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Anecdotally, lots of people in SF tech hate AI too. _Most_ people out of tech do. But, enough of the people in tech have their future tied to AI that there are

Anecdotally, lots of people in SF tech hate AI too. _Most_ people out of tech do. But, enough of the people in tech have their future tied to AI that there are lot of vocal boosters.

tptacek 10mo ago
It is not at all my experience working in local government (that is, in close contact with everybody else paying attention to local government) that non-tech people hate AI. It seems rather the opposite.
- kg 10mo ago
  EDIT: Removed part of my post that pissed people off for some reason. shrug It makes a lot of sense that someone casually coming in to use chatgpt for 30 minutes a week doesn't have any reason to think more deeply about what using that tool 'means' or where it came from. Honestly, they shouldn't have to think about it.
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    The claim I was responding to implied that non-techies distinctively hate AI. You're a techie.
- wk_end 10mo ago
  Managers everywhere love the idea of AI because it means they can replace expensive and inefficient human workers with cheap automation. Among actual people (i.e. not managers) there seems to be a bit of a generation gap - my younger friends (Gen Z) are almost disturbingly enthusiastic about entrusting their every thought and action to ChatGPT; my older friends (young millennials and up) find it odious.
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    The median age of people working local politics is probably 55, and I've met more people (non-family, that is) over 70 doing this than in anything else, and all of them are (a) using AI for stuff and (b) psyched to see any new application of AI being put to use (for instance, a year or so ago, I used 4o to classify every minute spent in our village meetings according to broad subjects). Or, drive through Worth and Bridgeview in IL, where all the middle eastern people in Chicago live, and notice all the AI billboards. Not billboards for AI, just, billboards obviously made with GenAI. I think it's just not true that non-tech people are especially opposed to AI.
    - Capricorn2481 10mo ago
      > The median age of people working local politics is probably 55, and I've met more people (non-family, that is) over 70 doing this than in anything else, and all of them are (a) using AI for stuff and (b) psyched to see any new application of AI being put to use That seems more like a canary than anything. This is the demographic that doesn't even know which tech company they're talking to in congress. That's not the demographic in touch with tech. They have gotten more excited about even dumber stuff. For people under 50, it's a wildly common insult to say something seems AI generated. They are disillusioned with the content slop filling the internet, the fact that 50% of the internet is bots, and their future job prospects. The only people I've seen liking AI art, like fake cat videos, are people over 50. Not that they don't matter, but they are not the driver of what's popular or sustainable.
  - sleepybrett 10mo ago
    Mangers should realize that the thing AI might be best at is to replace them. Most of my managers don't understand the people they are managing and don't understand what the people they are managing are actually building. They job is to get a question from management that their reports can answer, format that answer for their boss and send the email. They job is to be the leader in a meeting to make sure it stays on track, not understand the content. AI can do all that shit without a problem.
    - vasvir 10mo ago
      MANNA https://milweesci.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/4/13247648/mannapdf.pdf https://milweesci.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/4/13247648/mannap...
  - pseudalopex 10mo ago
    A Pew Research Center survey found age correlation. But not a generation gap.[1] [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/ai-in-americans-lives-awareness-experiences-and-attitudes/ps_2024-9-15_ai-and-its-impact_1-04/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/ai-in-america...
- majormajor 10mo ago
  Non-technical people that I know have rapidly embraced it as "better google where i don't have to do as much work to answer questions." This is in a non-work context so i don't know how much those people are using it to do their day job writing emails or whatever. A lot of these people are tech-using boomers - they already adjusted to Google/the internet, they don't know how it works, they just are like "oh, the internet got even better." There's maybe a slow trend towards "that's not true, you should know better than to trust AI for that sort of question" in discussions when someone says something like "I asked AI how [xyz was done]" but it's definitely not enough yet to keep anyone from going to it as their first option for answering a question.
- somekyle2 10mo ago
  I don't doubt that many love it. I'm just going based on SF non-tech people I know, who largely see it as the thing vaguely mentioned on every billboard and bus stop, the chatbot every tech company seems to be trying to wedge into every app, and the thing that makes misleading content on social media and enables cheating on school projects. But, sometimes it is good at summarizing videos and such. I probably have a biased sample of people who don't really try to make productive use of AI.
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    I can imagine reasons why non-tech people in SF would hate all tech. I work in tech and living in the middle of that was a big part of why I was in such a hurry to get out of there.
    - pesus 10mo ago
      Frankly, tech deserves its bad reputation in SF (and worldwide, really). One look at the dystopian billboards bragging about trying to replace humans with AI should make any sane human angry at what tech has done. Or the rising rents due to an influx of people working on mostly useless AI startups, 90% of which won't be around in 5 years. Or even how poorly many in tech behave in public and how poorly they treat service workers. That's just the tip of the iceberg, and just in SF alone. I say all this as someone living in SF and working in tech. As a whole, we've brought the hate upon ourselves, and we deserve it.
      - tptacek 10mo ago
        I don't agree with any of this. I just think it's aggravating to live in a company town.
