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Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI

142 points by elsewhen 6mo ago

aurareturn 6mo ago
If I'm Gen Z, especially someone who is graduating or just graduated, I'd be very angry at AI too. Even in our own organization, we've almost stopped hiring juniors and interns completely. We just leverage AI more and more. So I can understand how most Gen Zs feel threatened by AI. There are basically 2 groups who are loving AI: * Seniors who have deep knowledge so AI is just there to help make them accomplish their goals cheaper and faster * Gen Zs who are starting their own businesses and have embraced AI My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can. Learn to be extremely productive with it. Learn to use it to create businesses. Burying your head in the sand hoping AI will collapse is not going to work in their favor. PS. You can get a pretty good idea of how young people view AI on Reddit. Reddit users tend to be younger, less affluent. Save for a few subs, most of Reddit is very anti-AI. I'd guess most of them wish AI will collapse soon so they can go back to a world where human intelligence matter more.
- DaSHacka 6mo ago
  Meh, there are still fields AI can't touch, going into those is a much better idea than trying (in vain) to use the Job Replacer 5000 in such a manner that won't eventually leave you without a job. We've always had offshoring too, and the same concerns exist there. The more corporate companies use it, and either eventually get burned and revert back, or just hold on for dear life as they circle the toilet. Curious how these companies will fare when there are no senior-level candidates left to replace the ones that are retiring in a few years. I guess everyone's hoping AI will be good enough to just replace the entire field, as one final "fuck you" to the generations that follow, from the generations that had everything and pulled up the ladder.
  - dismalaf 6mo ago
    The fields that "AI can't touch" are shit fields that have already been decimated by globalism and immigration. Like cool, farmers, cooks, baristas, plumbers and manual labourers are safe from AI for now. But most paths to a middle class lifestyle are being closed off...
    - HappyHacker731 6mo ago
      You're right and it's actually even worse than that. If X% of the white collar jobs get replaced by ai that means there are X% more people competing for the "safe" jobs. Over time the "safe" jobs will pay less and less adjusted for inflation because the job displacement is increasing the labor supply making your labor less valuable.
      - georgemcbay 6mo ago
        The "safe" jobs will get squeezed in two ways. Like you said there will be more people trying to do those jobs causing devaluation on the supply side, but at the same time overall demand will drop because there will be less people with comfortable white-collar jobs that make up a lot of the demand for the work those jobs perform.
        HappyHacker731 6mo ago
        Exactly. I've been thinking about the demand issue for a while now too. It makes me think either the frontier labs are really "move fast and break things" cultists that truly don't care about any second order effects, or they're 100% convinced "asi" will subsume all forms of labor. If you permanently remove a massive chunk of labor from the white collar sector that will cause a massive drop in consumer spending, which will impact company revenue, which will in turn put pressure on their ability to spend on the ai causing the displacement in the first place. Unless they monopolize all labor and cause a paradigm shift in how economies fundamentally work I don't see how they're not just shooting themselves in the foot.
        bluefirebrand 6mo ago
  - PaulHoule 6mo ago
    Well I post a lot of articles about grippers and agricultural robots that almost never get upvoted so if you don't know about these things I blame y'all. I think if you want to change the world robots that can pick strawberries and change bedpans are it. People like to gush about "more Nobel prize research" an such but Nobel prizes are valuable because a limited number are given out, not because the research is valuable in and of itself. (e.g. Kuhn would tell you normal science is "apply for grant - write paper - repeat")
    - antonvs 6mo ago
      Kuhn wouldn't tell you that because that cycle wasn't yet fully dominant when he wrote SSR, although the framework was in place for it.
- justonepost2 6mo ago
  The "businesses" created are thin wrappers that will get absorbed by the model companies faster than you can come up with them.
  - bad_haircut72 6mo ago
    Yeah "start a business with AI" is the new "learn to code". Like what does that even mean, do you just go to Claude "hey what business should I start?" If starting a business was so easy, almost all of us who work salary would go do it. This advice is like, if your local football club gets shut down, just work hard enough to make into Manchester United
    - 9rx 6mo ago
      > If starting a business was so easy, almost all of us who work salary would go do it. Would we? Starting a business is easy. Building a profitable business isn't even that hard. Wanting pleasure in our work is what stops us. Running a business generally isn't much fun. We work salary because it means we can focus on the enjoyable parts of the business, letting someone else deal with the crap.
      - bombcar 6mo ago
        Starting and running a business is an entirely different skillset from "doing the work" - even someone who could easily "be on their own" (think: plumbers, doctors, etc) really often prefer the salaried position where they don't have to think about "the business". It's an older book, but The E-Myth Revisited is worth a read for everyone, a business is not a job. It's related, but it's not the same.
      - thankyoufriend 6mo ago
        > We work salary because it means we can focus on the enjoyable parts of the business, letting someone else deal with the crap. I can understand why a specialist would feel this way. Personally, I believe that most people who work salary do it because of the job security and the health insurance.
- deleted 6mo ago
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- throwaway290 6mo ago
  > My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can It's game theory. If you betray ASAP you get to monetize others who hold out. It works until you yourself get ousted the same way. So the most enthusiastic people are old enough that they leverage their status and won't face the consequences in their lifetime OR young enough that they don't understand the proposition, have nothing to lose and when they look around and see everybody doing it they have no other choice except to do the same If everybody took a stance against corps stealing our work and reselling it to us then we would 100% prevail but what are principles against personal profit... "we need to work more and help train the llms of superrich to make the same money" became the new "we will have more free time and more money thanks to AI" but everybody is too busy trying to outrace the next guy so no one noticed.
- parliament32 6mo ago
  How could your "business" ever make money if any idiot with a $20 CC subscription can recreate it in a weekend? And no, "I can prompt better than them" is not a differentiator.
  - daemonologist 6mo ago
    The idea is the opposite - "nobody" can make money selling software anymore, because software can be cheaply created by an LLM, so you want to start a business that previously would have had to buy software/software engineers in order to support some other product. However, even if that holds true (which is a big if - right now I wouldn't want to run a business backed by vibe software), and even if there are enough such business ideas to go around, there's going to be quite a lot of turmoil in the meantime.
