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I don't think most people in tech are quite aware of the level of visceral AI hatred amongst non-techies. I've personally witnessed the worst Thanksgiving dinne
by MontyCarloHall 6mo ago
I don't think most people in tech are quite aware of the level of visceral AI hatred amongst non-techies. I've personally witnessed the worst Thanksgiving dinnertable fight I've ever seen (after someone revealed that their recipe was AI-generated, a couple people literally spat out the food they were enjoying and threw their plates in the trash), and a divorce (a very solid marriage between two people who were once both staunchly anti-AI unraveled within weeks after one of them changed their tune and adopted AI at work).
- alfalfasprout 6mo agoIt's quite prevalent in tech too-- however, folks tend to be quiet because the "use AI for everything or else" hammer is being used across the industry.
- therobots927 6mo agoMost SV people live in a bubble inside of a bubble. They don’t understand how their words come across to a significant portion of the population. If they did they would shut the fuck up.
- baal80spam 6mo agoNot sure why you were downvoted so heavily. SV is a bubble if I've seen one.
- lexarflash8g 6mo agoSilicon Valley just means a concentration of influential and powerful actors including venture capitalists, executives, entrepreneurs who decide the fate of the technology industry. Basically the elites of the XYZ sector. Same can be applied for DC (politics/military), NY (finance), LA (entertainment). SV was around since the 60-90s but didn't get much attention until beginning of this millenium due to the huge value creation and control they had over the US economy. They just happen to be relevant in recent times. 100s of years ago it was the railroad and oil conglomerates, 1000s of years ago kings and feudal lords. So there is always a powerful influential class who controls the strings -- its a feature of human society.
- linkage 6mo agoPolitics really is a substitute for religion in America
- leosanchez 6mo agoReligious people can be anti-AI too.
- kelnos 6mo agoIn secular America at least. Most people in the US are religious, many of them fervently so. And quite a few of them like to mix their religion with politics.
- misiti3780 6mo agothis is true, but thankfully, religion is declining in America. although if people are replacing it with politics, maybe we need another revival
- elephanlemon 6mo agoFrankly I think a lot of these people are politics first. How else do you explain the dissonance between Jesus’s teachings and their political opinions?
- MiguelX413 6mo agoTheir politics are perfectly in line with their Christian-themed cult.
- lazyasciiart 6mo agoYes but when they’re not, they choose politics. See: Catholics right now.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- racl101 6mo ago
- lbarrow 6mo agoSpitting your food out because the AI generated the recipe is so clearly irrational that I chuckled a bit on reading that
- dirkc 6mo agoPeople talk about AI getting things wrong all the time, why is it "so clearly irrational" to be doubtful of a recipe that might include ingredients that can make you sick?
- VectorLock 6mo agoBecause I hope that someone who's hands were required to assemble the recipe didn't blindly add ingredients like "bleach" if the AI happened to hallucinate them.
- stvltvs 6mo agoA naive hope perhaps, but this ignores the risk of LLMs just creating a bad recipe based on the blind combination of various recipes in their training data.
- VectorLock 6mo agoAs the parent comment said the people seemed to be enjoying the food otherwise so the LLM didn't create an unpalatable combination, and I can't think of any combination of edible and unharmful ingredients that might combine to something harmful (when consuming a reasonable amount)
- psvv 6mo agoIf meat was involved, the cooking time may have been unsafe if other precautions weren't taken by the cook (like checking the internal temperature).
- xmprt 6mo agoThis is exactly what makes it dangerous. Food can taste ok but actually cause you to get sick. Not all bacteria is going to taste off. I'm assuming you're not a chef because if you were then you'd know how absurd your statement is. For a super simple example, if you don't properly handle or cook raw meat then you risk getting sick even though the food might not immediately taste bad. Maybe that's obvious to you but might not be to the person preparing the food. Another example: Rhubarb pie is supposed to be made with the leaves and not the stalk because the stalk is poisonous and can cause illness. Just kidding, it's actually the other way around but if you were just reading a ChatGPT recipe that made that mistake maybe you wouldn't have caught it.
- littlestymaar 6mo ago> after someone revealed that their recipe was AI-generated, a couple people literally spat out the food they were enjoying and threw their plates in the trash Not entirely unwarranted given the track record of LLMs as a chef though: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/pak-n-save-savey-meal-bot-ai-app-malfunction-recipes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/pak-n-save-sav... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o Of course it was two years ago and it's unlikely to happen again, but that's the drawback of the “move fast and break things” attitude: sometimes you've broken public perception and it's hard to fix afterwards.