      - treis 10mo ago
        There's a long list of things that have "replaced" humans all the way back to the ox drawn plow. It's not sane to be angry at any of those steps along the way. GenAI will likely not be any different.
- neutronicus 10mo ago
  Anyone involved in government procurement loves AI, irrespective of what it even is, for the simple fact that they get to pointedly ask every single tech vendor for evidence that they have "leveraged efficiency gains from AI" in the form of a lower bid. At least, that's my wife's experience working on a contract with a state government at a big tech vendor.
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    Not talking about government employees, for whatever that's worth.
- exasperaited 10mo ago
  I live in a medium-sized British town of 100,000 people or so. It may be a slightly more creative town than most — lots of arts and music and a really surprisingly cool music scene — but I can tell you that AI pleases (almost) nobody. I think actually a lot about it is the sort of crass, unthinking, default-American-college-student manner about the way ChatGPT speaks. It's so American and we can feel it. But AI generated art and music is hugely unpopular, AI chatbots replacing real customer service is something we loathe. Generally speaking I would say that AI feels like something that is being done to us by a handful of powerful Americans we profoundly distrust (and for good reason: they are untrustworthy and we can see through their bullshit). I can tell you that this is so different to the way the internet was initially received even by older people. But again, perhaps this is in part due to our changing perspectives on America. It felt like an exciting thing to be part of, and it helped in the media that the Web was the brainchild of a British person (even if twenty years later that same media would have liked to pretend he wasn't at a European research institution when he did it). The feeling about AI is more like the feeling we have about what the internet eventually did to our culture: destroying our high streets. We know what is coming will not be good for what makes us us.
mips_avatar 10mo ago
That’s fair. The bad behavior in the name of AI definitely isn’t limited to Seattle. I think the difference in SF is that there are people doing legitimately useful stuff with AI
- _keats 10mo ago
  I think this comment (and TFA) is really just painting with too broad of strokes. Of course there are going to be people in tech hubs that are very pro-AI, either because they are working with it directly and have had legitimately positive experiences or because they work with it and they begrudgingly see the writing on that wall for what it means for software professionals. I can assure you, living in Seattle I still encounter a lot a AI boosters just as much as I encounter AI haters/skeptics
Forgeties79 10mo ago
What’s so striking to me is these “vocal boosters” almost preach like televangelists the moment the subject comes up. It’s very crypto-esque (not a hot take at all I know). I’m just tired of watching these people shout down folks asking legitimate questions pertaining to matters like health and safety.
- lambchoppers 10mo ago
  Health and safety seems irrelevant to me. I complain about cars, I point out "obscure" facts like that they are a major cause of lung related health problems for innocent bystanders, I don't actually ride in cars on any regular basis, I use them less in fact than I use AI. There were people at the car's introduction who made all the points I would make today. The world is not at all about fairness of benefits and impacts to all people it is about a populist mass and what amuses them and makes their life convenient, hopefully without attending the relevant funerals themselves.
  - Forgeties79 10mo ago
    > health and safety seems irrelevant to me Honestly I don’t really know what to say to that, other than it seems rather relevant to me. I don’t really know what to elaborate on given we disagree on such a fundamental level.
    - lambchoppers 10mo ago
      Do you think the industry will stop because of your concern? If for example, AI does what it says on the box but causes goiters for prompt jockeys do you think the industry will stop then or offshore the role of AI jockey? It's lovely that you care about health, but I have no idea why you think you are relevant to a society that is very much willing to risk extinction to avoid the slightest upset or delay to consumer convenience measured progress.
      - Forgeties79 10mo ago
        > Do you think the industry will stop because of your concern? I’m not sure what this question is addressing. I didn’t say it needs to “stop” or the industry has to respond to me. > It's lovely that you care about health, 1) you should care too, 2) drop the patronizing tone if you are actually serious about having a conversation.
ggerni 10mo ago
[flagged]
IAmBroom 10mo ago
Most of my FB contacts are not in tech. It is overwhelming viewed as a negative by them. To be clearer: I'm counting anyone who posts AI-generated pictures on FB as implicitly being pro-AI; if we neglect this portion the only non-negative posts about AI would be highly qualified "in some special cases it is useful" statements.
themafia 10mo ago
> enough of the people in tech have their future tied to AI that there are lot of vocal boosters That's the presumption. There's no data on whether this is actually true or not. Most rational examinations show that it most likely isn't. The progress of the technology is simply too slow and no exponential growth is on the horizon.
65 10mo ago
Strangely I've found the only people who are super excited about AI are executive level boomers. My mom loves AI and uses it to do her job, which of course has poor results. All the younger people I know hate AI. Perhaps it's also a generational dofference.
tokioyoyo 10mo ago
It’s one of those “people hate noticing AI-generated stuff, but everyone and their mom is using ChatGPT to make their works easier”. There are a lot of vocal boosters and vocal anti-boosters, but the general population is using it in a Google fashion and move on. Not everyone is thinking about AI-apocalypse every day. Personally, I’m in-between the opinions. I hate when I’m consuming AI-generated stuff, but can see the use for myself for work or asking bunch of not-so-important questions to get general idea of stuff.
slashdave 10mo ago
You mean "_Most_ people out of tech that write social media posts I read".