    - RealityVoid 6mo ago
      I don't think that's true. SW that works is still expensive to produce. SW that kind of works is super easy to do. The money is in making SW that works. You still need expertise for that.
    - parliament32 6mo ago
      There's a fallacy here around how software is fungible. WordPress hasn't made web developers obsolete, despite everybody having access to a $5/mo WYSIWYG-and-domains-and-hosting-bundle environment; quite the opposite, in fact. I'm seeing the parent's point along these lines: "me and all my friends are starting businesses being the middlemen between WordPress and (people who want websites)". It's not that it won't work, it's just a shit business model.
  - Herring 6mo ago
    Gyms still make money even though you can stay quite fit with just a good set of adjustable dumbbells, a bench, and a jump rope.
    - parliament32 6mo ago
- everdrive 6mo ago
  > My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can How will this help them? If LLMs are going to replace workers and reduce the number of available jobs, how will fully embracing an LLM help an individual? To it seems the most it could do is put them ahead of people who won't embrace LLMs ... but if everyone took this advice then the advice would certainly do nothing.
  - bogzz 6mo ago
    Conversely, it's possible that honing your actual skills by minimizing reliance on LLMs could become a very valuable trait in the coming future. But in that case, you'd be burning fewer tokens and you wouldn't be contributing to LLM company userbase growth which is a bad thing to do.
- kylehotchkiss 6mo ago
  Local models are going to be pretty useful by the time the current companies have to face their finances. The cost of entry will be higher end hardware though.
justonepost2 6mo ago
We are, in the best case scenario, minting a lost generation in real time. This will become increasingly clear over the next 2 years. Meanwhile, simonw and his retiree friends are having the "time of their lives", so that's good I guess :)
- bix6 6mo ago
  Damn this hits. Young people were already struggling to build lives and families before the AI recession. It’s hard to fathom having any hope for raising a family or finding meaningful work in the PE slop driven economy.
  - jsiyc 6mo ago
    Thats just the experience of any young person born outside the western bubble, thinking about their future in their poor ass over exploited countries for hundreds of years now. If they didnt see sources of hope around them they moved to where they did see a better future.
- harmonic18374 6mo ago
  Is that an actual quote from simonw? He seems an unbiased observer and reporter of progress, I'd be sad to see him cheering this stuff on so callously.
  - kranner 6mo ago
    Not just that but "you're holding it wrong" on many occasions. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=true&query=author%3Asimonw%20you%27re%20holding%20it%20&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483567 is pretty much (paraphrasing) sucks to be you if you can't make it work. Well, people who are not above a threshold of experience yet are not in a position to self-assess and course-correct if their long term learning is being affected. And even less so if there is pressure to be hyper-productive with the help of AI. Speculating here but I think even seniors who rely on AI all the time and enjoy the enhanced output are going to end up with impostor syndrome over the things they suspect they can no longer do without AI, and FOMO about all the projects they haven't yet attempted with AI despite working as hard as they can.
therobots927 6mo ago
Yeah well maybe that has something to do with entry level jobs drying up, ostensibly due to AI. I don’t even think that’s actually the case - we’re in a soft recession. AI has nothing to do with it. But that’s not what kids are being told. Great marketing campaign guys. Just wait. If you think sentiment around AI is negative now you haven’t seen shit.
- richwater 6mo ago
  Ha, we simultaneously posted the same thesis!
  - therobots927 6mo ago
    I’m not sure we’re in agreement. I don’t think AI is the equivalent of the loom. And I think all of this data center spend is a massive waste of money (unless you’re the NSA, planning to buy them all up for cheap and run 24/7 AI surveillance on everyone).
- 9rx 6mo ago
  > AI has nothing to do with it. "Nothing" is a stretch. Major capital being now being allocated towards building AI data centres, away from what it was doing previously, is absolutely a contributing factor. Of course not the only one, but there is never just one reason for anything.
  - therobots927 6mo ago
    Totally fair point and a big oversight on my part.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  I believe someday we will wake up and find out our children are setting sail for the new America. Wherever that may be. The capital holders have consolidated their power intertwined with government and are pulling up the ladders. This is why many Europeans set sail for America in the first place, and the cycle has completed itself, and we have become what we escaped. I do not think you can vote your way out of that. Maybe there is some place left that needs young people badly enough that they are willing to open up opportunities, or someplace left ripe and weak enough that the youth will take it over by force.
richwater 6mo ago
AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane. It will take time to adjust and some industries will go away and others will pop up. I think a lot of people are conflating two ongoing things: the emergence of AI and stagnant (if not recessionary) economies across the globe. It appears as if AI is resulting in so much more negative externalities but in reality if not for AI, we'd 100% be in a recession.
- palmotea 6mo ago
  > AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane. It will take time to adjust and some industries will go away and others will pop up. That's fallacious thinking. Technological developments aren't instances of some kind of repeating phenomena; they're distinct, unique events with their own characteristics. You need to consider those characteristics instead of gesticulating at the past for a prediction of the future. And even if you're correct, you're missing a lot. I'll explain by analogy: at the beginning of a genocide, as someone's community in the process of being murdered, you could totally say "genocides have happened before, some people will go away, others will survive." But that's cold comfort for someone who's about to be killed with their family. AI likely means economic death (or at least hardship) for a lot of people who don't have the needed combination of psychopathy, luck, and wealth to succeed in the new order.
  - throwaway290 6mo ago
    > you could totally go up to someone in the middle of a genocide, as their community in the process of being murdered, and say "genocides have happened before, some people will go away, others will survive." Yeah. How many times I saw people here say oh yeah it's just the same as job loss during automaton-industrialization. How is that making things better? "Yeah just more mass poverty and more wealth inequality, what are you worried about!" Also during automation there was a lot of work you could switch to and what about options now? start another vibeslop startup so that you can pay openai for tokens? the only explanation for people saying this is that they don't understand they will be on the line later just like the people displaced now. but the dream of being the .1% who get to be on top and monetize everybody else is too tempting I guess.
dlev_pika 6mo ago
