respond to this stronger form of the argument. It saves time, at least if you're going to seek out a discussion it does. Plenty of counter claims to them, but it gets the conversational ball rolling in a productive direction and if the response in turn is less constructive then you also know not to bother any more.
clown_strike 1y ago
[dead]
teknikalm 1y ago
> On HN, we can do better! IMO the move is drop the politics, and discuss things on their technical merits. Zero obligation to satisfy HN audience; tiny proportion of the populace. But for giggles... Technical merits: there are none. Look at Karpathy's GPT on Github. Just some boring old statistics. These technologies are built on top of mathematical principles in textbooks printed 70-80 years ago. The sharding and distribution of work across numerous machines is also a well trodden technical field. There is no net new discovery. This is 100% a political ploy on the part of tech CEOs who take advantage of the innumerate/non-technical political class that holds power. That class is bought into the idea that massive leverage over resource markets is a win for them, and they won't be alive to pay the price of the environmental destruction. It's not "energy and water" concerns, it's survival of the species concerns obfuscated by socio-political obligations to keep calm carry on and debate endlessly, as vain circumlocution is the hallmark of the elders whose education was modeled on people being VHS cassettes of spoken tradition, industrial and political roles. IMO there is little technical merit to most software. Maps, communication. That's all that's really needed. ZIRP era insanity juiced the field and created a bunch of self-aggrandizing coder bros whose technical achievements are copy-paste old ideas into new syntax and semantics, to obfuscate their origins, to get funded, sell books, book speaking engagements. There is no removing any of this from politics as political machinations gave rise to the dumbest era of human engineering effort ever. The only AI that has merit is robotics. Taking manual labor of people that are otherwise exploited by bougie first worlders in their office jobs. People who have, again with the help of politicians, externalized their biologies real needs on the bodies of poorer illiterates they don't have to see as the first-world successfully subjugated them and moved operations out of our own backyard. Source: was in the room 30 years ago, providing feedback to leadership how to wind down local manufacturing and move it all over to China. Powerful political forces did not like the idea of Americans having the skills and knowledge to build computers. It ran afoul of their goals to subjugate and manipulate through financial engineering. Americans have been intentionally screwed out of learning hands on skills with which they would have political leverage over the status quo. There is no removing politics from this. The situation we are in now was 100% crafted by politics.

techblueberry 1y ago

I mean, it is intellectually honest to point out that the AI debate at the point is much more a religious or political than strictly technical really. Especially the way tech CEOs hype this as the end of everything.

HardCodedBias 1y ago

It seems like there is a very strong correlation between identity politics and "AI skepticism." I have no idea why. I don't think that the correlation is 1, but it seems weirdly high.

pimeys 1y ago
Yep. Same for the other direction: there is a very strong correlation between identity politics and praising AI on Twitter. Then there's us who are mildly disappointed on the agents and how they don't live their promise, and the tech CEOs destroying the economy and our savings. Still using the agents for things that work better, but being burned out for spending days of our time fixing the issues the they created to our code.
tech_ken 1y ago
The adoption and use of technology frequently (even typically) has a political axis, it's kind of just this weird world of consumer tech/personal computers that's nominally "apolitical" because it's instead aligned to the axis of taste/self-identity so it'll generate more economic activity.
wmf 1y ago
AI hating is part of the omnicause because it overlaps with art ho socialism, degrowth environmentalism, and general tech skepticism/ludditism.
Libidinalecon 1y ago
IMO this is a Rorschach test for the politically obsessed because I can't stand politics and have no clue what you are talking about. You have just trained your brain to be so obsessed with politics you can't but help to see it everywhere.

Flavius 1y ago

Expecting a purely technical discussion is unrealistic because many people have significant vested interests. This includes not only those with financial stakes in AI stocks but also a large number of professionals in roles that could be transformed or replaced by this technology. For these groups, the discussion is inherently political, not just technical.

tracerbulletx 1y ago
I don't really mind if people advocate for their value judgements, but the total disregard for good faith arguments and facts is really out of control. The number of people who care at all about finding the best position through debate and are willing to adjust their position is really shockingly small across almost every issue.
- Flavius 1y ago
  Totally agree. It seems like a symptom of a larger issue: people are becoming increasingly selfish and entrenched in their own bubbles. It’s hard to see a path back to sanity from here.
  - lukan 1y ago
    Well, I share your pain .. but was it ever really better in reality? Unfortunately it is not like human society in history had truth as the highest virtue.
    - keeganpoppen 1y ago
      yeah maybe around the time of Archimedes it was closer to the top, but societies in which people are willing to die for abstract ideas tend to be one... where the value of life isn't quite as high as it is nowadays (ie no matter how much my inner nerd has a love and fascination for that time period, no way i'm pressing the button on any one-way time machines...).
      - 1y ago

lkey 1y ago

| Drop the politics Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources. Most municipalities literally do not have enough spare power to service this 1.4 trillion dollar capital rollout as planned on paper. Even if they did, the concurrent inflation of energy costs is about as political as a topic can get. Economic uncertainty (firings, wage depression) brought on by the promises of AI is about as political as it gets. There's no 'pure world' of 'engineering only' concerns when the primary goals of many of these billionaires is leverage this hype, real and imagined, into reshaping the global economy in their preferred form. The only people that get to be 'apolitical' are those that have already benefitted the most from the status quo. It's a privilege.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
eucyclos 1y ago
There are politics and there are Politics, and I don't think the two of you are using the same definition. 'Making decisions in groups' does not require 'oversimplifying issues for the sake of tribal cohesion or loyalty'. It is a distressingly common occurrence that complex problems are oversimplified because political effectiveness requires appealing to a broader audience. We'd all be better off if more people withheld judgement while actually engaging with the nuances of a political topic instead of pushing for their team. The capacity to do that may be a privilege but it's a privilege worth earning and celebrating.
- grokgrok 1y ago
  The negatively coded, tribal/political speech can be referred to as 'Polemic' which stems from 'warlike' expression.
  - dontlaugh 1y ago
    And polemic is an entirely legitimate form of political action. Would you rather starve or never lie about those that would starve you?