Anecdotally, lots of people in SF tech hate AI too. _Most_ people out of tech do. But, enough of the people in tech have their future tied to AI that there are lot of vocal boosters.

tptacek 10mo ago

It is not at all my experience working in local government (that is, in close contact with everybody else paying attention to local government) that non-tech people hate AI. It seems rather the opposite.

kg 10mo ago
EDIT: Removed part of my post that pissed people off for some reason. shrug It makes a lot of sense that someone casually coming in to use chatgpt for 30 minutes a week doesn't have any reason to think more deeply about what using that tool 'means' or where it came from. Honestly, they shouldn't have to think about it.
- tptacek 10mo ago
  The claim I was responding to implied that non-techies distinctively hate AI. You're a techie.
wk_end 10mo ago
Managers everywhere love the idea of AI because it means they can replace expensive and inefficient human workers with cheap automation. Among actual people (i.e. not managers) there seems to be a bit of a generation gap - my younger friends (Gen Z) are almost disturbingly enthusiastic about entrusting their every thought and action to ChatGPT; my older friends (young millennials and up) find it odious.
- tptacek 10mo ago
  The median age of people working local politics is probably 55, and I've met more people (non-family, that is) over 70 doing this than in anything else, and all of them are (a) using AI for stuff and (b) psyched to see any new application of AI being put to use (for instance, a year or so ago, I used 4o to classify every minute spent in our village meetings according to broad subjects). Or, drive through Worth and Bridgeview in IL, where all the middle eastern people in Chicago live, and notice all the AI billboards. Not billboards for AI, just, billboards obviously made with GenAI. I think it's just not true that non-tech people are especially opposed to AI.
  - Capricorn2481 10mo ago
    > The median age of people working local politics is probably 55, and I've met more people (non-family, that is) over 70 doing this than in anything else, and all of them are (a) using AI for stuff and (b) psyched to see any new application of AI being put to use That seems more like a canary than anything. This is the demographic that doesn't even know which tech company they're talking to in congress. That's not the demographic in touch with tech. They have gotten more excited about even dumber stuff. For people under 50, it's a wildly common insult to say something seems AI generated. They are disillusioned with the content slop filling the internet, the fact that 50% of the internet is bots, and their future job prospects. The only people I've seen liking AI art, like fake cat videos, are people over 50. Not that they don't matter, but they are not the driver of what's popular or sustainable.
- sleepybrett 10mo ago
  Mangers should realize that the thing AI might be best at is to replace them. Most of my managers don't understand the people they are managing and don't understand what the people they are managing are actually building. They job is to get a question from management that their reports can answer, format that answer for their boss and send the email. They job is to be the leader in a meeting to make sure it stays on track, not understand the content. AI can do all that shit without a problem.
  - vasvir 10mo ago
    MANNA https://milweesci.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/4/13247648/mannapdf.pdf https://milweesci.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/4/13247648/mannap...
- pseudalopex 10mo ago
  A Pew Research Center survey found age correlation. But not a generation gap.[1] [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/ai-in-americans-lives-awareness-experiences-and-attitudes/ps_2024-9-15_ai-and-its-impact_1-04/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/ai-in-america...
majormajor 10mo ago