It’s possible they do not appreciate how AI will help some rich fucks siphoning all the money out of the economy and into their bank accounts.
- coffeebeqn 6mo ago
  What exactly is the bull case for your average Joe to be excited about for AI?
  - causal 6mo ago
    I think there are a lot of people who (naively) believe AI is going to lead to abundance for everyone. I think there are very rich people trying to sell that vision. I think most of us know that even if AI could do all of our jobs, it won't be to give us free products and services.
    - dlev_pika 6mo ago
      Any rando might be able to push out their cute tool (hi mom!), this is what they (will) sell, but true leverage will happen for those that can allocate their vast resources to further dominate; The big players just appropriated the collective corpus of mankind’s knowledge.
  - sph 6mo ago
    “They can stay home and paint all day, for the machine will do their job.” It’s trickle-down economics 2.0. The bullshit is the same.
enmyj 6mo ago
[flagged]
jesse_dot_id 6mo ago
Yeah, no kidding, the tech bros have utterly botched the rollout of this technology. It's the pinnacle of human innovation. It should be revered as our greatest achievement. People should know about how its going to revolutionize scientific research. Instead, they opted for regulatory capture in lieu of addressing people's concerns, using robber-baron techniques to force data center construction in at-risk communities, made it clear they want to replace human workers, and then shoved its art slop capabilities in front of everybody's faces.
- bogzz 6mo ago
  > It's the pinnacle of human innovation. It should be revered as our greatest achievement. People should know about how its going to revolutionize scientific research. How so? Colloquially, AI currently means LLMs. Why would we revere LLMs as our greatest achievement?
  - SirFatty 6mo ago
    People that I speak with often conflate LLMs with AGI (or at least what they thing AGI is).
    - bogzz 6mo ago
      I'm thinking LLMs lead to an AIG scenario (circa 2008) as opposed to AGI.
  - antonvs 6mo ago
    Because we've built something that's (functionally) intelligent, comparable to humans in terms of its ability to exhibit (functional) understanding of complex topics, and produce novel correct output. There's nothing even remotely close to this in human history. This was all science fiction 10 years ago.
    - soco 6mo ago
      Maybe the comparison is imperfect, but: we also built a wonderful, novel and excellent bomb, the atom one, not remotely close to whatever humans did before, yet I'm not totally thrilled by it.
jlarocco 6mo ago
Why would they be angry that companies would rather burn money in AI data centers then hire them? /s
angelgonzales 6mo ago
[flagged]
- oliver236 6mo ago
  why do things make you hopeful?
  - angelgonzales 6mo ago
    I’m hopeful for driver assist so I don’t have to pay attention while driving, also this helps disabled people get around (particularly in rural areas with less/no public transit). I’m also hopeful for humanoid robots so they can do all my chores like sweeping, laundry and cooking. In general the idea that me, my family/friends and my country is progressing makes me hopeful.
    - nancyminusone 6mo ago
      It's fair to hope for what was promised, but you cannot discount what is being delivered. Self driving cars were a huge deal 10 years ago and we were all going to be using them immenitly. Now the future is here and they are no greater than a curiosity for the average person. 99.99% are driving manually and will be 30 years from now. Similarly, AI promises to solve every problem, but the average persons' experience is that of increasing irrelevant spam and junk mail rather than being freed from laundry duty.
- wredcoll 6mo ago
  > pressures of high taxes This is something I never see mentioned so I'm curious what brought it up. Are you personally paying a lot of taxes or so much that you can't afford other things or is this a thing peers talk about? Is this a state or federal thing?
  - angelgonzales 6mo ago
    I totally am paying a massive amount of capital gains taxes! I’m also saving up for a house which means every dollar I don’t contribute to a down payment becomes principal and interest on a mortgage which equals even more money out of my pocket. For instance if I pay $37k in capital gains one year (which I did) and if my principal on a $500k house is $200k at 6% and $1500 monthly payments I’ll have to pay $33k in interest on just the $37k I didn’t pay up front!
bartwr 6mo ago
I love using AI tools and they are changing my work and life in amazing ways. I cannot imagine going back. And yet, I am more concerned about the social damage due to their widespread use and the amounts of slop they generate. Just this week: - There was an article about a news company faking polls by asking LLMs for answers. - My wife told me that she stopped watching any funny pet videos because 99% now is AI slop - start normal, but then turn into someone's slop idea. - A friend told me their big tech company uses AI-generated metrics as part of performance evaluation. Nobody checks them. - Another friend told me their big tech company requires engineers to use AI-generated commit messages with terrible signal-to-noise ratio and making version control and history useless for engineers. But directors and PMs love them, they are so descriptive! - My neighbor uses LLMs to create some neighbor meeting plans/agendas, plausibly looking PDFs citing contractors etc. It's impossible to read through it, mixed hallucinations and real information, all wrapped in thousands of slop words. What is real and what made up? I'll spend 10x more time double guessing. - Encountering more and more articles and general "content" that is AI generated and looks ok at the first glance, but slop upon inspections. Why would I read LLMs output on a webpage with ads, if I can ask it myself and get better, personal answers and style? And I am not even talking here about other ethical issues, training data, less junior job positions, job replacement of journalists with LLM-equipeed contractors, etc. LLMs make my personal and work life so much better, but social life unbearable. Is it worth the trade-off? I guess it doesn't matter at this point.
- Atheros 6mo ago
  I think it remains to be seen whether the various AI tools we have today are a net-negative or net-positive for society. Most inventions are a net positive: The steam engine, vaccines, chimneys. A few are net-negative: grenades, leaded gasoline, asbestos insulation. If we can no longer trust that a potential job candidate in a video call actually exists, they will have to be flown in. That's a cost. If we can no longer trust that an employee who wrote a document actually thought about it at all and must be questioned to make sure, that's a cost. Those costs will add up. A written document or a video essay used to be proof-of-thought and now it's not. If we can't find new proofs of thought, and if AI doesn't get vastly better to the point where we can trust it blindly, then I think this will all be a net-negative. One of the motivations to build data centers as fast as possible and improve tools as fast as possible may be to get to net-positive before it all gets banned. This article exists. The clock is ticking.
heliumtera 6mo ago
You can still milk the react/Vercel andies, they will never get tired of being exploited even if the whole world turns against AI.
deleted 6mo ago
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throwaway613746 6mo ago
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beloch 6mo ago