- TehCorwiz 6mo agoWell, Sam Altman and Jensen Huang are going around bragging about how many people they're going to push out of employment. Might have something to do with it.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- NickC25 6mo agoThis. Sam's got 3 billion net worth. Jensen's got 165 billion to his name. They are giddy about taking jobs away, and both are engaged in "tax reduction strategies" and suck up to Donald Trump. You wonder why people are pissed?
- bloody-crow 6mo ago> They are giddy about taking jobs away This is just your interpretation. My interpretation is that they talk about computers being able to perform some intellectual tasks that are now handled by humans in a more efficient and fast manner. They're excited about technological progress and new opportunities it provides, not being "giddy" about unemployment and economic uncertainty. > suck up to Donald Trump When you're a head of multi-billion dollar company that employ thousands of people and respond to board that expects your company to continue growing and make money for them, it's strategically dumb and irresponsible to NOT suck up to the most childish and vindictive person who has real power to screw over you and all the people you employ who expect you do everything in your power to prevent this. If you don't do that and Trump fucks your company over as a result, you're just bad at your job as a CEO.
- tokioyoyo 6mo agoWhere is everyone getting their information from in this thread? It’s like everyone is talking past each other. I think AI is net-good. But every frontier lab founder has said, paraphrasing, “Things might go horribly wrong, a lot of people might lose jobs, or maybe we’ll have even better economy, and people will prosper. We can’t operate based on the former, because if our adversaries out-invent us, we’re screwed.”. Like all AI-adjacent companies talk about long-term savings, increasing productivity, needing less people to do the same jobs and etc. Obviously fully employed people, especially the ones with things to lose don’t want it? Also, this is not a uniquely American thing. People in China are going through the same stuff.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- throwanem 6mo agoSurely there must have been underlying tensions in that marriage. (I don't feel at all confident in that statement; I am requesting reassurance.)
- MontyCarloHall 6mo agoThey are pretty good friends of mine and I never sensed any tension. It really was a marriage-ending bolt out of the blue, like discovering an affair or severe financial infidelity.
- throwanem 6mo agoI don't really want to say "thank you." That story, more to the point that I can't find a priori cause to doubt it, makes me glad I'm about to go enjoy a gorgeous spring afternoon full of birdsong and sunshine. But I appreciate your taking the time to follow up.
- gopher_space 6mo agoI mean the simplest way to look at this is that he's just wrong about the couple being happy.
- throwanem 6mo agoI was married for a decade. Little of that was happy. (We both made the mistake of marrying each other, then compounded it by both being afraid to be first to admit to having noticed.) Everyone noticed - and of course I've seen it from the other side, too, many times. You can't hide when people are together who don't want to be. That always shows.
- lazyasciiart 6mo agoThis is like saying that of course people could tell Ted Bundy was a psychopath, it always shows.
- happytoexplain 6mo agoThere is very strong anti-AI sentiment among "techies" too. It's just not absolute or generalized (AI is a huge umbrella term).
- metalliqaz 6mo agoYou might call me a "techie" and I both use AI and have very strong anti-AI sentiment. I don't think this is a contradiction, because I believe while the technology itself is not bad, the way that people use it definitely is. People trust AI outputs in ways they should not. They don't understand its sycophantic design and succumb to AI psychosis. They deploy it in antisocial ways, for war, or spam, or scams. They use it to justify layoffs. They use it as a justification to gobble up public funds. They use it to power their winner-take-all late-stage capitalism economy. It goes on and on.
- slopinthebag 6mo agoI agree completely. The way it's marketed and used is a big part of my distaste, the other part is big tech / AI companies and their actions and ethics. It's why I'm a huge supporter of open source and locally run models, and I am moving most of my workflow to things that I can run on my own machine, or at least on a GPU that I can rent from a plethora of providers.