magicalist 1y ago

> I will go meta into what you posted here: That people are classifying themselves as "AI skeptics" The comment you're replying to is calling other people AI skeptics. Your advice has some fine parts to it (and simonw's comment is innocuous in its use of the term), but if we're really going meta, you seem to be engaging in the tribal conflict you're decrying by lecturing an imaginary person rather than the actual context of what you're responding to.

pweezy 1y ago
To me, "Tip for AI skeptics" reads as shorthand for "Tip for those of you who classify as AI skeptics". That is why the meta commentary about identity politics made complete sense to me. It's simply observing that this discussion (like so many others) tends to go this way, and suggests a better alternative - without a straw man.
- tbrownaw 1y ago
  I read it more as a claim that people who advocate against AI are picking arguments as a means to an end rather than because they actually believe or care about what they're saying.

hamdingers 1y ago

> IMO the move is drop the politics, and discuss things on their technical merits. I'd love this but it's impossible to have this discussion with someone who will not touch generative AI tools with a 10 foot pole. It's not unlike when religious people condemn a book they refuse to read. The merits of the book don't matter, it's symbolic opposition to something broader.

Capricorn2481 1y ago
Okay, but a lot of people are calling environmental and content theft arguments "political" in an attempt to make it sound frivolous. It's fine if you think every non-technical criticism against AI is overblown. I use LLMs, but it's perfectly fine to start from a place of whether it's ethical, or even a net good, to use these in the first place. People saying "ignoring all of those arguments, let's just look at the tech" are, generously, either naive or shilling. Why would we only revisit these very important topics, which are the heart of how the tech would alter our society, after it's been fully embraced?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nasmorn 1y ago
  The environmental argument is frivolous as long as people fly to Vegas for the weekend or drive a F150 to the office. Why is this as special domain?
  - zzzeek 1y ago
    debating the environmental and public health effects of AI negates the possibility of debating those same things with respect to cars/trucks ?
    - ineedasername 1y ago
      Charitably, I think you can read into that a not-unreasonable (if unproven) assertion that there are many lower hanging fruits on the tree that would do endlessly more good for the cause to pick than data centers, and AI at least has the arguable potential upside of alleviating some of those specific burdens-- better health care and less environmental pollution through various improved forms of automation. Or at least when addressing the stub claim of the sort in the GP comment, you should assume these fairly straightforward subclaims pre-emptively and respond to this stronger form of the argument. It saves time, at least if you're going to seek out a discussion it does. Plenty of counter claims to them, but it gets the conversational ball rolling in a productive direction and if the response in turn is less constructive then you also know not to bother any more.

clown_strike 1y ago

[dead]

teknikalm 1y ago

> On HN, we can do better! IMO the move is drop the politics, and discuss things on their technical merits. Zero obligation to satisfy HN audience; tiny proportion of the populace. But for giggles... Technical merits: there are none. Look at Karpathy's GPT on Github. Just some boring old statistics. These technologies are built on top of mathematical principles in textbooks printed 70-80 years ago. The sharding and distribution of work across numerous machines is also a well trodden technical field. There is no net new discovery. This is 100% a political ploy on the part of tech CEOs who take advantage of the innumerate/non-technical political class that holds power. That class is bought into the idea that massive leverage over resource markets is a win for them, and they won't be alive to pay the price of the environmental destruction. It's not "energy and water" concerns, it's survival of the species concerns obfuscated by socio-political obligations to keep calm carry on and debate endlessly, as vain circumlocution is the hallmark of the elders whose education was modeled on people being VHS cassettes of spoken tradition, industrial and political roles. IMO there is little technical merit to most software. Maps, communication. That's all that's really needed. ZIRP era insanity juiced the field and created a bunch of self-aggrandizing coder bros whose technical achievements are copy-paste old ideas into new syntax and semantics, to obfuscate their origins, to get funded, sell books, book speaking engagements. There is no removing any of this from politics as political machinations gave rise to the dumbest era of human engineering effort ever. The only AI that has merit is robotics. Taking manual labor of people that are otherwise exploited by bougie first worlders in their office jobs. People who have, again with the help of politicians, externalized their biologies real needs on the bodies of poorer illiterates they don't have to see as the first-world successfully subjugated them and moved operations out of our own backyard. Source: was in the room 30 years ago, providing feedback to leadership how to wind down local manufacturing and move it all over to China. Powerful political forces did not like the idea of Americans having the skills and knowledge to build computers. It ran afoul of their goals to subjugate and manipulate through financial engineering. Americans have been intentionally screwed out of learning hands on skills with which they would have political leverage over the status quo. There is no removing politics from this. The situation we are in now was 100% crafted by politics.