"Many respondents did acknowledge that A.I. might make them more efficient in school and the workplace, he said. But they were concerned about how the technology would affect their creativity and critical thinking skills." ----------------- Perhaps schools need to adapt to AI use and recenter the goals of education in the minds of students. If AI use impairs your development, you are only being efficient in your evasion of education. i.e. Students need to be taught that learning to efficiently pump out AI written essays isn't the same thing as learning to reason and express themselves. AI tools will evolve and become easier and easier to pick up and use. Using your own mind is a slower and more difficult skill to develop, but it makes the difference between going through life as a human being or a mere meat-puppet for AI. It will always be far easier for a human to pick up AI tools and learn them from scratch than it will for a meat-puppet to remedy their lack of human development.
- causal 6mo ago
  Probably but how do you adapt to something that changes faster than semesters. Revising your theory of learning, implementing, evaluating results, etc. takes years, not weeks.
  - beloch 6mo ago
    The current situation is that many students don't perceive that using AI to produce, for example, essays is harmful to themselves, and students who do things honestly may feel pressure to use AI in order to stay competitive with students who do. The answer may be to focus less on output and more on the process. e.g. Instead of sending students off to do essays at home and then merely grading what gets handed in, perhaps teachers should run workshops where students work on their essays while receiving guidance. i.e. Everybody works in the classroom on their essay and talks to each other and the teacher about what they're doing. Grades would be at least partly based on participation, and teachers would get a better sense of what students are actually able to write themselves. If Johnny sits back and picks his nose in the workshop and then hands in a paper that's suspiciously good, it's probably slop even if it isn't obviously so. Of course, doing this sort of thing would mean taking time away from lectures and wrote learning. Finding the right balance is no easy task and it's going to take good teachers to blaze the way. That can only happen if they're backed with resources and the freedom to alter curriculum.
bko 6mo ago
Reminds me of the quote: No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded. These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. I'm sure most teachers and schools would prefer them not to. Why do they have to use it? Have standards gotten higher in schools such that they will be left behind if they don't? Is there peer pressure to use it? Is there some social aspect I'm unaware of? Of course not. People find the technology useful. Social media I understand as it's harder to break away because friends use it to communicate. But that's not true for AI. And then they have some doomer media telling them they should be concerned and scapegoat the technology. Gen AI will prevent you from being an artist or poet? Yeah, I just don't buy it.
- bluefirebrand 6mo ago
  > These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. When you're constantly being force fed the narrative that you must use AI or be left behind, using it is no longer a revealed preference it is a survival mechanism
  - toraway 6mo ago
    Not to mention jobs that require or heavily push using it both in and outside the tech sector. Plus, even in a competitive academic environment it’s naive to think college students won’t feel pressure to keep up with their peers if they’re all using AI and pushing up the curve.
  - bko 6mo ago
    Literally no one says this to young kids. Teachers are begging them not to use AI. And if you read the article young people are using it for things like deciding what school to go to or dating advice.
    - deleted 6mo ago
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- 6mo ago
Lendal 6mo ago
It's okay to have two conflicting thoughts about something and both be true at the same time. AI is awesome but at the same time is promising to do evil in the future. Why? Facebook has done a lot of good for the world, like React for instance, but also done a lot of evil as well. Billionaires have initiated the development of some amazing products and services, but at the same time they're spending their money building bunkers so they can survive an end of the world scenario that they're largely responsible for, rather than using it to mitigate some of the evil that they unleashed. Why are they doing that? I don't know. It doesn't seem necessary to me.
- causal 6mo ago
  Yeah. A think there are a lot of tech enthusiasts like myself that find it amazing from a tinkering and curiosity standpoint, but terrifying from a power and those-who-wield-it standpoint.
maerF0x0 6mo ago
As someone who sees value in generational contracts like older people investing heavily in younger people, with the assumption that they will also take care of us in our older age, I long to improve the lives of subsequent generations. I don't know how we do that when we keep mortgaging their futures with gov't debt and spending that extends beyond the length of the administration. If I had a genie of many wishes I'd wish for 1. No more deficit spending 2. Budgets cannot exceed prior year's intakes 3. An end to progressive taxation, but an increase in a flat tax rate to pay off all public debt. As the debt is paid a negative tax rate will replace it. 4. All politicians' pay tied to a fixed/capped multiple of the median income in the country 5. The building of a public wealth fund which is built from any benefit granted to a company through the governemnt -- want a tax break or a publicly funded stadium? Give us 50% share in the team. Want a bailout for your bank/automaker? Sell us preferred shares at high rates (to reflect the risk). Want publicly funded power plants for your GPUs? Then we want a share of your AI Company in exchange in our public wealth fund. 6. Forced public liquidity of large companies (say $1B) to ensure the public is able to participate in the overall economy, rather than just private networks of back scratchers 7. Politicians who want to invest must invest in an equal weight russell 3000 (or an even wider spread of US stocks) to ensure vested interest in the country, but divested interest in any specific company/sector. 8. Capped political spend. 9. A concerted effort to move towards known maxima rather than stepping towards local maxima with fear of going through local minima too. 10. A publicly funded opt-in national service program for building houses. If you give 4 years of your life to building houses we'll give you a 2 bed 1 bath and a salary along the way. (Obviously, details tbd, but something along that idea)
cyanydeez 6mo ago
Hopefully, they'll see the modern media is the same overhype under deliver and lockin emotional facade that is as empty as the current American farce. It's all such a bullshit storm that it's hard to imagine anyone believes there's a solid foundation and super reliance of the american dream create a dirth of benefits.
nickvec 6mo ago
https://archive.ph/9ySwG https://archive.ph/9ySwG
metalman 6mo ago
Everybody should be horrified by the idea of a gerntocracy/beurocracy/cleptocratic military industrial complex that is hidden behind an algorythim of exploitation, in a never ending techno feudalistic hell world.
- cindyllm 6mo ago
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ofjcihen 6mo ago
Tangential to the worries of those surveyed: I noticed a drop in my critical thinking and skills very quickly. It makes sense, the easiest thing to do is just ask AI for the answer or ideas and then tell it to implement them. I’m deliberately trying to understand things more deeply now to combat that. We’ll see how it goes.