Non-technical people that I know have rapidly embraced it as "better google where i don't have to do as much work to answer questions." This is in a non-work context so i don't know how much those people are using it to do their day job writing emails or whatever. A lot of these people are tech-using boomers - they already adjusted to Google/the internet, they don't know how it works, they just are like "oh, the internet got even better." There's maybe a slow trend towards "that's not true, you should know better than to trust AI for that sort of question" in discussions when someone says something like "I asked AI how [xyz was done]" but it's definitely not enough yet to keep anyone from going to it as their first option for answering a question.
somekyle2 10mo ago
I don't doubt that many love it. I'm just going based on SF non-tech people I know, who largely see it as the thing vaguely mentioned on every billboard and bus stop, the chatbot every tech company seems to be trying to wedge into every app, and the thing that makes misleading content on social media and enables cheating on school projects. But, sometimes it is good at summarizing videos and such. I probably have a biased sample of people who don't really try to make productive use of AI.
- tptacek 10mo ago
  I can imagine reasons why non-tech people in SF would hate all tech. I work in tech and living in the middle of that was a big part of why I was in such a hurry to get out of there.
  - pesus 10mo ago
    Frankly, tech deserves its bad reputation in SF (and worldwide, really). One look at the dystopian billboards bragging about trying to replace humans with AI should make any sane human angry at what tech has done. Or the rising rents due to an influx of people working on mostly useless AI startups, 90% of which won't be around in 5 years. Or even how poorly many in tech behave in public and how poorly they treat service workers. That's just the tip of the iceberg, and just in SF alone. I say all this as someone living in SF and working in tech. As a whole, we've brought the hate upon ourselves, and we deserve it.
    - tptacek 10mo ago
      I don't agree with any of this. I just think it's aggravating to live in a company town.
    - treis 10mo ago
      There's a long list of things that have "replaced" humans all the way back to the ox drawn plow. It's not sane to be angry at any of those steps along the way. GenAI will likely not be any different.
neutronicus 10mo ago
Anyone involved in government procurement loves AI, irrespective of what it even is, for the simple fact that they get to pointedly ask every single tech vendor for evidence that they have "leveraged efficiency gains from AI" in the form of a lower bid. At least, that's my wife's experience working on a contract with a state government at a big tech vendor.
- tptacek 10mo ago
  Not talking about government employees, for whatever that's worth.
exasperaited 10mo ago
I live in a medium-sized British town of 100,000 people or so. It may be a slightly more creative town than most — lots of arts and music and a really surprisingly cool music scene — but I can tell you that AI pleases (almost) nobody. I think actually a lot about it is the sort of crass, unthinking, default-American-college-student manner about the way ChatGPT speaks. It's so American and we can feel it. But AI generated art and music is hugely unpopular, AI chatbots replacing real customer service is something we loathe. Generally speaking I would say that AI feels like something that is being done to us by a handful of powerful Americans we profoundly distrust (and for good reason: they are untrustworthy and we can see through their bullshit). I can tell you that this is so different to the way the internet was initially received even by older people. But again, perhaps this is in part due to our changing perspectives on America. It felt like an exciting thing to be part of, and it helped in the media that the Web was the brainchild of a British person (even if twenty years later that same media would have liked to pretend he wasn't at a European research institution when he did it). The feeling about AI is more like the feeling we have about what the internet eventually did to our culture: destroying our high streets. We know what is coming will not be good for what makes us us.