142 points by elsewhen 6mo ago

If I'm Gen Z, especially someone who is graduating or just graduated, I'd be very angry at AI too. Even in our own organization, we've almost stopped hiring juniors and interns completely. We just leverage AI more and more. So I can understand how most Gen Zs feel threatened by AI. There are basically 2 groups who are loving AI: * Seniors who have deep knowledge so AI is just there to help make them accomplish their goals cheaper and faster * Gen Zs who are starting their own businesses and have embraced AI My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can. Learn to be extremely productive with it. Learn to use it to create businesses. Burying your head in the sand hoping AI will collapse is not going to work in their favor. PS. You can get a pretty good idea of how young people view AI on Reddit. Reddit users tend to be younger, less affluent. Save for a few subs, most of Reddit is very anti-AI. I'd guess most of them wish AI will collapse soon so they can go back to a world where human intelligence matter more.

DaSHacka 6mo ago
Meh, there are still fields AI can't touch, going into those is a much better idea than trying (in vain) to use the Job Replacer 5000 in such a manner that won't eventually leave you without a job. We've always had offshoring too, and the same concerns exist there. The more corporate companies use it, and either eventually get burned and revert back, or just hold on for dear life as they circle the toilet. Curious how these companies will fare when there are no senior-level candidates left to replace the ones that are retiring in a few years. I guess everyone's hoping AI will be good enough to just replace the entire field, as one final "fuck you" to the generations that follow, from the generations that had everything and pulled up the ladder.
- dismalaf 6mo ago
  The fields that "AI can't touch" are shit fields that have already been decimated by globalism and immigration. Like cool, farmers, cooks, baristas, plumbers and manual labourers are safe from AI for now. But most paths to a middle class lifestyle are being closed off...
  - HappyHacker731 6mo ago
    You're right and it's actually even worse than that. If X% of the white collar jobs get replaced by ai that means there are X% more people competing for the "safe" jobs. Over time the "safe" jobs will pay less and less adjusted for inflation because the job displacement is increasing the labor supply making your labor less valuable.
    - georgemcbay 6mo ago
      The "safe" jobs will get squeezed in two ways. Like you said there will be more people trying to do those jobs causing devaluation on the supply side, but at the same time overall demand will drop because there will be less people with comfortable white-collar jobs that make up a lot of the demand for the work those jobs perform.
      - HappyHacker731 6mo ago
        Exactly. I've been thinking about the demand issue for a while now too. It makes me think either the frontier labs are really "move fast and break things" cultists that truly don't care about any second order effects, or they're 100% convinced "asi" will subsume all forms of labor. If you permanently remove a massive chunk of labor from the white collar sector that will cause a massive drop in consumer spending, which will impact company revenue, which will in turn put pressure on their ability to spend on the ai causing the displacement in the first place. Unless they monopolize all labor and cause a paradigm shift in how economies fundamentally work I don't see how they're not just shooting themselves in the foot.
        bluefirebrand 6mo ago
- PaulHoule 6mo ago
  Well I post a lot of articles about grippers and agricultural robots that almost never get upvoted so if you don't know about these things I blame y'all. I think if you want to change the world robots that can pick strawberries and change bedpans are it. People like to gush about "more Nobel prize research" an such but Nobel prizes are valuable because a limited number are given out, not because the research is valuable in and of itself. (e.g. Kuhn would tell you normal science is "apply for grant - write paper - repeat")
  - antonvs 6mo ago
    Kuhn wouldn't tell you that because that cycle wasn't yet fully dominant when he wrote SSR, although the framework was in place for it.
justonepost2 6mo ago
The "businesses" created are thin wrappers that will get absorbed by the model companies faster than you can come up with them.
- bad_haircut72 6mo ago
  Yeah "start a business with AI" is the new "learn to code". Like what does that even mean, do you just go to Claude "hey what business should I start?" If starting a business was so easy, almost all of us who work salary would go do it. This advice is like, if your local football club gets shut down, just work hard enough to make into Manchester United
  - 9rx 6mo ago
    > If starting a business was so easy, almost all of us who work salary would go do it. Would we? Starting a business is easy. Building a profitable business isn't even that hard. Wanting pleasure in our work is what stops us. Running a business generally isn't much fun. We work salary because it means we can focus on the enjoyable parts of the business, letting someone else deal with the crap.
    - bombcar 6mo ago
      Starting and running a business is an entirely different skillset from "doing the work" - even someone who could easily "be on their own" (think: plumbers, doctors, etc) really often prefer the salaried position where they don't have to think about "the business". It's an older book, but The E-Myth Revisited is worth a read for everyone, a business is not a job. It's related, but it's not the same.
    - thankyoufriend 6mo ago
      > We work salary because it means we can focus on the enjoyable parts of the business, letting someone else deal with the crap. I can understand why a specialist would feel this way. Personally, I believe that most people who work salary do it because of the job security and the health insurance.
deleted 6mo ago
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throwaway290 6mo ago
> My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can It's game theory. If you betray ASAP you get to monetize others who hold out. It works until you yourself get ousted the same way. So the most enthusiastic people are old enough that they leverage their status and won't face the consequences in their lifetime OR young enough that they don't understand the proposition, have nothing to lose and when they look around and see everybody doing it they have no other choice except to do the same If everybody took a stance against corps stealing our work and reselling it to us then we would 100% prevail but what are principles against personal profit... "we need to work more and help train the llms of superrich to make the same money" became the new "we will have more free time and more money thanks to AI" but everybody is too busy trying to outrace the next guy so no one noticed.
parliament32 6mo ago
How could your "business" ever make money if any idiot with a $20 CC subscription can recreate it in a weekend? And no, "I can prompt better than them" is not a differentiator.
- daemonologist 6mo ago
  The idea is the opposite - "nobody" can make money selling software anymore, because software can be cheaply created by an LLM, so you want to start a business that previously would have had to buy software/software engineers in order to support some other product. However, even if that holds true (which is a big if - right now I wouldn't want to run a business backed by vibe software), and even if there are enough such business ideas to go around, there's going to be quite a lot of turmoil in the meantime.
  - RealityVoid 6mo ago
    I don't think that's true. SW that works is still expensive to produce. SW that kind of works is super easy to do. The money is in making SW that works. You still need expertise for that.
  - parliament32 6mo ago
    There's a fallacy here around how software is fungible. WordPress hasn't made web developers obsolete, despite everybody having access to a $5/mo WYSIWYG-and-domains-and-hosting-bundle environment; quite the opposite, in fact. I'm seeing the parent's point along these lines: "me and all my friends are starting businesses being the middlemen between WordPress and (people who want websites)". It's not that it won't work, it's just a shit business model.
- Herring 6mo ago
  Gyms still make money even though you can stay quite fit with just a good set of adjustable dumbbells, a bench, and a jump rope.
  - parliament32 6mo ago
everdrive 6mo ago
> My advice to young people is to embrace AI as fully as you can How will this help them? If LLMs are going to replace workers and reduce the number of available jobs, how will fully embracing an LLM help an individual? To it seems the most it could do is put them ahead of people who won't embrace LLMs ... but if everyone took this advice then the advice would certainly do nothing.
- bogzz 6mo ago
  Conversely, it's possible that honing your actual skills by minimizing reliance on LLMs could become a very valuable trait in the coming future. But in that case, you'd be burning fewer tokens and you wouldn't be contributing to LLM company userbase growth which is a bad thing to do.
kylehotchkiss 6mo ago
Local models are going to be pretty useful by the time the current companies have to face their finances. The cost of entry will be higher end hardware though.

justonepost2 6mo ago

We are, in the best case scenario, minting a lost generation in real time. This will become increasingly clear over the next 2 years. Meanwhile, simonw and his retiree friends are having the "time of their lives", so that's good I guess :)

bix6 6mo ago
Damn this hits. Young people were already struggling to build lives and families before the AI recession. It’s hard to fathom having any hope for raising a family or finding meaningful work in the PE slop driven economy.
- jsiyc 6mo ago
  Thats just the experience of any young person born outside the western bubble, thinking about their future in their poor ass over exploited countries for hundreds of years now. If they didnt see sources of hope around them they moved to where they did see a better future.
harmonic18374 6mo ago
Is that an actual quote from simonw? He seems an unbiased observer and reporter of progress, I'd be sad to see him cheering this stuff on so callously.
- kranner 6mo ago
  Not just that but "you're holding it wrong" on many occasions. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=true&query=author%3Asimonw%20you%27re%20holding%20it%20&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483567 is pretty much (paraphrasing) sucks to be you if you can't make it work. Well, people who are not above a threshold of experience yet are not in a position to self-assess and course-correct if their long term learning is being affected. And even less so if there is pressure to be hyper-productive with the help of AI. Speculating here but I think even seniors who rely on AI all the time and enjoy the enhanced output are going to end up with impostor syndrome over the things they suspect they can no longer do without AI, and FOMO about all the projects they haven't yet attempted with AI despite working as hard as they can.

therobots927 6mo ago

Yeah well maybe that has something to do with entry level jobs drying up, ostensibly due to AI. I don’t even think that’s actually the case - we’re in a soft recession. AI has nothing to do with it. But that’s not what kids are being told. Great marketing campaign guys. Just wait. If you think sentiment around AI is negative now you haven’t seen shit.

richwater 6mo ago
Ha, we simultaneously posted the same thesis!
- therobots927 6mo ago
  I’m not sure we’re in agreement. I don’t think AI is the equivalent of the loom. And I think all of this data center spend is a massive waste of money (unless you’re the NSA, planning to buy them all up for cheap and run 24/7 AI surveillance on everyone).
9rx 6mo ago
> AI has nothing to do with it. "Nothing" is a stretch. Major capital being now being allocated towards building AI data centres, away from what it was doing previously, is absolutely a contributing factor. Of course not the only one, but there is never just one reason for anything.
- therobots927 6mo ago
  Totally fair point and a big oversight on my part.
mothballed 6mo ago
I believe someday we will wake up and find out our children are setting sail for the new America. Wherever that may be. The capital holders have consolidated their power intertwined with government and are pulling up the ladders. This is why many Europeans set sail for America in the first place, and the cycle has completed itself, and we have become what we escaped. I do not think you can vote your way out of that. Maybe there is some place left that needs young people badly enough that they are willing to open up opportunities, or someplace left ripe and weak enough that the youth will take it over by force.

richwater 6mo ago

AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane. It will take time to adjust and some industries will go away and others will pop up. I think a lot of people are conflating two ongoing things: the emergence of AI and stagnant (if not recessionary) economies across the globe. It appears as if AI is resulting in so much more negative externalities but in reality if not for AI, we'd 100% be in a recession.

palmotea 6mo ago
> AI is just another disruptive technology like the loom, the steam engine or the airplane. It will take time to adjust and some industries will go away and others will pop up. That's fallacious thinking. Technological developments aren't instances of some kind of repeating phenomena; they're distinct, unique events with their own characteristics. You need to consider those characteristics instead of gesticulating at the past for a prediction of the future. And even if you're correct, you're missing a lot. I'll explain by analogy: at the beginning of a genocide, as someone's community in the process of being murdered, you could totally say "genocides have happened before, some people will go away, others will survive." But that's cold comfort for someone who's about to be killed with their family. AI likely means economic death (or at least hardship) for a lot of people who don't have the needed combination of psychopathy, luck, and wealth to succeed in the new order.
- throwaway290 6mo ago
  > you could totally go up to someone in the middle of a genocide, as their community in the process of being murdered, and say "genocides have happened before, some people will go away, others will survive." Yeah. How many times I saw people here say oh yeah it's just the same as job loss during automaton-industrialization. How is that making things better? "Yeah just more mass poverty and more wealth inequality, what are you worried about!" Also during automation there was a lot of work you could switch to and what about options now? start another vibeslop startup so that you can pay openai for tokens? the only explanation for people saying this is that they don't understand they will be on the line later just like the people displaced now. but the dream of being the .1% who get to be on top and monetize everybody else is too tempting I guess.

dlev_pika 6mo ago

It’s possible they do not appreciate how AI will help some rich fucks siphoning all the money out of the economy and into their bank accounts.