mips_avatar 10mo ago

That’s fair. The bad behavior in the name of AI definitely isn’t limited to Seattle. I think the difference in SF is that there are people doing legitimately useful stuff with AI

_keats 10mo ago
I think this comment (and TFA) is really just painting with too broad of strokes. Of course there are going to be people in tech hubs that are very pro-AI, either because they are working with it directly and have had legitimately positive experiences or because they work with it and they begrudgingly see the writing on that wall for what it means for software professionals. I can assure you, living in Seattle I still encounter a lot a AI boosters just as much as I encounter AI haters/skeptics

Forgeties79 10mo ago

What’s so striking to me is these “vocal boosters” almost preach like televangelists the moment the subject comes up. It’s very crypto-esque (not a hot take at all I know). I’m just tired of watching these people shout down folks asking legitimate questions pertaining to matters like health and safety.

lambchoppers 10mo ago
Health and safety seems irrelevant to me. I complain about cars, I point out "obscure" facts like that they are a major cause of lung related health problems for innocent bystanders, I don't actually ride in cars on any regular basis, I use them less in fact than I use AI. There were people at the car's introduction who made all the points I would make today. The world is not at all about fairness of benefits and impacts to all people it is about a populist mass and what amuses them and makes their life convenient, hopefully without attending the relevant funerals themselves.
- Forgeties79 10mo ago
  > health and safety seems irrelevant to me Honestly I don’t really know what to say to that, other than it seems rather relevant to me. I don’t really know what to elaborate on given we disagree on such a fundamental level.
  - lambchoppers 10mo ago
    Do you think the industry will stop because of your concern? If for example, AI does what it says on the box but causes goiters for prompt jockeys do you think the industry will stop then or offshore the role of AI jockey? It's lovely that you care about health, but I have no idea why you think you are relevant to a society that is very much willing to risk extinction to avoid the slightest upset or delay to consumer convenience measured progress.
    - Forgeties79 10mo ago
      > Do you think the industry will stop because of your concern? I’m not sure what this question is addressing. I didn’t say it needs to “stop” or the industry has to respond to me. > It's lovely that you care about health, 1) you should care too, 2) drop the patronizing tone if you are actually serious about having a conversation.

ggerni 10mo ago

[flagged]

IAmBroom 10mo ago

Most of my FB contacts are not in tech. It is overwhelming viewed as a negative by them. To be clearer: I'm counting anyone who posts AI-generated pictures on FB as implicitly being pro-AI; if we neglect this portion the only non-negative posts about AI would be highly qualified "in some special cases it is useful" statements.

themafia 10mo ago

> enough of the people in tech have their future tied to AI that there are lot of vocal boosters That's the presumption. There's no data on whether this is actually true or not. Most rational examinations show that it most likely isn't. The progress of the technology is simply too slow and no exponential growth is on the horizon.

65 10mo ago

Strangely I've found the only people who are super excited about AI are executive level boomers. My mom loves AI and uses it to do her job, which of course has poor results. All the younger people I know hate AI. Perhaps it's also a generational dofference.

tokioyoyo 10mo ago

It’s one of those “people hate noticing AI-generated stuff, but everyone and their mom is using ChatGPT to make their works easier”. There are a lot of vocal boosters and vocal anti-boosters, but the general population is using it in a Google fashion and move on. Not everyone is thinking about AI-apocalypse every day. Personally, I’m in-between the opinions. I hate when I’m consuming AI-generated stuff, but can see the use for myself for work or asking bunch of not-so-important questions to get general idea of stuff.

slashdave 10mo ago

You mean "_Most_ people out of tech that write social media posts I read".