coffeebeqn 6mo ago
What exactly is the bull case for your average Joe to be excited about for AI?
- causal 6mo ago
  I think there are a lot of people who (naively) believe AI is going to lead to abundance for everyone. I think there are very rich people trying to sell that vision. I think most of us know that even if AI could do all of our jobs, it won't be to give us free products and services.
  - dlev_pika 6mo ago
    Any rando might be able to push out their cute tool (hi mom!), this is what they (will) sell, but true leverage will happen for those that can allocate their vast resources to further dominate; The big players just appropriated the collective corpus of mankind’s knowledge.
- sph 6mo ago
  “They can stay home and paint all day, for the machine will do their job.” It’s trickle-down economics 2.0. The bullshit is the same.

enmyj 6mo ago

[flagged]

jesse_dot_id 6mo ago

Yeah, no kidding, the tech bros have utterly botched the rollout of this technology. It's the pinnacle of human innovation. It should be revered as our greatest achievement. People should know about how its going to revolutionize scientific research. Instead, they opted for regulatory capture in lieu of addressing people's concerns, using robber-baron techniques to force data center construction in at-risk communities, made it clear they want to replace human workers, and then shoved its art slop capabilities in front of everybody's faces.

bogzz 6mo ago
> It's the pinnacle of human innovation. It should be revered as our greatest achievement. People should know about how its going to revolutionize scientific research. How so? Colloquially, AI currently means LLMs. Why would we revere LLMs as our greatest achievement?
- SirFatty 6mo ago
  People that I speak with often conflate LLMs with AGI (or at least what they thing AGI is).
  - bogzz 6mo ago
    I'm thinking LLMs lead to an AIG scenario (circa 2008) as opposed to AGI.
- antonvs 6mo ago
  Because we've built something that's (functionally) intelligent, comparable to humans in terms of its ability to exhibit (functional) understanding of complex topics, and produce novel correct output. There's nothing even remotely close to this in human history. This was all science fiction 10 years ago.
  - soco 6mo ago
    Maybe the comparison is imperfect, but: we also built a wonderful, novel and excellent bomb, the atom one, not remotely close to whatever humans did before, yet I'm not totally thrilled by it.

jlarocco 6mo ago

Why would they be angry that companies would rather burn money in AI data centers then hire them? /s

angelgonzales 6mo ago

[flagged]

oliver236 6mo ago
why do things make you hopeful?
- angelgonzales 6mo ago
  I’m hopeful for driver assist so I don’t have to pay attention while driving, also this helps disabled people get around (particularly in rural areas with less/no public transit). I’m also hopeful for humanoid robots so they can do all my chores like sweeping, laundry and cooking. In general the idea that me, my family/friends and my country is progressing makes me hopeful.
  - nancyminusone 6mo ago
    It's fair to hope for what was promised, but you cannot discount what is being delivered. Self driving cars were a huge deal 10 years ago and we were all going to be using them immenitly. Now the future is here and they are no greater than a curiosity for the average person. 99.99% are driving manually and will be 30 years from now. Similarly, AI promises to solve every problem, but the average persons' experience is that of increasing irrelevant spam and junk mail rather than being freed from laundry duty.
wredcoll 6mo ago
> pressures of high taxes This is something I never see mentioned so I'm curious what brought it up. Are you personally paying a lot of taxes or so much that you can't afford other things or is this a thing peers talk about? Is this a state or federal thing?
- angelgonzales 6mo ago
  I totally am paying a massive amount of capital gains taxes! I’m also saving up for a house which means every dollar I don’t contribute to a down payment becomes principal and interest on a mortgage which equals even more money out of my pocket. For instance if I pay $37k in capital gains one year (which I did) and if my principal on a $500k house is $200k at 6% and $1500 monthly payments I’ll have to pay $33k in interest on just the $37k I didn’t pay up front!

bartwr 6mo ago

I love using AI tools and they are changing my work and life in amazing ways. I cannot imagine going back. And yet, I am more concerned about the social damage due to their widespread use and the amounts of slop they generate. Just this week: - There was an article about a news company faking polls by asking LLMs for answers. - My wife told me that she stopped watching any funny pet videos because 99% now is AI slop - start normal, but then turn into someone's slop idea. - A friend told me their big tech company uses AI-generated metrics as part of performance evaluation. Nobody checks them. - Another friend told me their big tech company requires engineers to use AI-generated commit messages with terrible signal-to-noise ratio and making version control and history useless for engineers. But directors and PMs love them, they are so descriptive! - My neighbor uses LLMs to create some neighbor meeting plans/agendas, plausibly looking PDFs citing contractors etc. It's impossible to read through it, mixed hallucinations and real information, all wrapped in thousands of slop words. What is real and what made up? I'll spend 10x more time double guessing. - Encountering more and more articles and general "content" that is AI generated and looks ok at the first glance, but slop upon inspections. Why would I read LLMs output on a webpage with ads, if I can ask it myself and get better, personal answers and style? And I am not even talking here about other ethical issues, training data, less junior job positions, job replacement of journalists with LLM-equipeed contractors, etc. LLMs make my personal and work life so much better, but social life unbearable. Is it worth the trade-off? I guess it doesn't matter at this point.

Atheros 6mo ago
I think it remains to be seen whether the various AI tools we have today are a net-negative or net-positive for society. Most inventions are a net positive: The steam engine, vaccines, chimneys. A few are net-negative: grenades, leaded gasoline, asbestos insulation. If we can no longer trust that a potential job candidate in a video call actually exists, they will have to be flown in. That's a cost. If we can no longer trust that an employee who wrote a document actually thought about it at all and must be questioned to make sure, that's a cost. Those costs will add up. A written document or a video essay used to be proof-of-thought and now it's not. If we can't find new proofs of thought, and if AI doesn't get vastly better to the point where we can trust it blindly, then I think this will all be a net-negative. One of the motivations to build data centers as fast as possible and improve tools as fast as possible may be to get to net-positive before it all gets banned. This article exists. The clock is ticking.

heliumtera 6mo ago

You can still milk the react/Vercel andies, they will never get tired of being exploited even if the whole world turns against AI.

deleted 6mo ago

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throwaway613746 6mo ago

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beloch 6mo ago

"Many respondents did acknowledge that A.I. might make them more efficient in school and the workplace, he said. But they were concerned about how the technology would affect their creativity and critical thinking skills." ----------------- Perhaps schools need to adapt to AI use and recenter the goals of education in the minds of students. If AI use impairs your development, you are only being efficient in your evasion of education. i.e. Students need to be taught that learning to efficiently pump out AI written essays isn't the same thing as learning to reason and express themselves. AI tools will evolve and become easier and easier to pick up and use. Using your own mind is a slower and more difficult skill to develop, but it makes the difference between going through life as a human being or a mere meat-puppet for AI. It will always be far easier for a human to pick up AI tools and learn them from scratch than it will for a meat-puppet to remedy their lack of human development.

causal 6mo ago
Probably but how do you adapt to something that changes faster than semesters. Revising your theory of learning, implementing, evaluating results, etc. takes years, not weeks.
- beloch 6mo ago
  The current situation is that many students don't perceive that using AI to produce, for example, essays is harmful to themselves, and students who do things honestly may feel pressure to use AI in order to stay competitive with students who do. The answer may be to focus less on output and more on the process. e.g. Instead of sending students off to do essays at home and then merely grading what gets handed in, perhaps teachers should run workshops where students work on their essays while receiving guidance. i.e. Everybody works in the classroom on their essay and talks to each other and the teacher about what they're doing. Grades would be at least partly based on participation, and teachers would get a better sense of what students are actually able to write themselves. If Johnny sits back and picks his nose in the workshop and then hands in a paper that's suspiciously good, it's probably slop even if it isn't obviously so. Of course, doing this sort of thing would mean taking time away from lectures and wrote learning. Finding the right balance is no easy task and it's going to take good teachers to blaze the way. That can only happen if they're backed with resources and the freedom to alter curriculum.

bko 6mo ago

Reminds me of the quote: No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded. These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. I'm sure most teachers and schools would prefer them not to. Why do they have to use it? Have standards gotten higher in schools such that they will be left behind if they don't? Is there peer pressure to use it? Is there some social aspect I'm unaware of? Of course not. People find the technology useful. Social media I understand as it's harder to break away because friends use it to communicate. But that's not true for AI. And then they have some doomer media telling them they should be concerned and scapegoat the technology. Gen AI will prevent you from being an artist or poet? Yeah, I just don't buy it.

bluefirebrand 6mo ago
> These types of surveys are pretty much useless. Just go by people's revealed preferences. They're using the technology. They don't have to. When you're constantly being force fed the narrative that you must use AI or be left behind, using it is no longer a revealed preference it is a survival mechanism
- toraway 6mo ago
  Not to mention jobs that require or heavily push using it both in and outside the tech sector. Plus, even in a competitive academic environment it’s naive to think college students won’t feel pressure to keep up with their peers if they’re all using AI and pushing up the curve.
- bko 6mo ago
  Literally no one says this to young kids. Teachers are begging them not to use AI. And if you read the article young people are using it for things like deciding what school to go to or dating advice.
  - deleted 6mo ago
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6mo ago

Lendal 6mo ago

It's okay to have two conflicting thoughts about something and both be true at the same time. AI is awesome but at the same time is promising to do evil in the future. Why? Facebook has done a lot of good for the world, like React for instance, but also done a lot of evil as well. Billionaires have initiated the development of some amazing products and services, but at the same time they're spending their money building bunkers so they can survive an end of the world scenario that they're largely responsible for, rather than using it to mitigate some of the evil that they unleashed. Why are they doing that? I don't know. It doesn't seem necessary to me.

causal 6mo ago
Yeah. A think there are a lot of tech enthusiasts like myself that find it amazing from a tinkering and curiosity standpoint, but terrifying from a power and those-who-wield-it standpoint.

maerF0x0 6mo ago

As someone who sees value in generational contracts like older people investing heavily in younger people, with the assumption that they will also take care of us in our older age, I long to improve the lives of subsequent generations. I don't know how we do that when we keep mortgaging their futures with gov't debt and spending that extends beyond the length of the administration. If I had a genie of many wishes I'd wish for 1. No more deficit spending 2. Budgets cannot exceed prior year's intakes 3. An end to progressive taxation, but an increase in a flat tax rate to pay off all public debt. As the debt is paid a negative tax rate will replace it. 4. All politicians' pay tied to a fixed/capped multiple of the median income in the country 5. The building of a public wealth fund which is built from any benefit granted to a company through the governemnt -- want a tax break or a publicly funded stadium? Give us 50% share in the team. Want a bailout for your bank/automaker? Sell us preferred shares at high rates (to reflect the risk). Want publicly funded power plants for your GPUs? Then we want a share of your AI Company in exchange in our public wealth fund. 6. Forced public liquidity of large companies (say $1B) to ensure the public is able to participate in the overall economy, rather than just private networks of back scratchers 7. Politicians who want to invest must invest in an equal weight russell 3000 (or an even wider spread of US stocks) to ensure vested interest in the country, but divested interest in any specific company/sector. 8. Capped political spend. 9. A concerted effort to move towards known maxima rather than stepping towards local maxima with fear of going through local minima too. 10. A publicly funded opt-in national service program for building houses. If you give 4 years of your life to building houses we'll give you a 2 bed 1 bath and a salary along the way. (Obviously, details tbd, but something along that idea)

cyanydeez 6mo ago

Hopefully, they'll see the modern media is the same overhype under deliver and lockin emotional facade that is as empty as the current American farce. It's all such a bullshit storm that it's hard to imagine anyone believes there's a solid foundation and super reliance of the american dream create a dirth of benefits.

nickvec 6mo ago

https://archive.ph/9ySwG https://archive.ph/9ySwG

metalman 6mo ago

Everybody should be horrified by the idea of a gerntocracy/beurocracy/cleptocratic military industrial complex that is hidden behind an algorythim of exploitation, in a never ending techno feudalistic hell world.

cindyllm 6mo ago
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ofjcihen 6mo ago

Tangential to the worries of those surveyed: I noticed a drop in my critical thinking and skills very quickly. It makes sense, the easiest thing to do is just ask AI for the answer or ideas and then tell it to implement them. I’m deliberately trying to understand things more deeply now to combat that. We’ll see how it goes.