- whimblepop 6mo ago> I both use AI and have very strong anti-AI sentiment. Me, too. The AI hype machine involves some really bad ideas, the amount of money being poured into "AI" right now distorts everything, public understanding of how these tools work is low, and a lot of contemporary uses both by corporations and governments are irresponsible, dangerous, and likely to produce or reproduce harmful biases and reduce the accountability of humans for crucial decisions and outcomes. At the same time, it's useful for me at work, and I'm curious about it. I sometimes enjoy using it. It lets me do things I didn't have time for before. It eliminates some procrastination problems for me. I think its use in computing is also likely to be increasingly mandatory for the near-to-moderate term, so it's probably good for me to get used to using it and thinking about it and looking for new useful things it can do for me. And my own experiences in using AI are part of what drive my anti-AI sentiment as well! I see it do completely insane and utterly stupid things pretty much every day, both in my personal life and in my professional life. I have a visceral awareness of its unreliability because I use it frequently. I should hope that as hackers we can muster some understanding and respect both for LLM users and for people with hard "anti-AI" stances. Even if you're "pro-AI" to the core (whatever that means), it's worth understanding the most serious and well-considered arguments of critics of LLMs and the contemporary "AI" race. You might even find, as someone who uses and enjoys using LLMs, that you agree with many of them.
- lexandstuff 6mo agoI've found that most non-tech people are indifferent or, at worst, utterly bored by any mention of AI. The tech people are the ones that have the strongest opinions one way or the other.
- kbelder 6mo agoThat is my experience, as well.
- mandeepj 6mo ago> a couple people literally spat out the food they were enjoying and threw their plates in the trash That was an unnecessarily extreme reaction, like AI 3d printed the ingredients.
- LooseMarmoset 6mo agoFrom my own perspective, the "visceral hatred" isn't so much at AI (which I use almost exclusively to generate funny pictures of myself and coworkers) but at the executives that view it as a way to enshittify society. turning myself (an overweight bearded guy) into an animated hula dancer and turning my coworker into the Terminator and sinking into molten steel don't seem to inspire the same hatred. unless you don't like hula dancers.
- solid_fuel 6mo agoAnecdotal. I can't stand generative AI. I wouldn't mind if a friend used stable diffusion to make a pic of their D&D character. I would be very mad if Wizards of the Coast used AI instead of artists in their next source book.
- nothinkjustai 6mo agoNot just non-techies. Plenty of techies share that same visceral hatred. Some of them even use these tools themselves, because it’s a complicated issue with nuances.
- lamasery 6mo agoYep, all of us with a clue are keeping our traps shut at work, or even boosting it or slapping it onto projects that don't need it, because this is clearly one of those things where attempting to offer counsel and advice that's contrary to the way the MBA winds are blowing can only hurt your career.
- nothinkjustai 6mo agoYou literally get praised for slopping out as much code as fast as you can, so why not? Makes your boss happy and gives you job security cuz eventually that shit will be completely unmanageable with or without LLMs. Gotta hit those KPIs!
- rvz 6mo agoCrypto doesn't get that much hatred, since you don't need to participate in the space even in non-techies circles. But it doesn't affect them and it can be safely ignored in its own bubble. Mentioning "AI" in non-techies circles is a bad idea. It tells you that many here are in a massive bubble and unaware of the visceral hate against AI because it directly affects them and they cannot opt-out. Given that AI takes more than it gives back (jobs, energy, water, houses) of course you will get anti-AI activists.
- layer8 6mo agoExcept when you’re the victim of ransomware that extorts you to pay some bitcoin. But it seems that fewer people have encountered that than having AI forced upon them.
- Kon5ole 6mo agoThe remarkable part of your anecdote is the behavior. Seems to me some humans nowadays are less tolerant of any difference in opinion, AI is just the current reason to pick a fight. Wonder why that is, and if we'll grow out of it peacefully.
- bloody-crow 6mo agoNowadays? It's always been the case, the only thing that changed is the subject.
- Kon5ole 6mo agoI think it's gotten way, way worse over the past 20 or so years. I recall having friends spanning several political parties, countries and religions hanging out with barely a sense of tension in the room.
- lazyasciiart 6mo agoIt’ll quiet down once we make it illegal and/or justification to be committed to an asylum to have opinions we don’t like - the way it was in the old, tolerant days.
- rishabhaiover 6mo agoThis was obviously a fictional thanksgiving dinner. Nobody is this geezed up about AI assistance.
- stvltvs 6mo agoNobody in your circle of friends/acquaintances perhaps.
- rishabhaiover 6mo agoYou're okay with sitting at the rear seat of a car while it drives you around the city though.
- bluefirebrand 6mo agoCan't speak for anyone else, but absolutely no. I don't have any interest in self driving cars.
- TripleTree 6mo agoI would absolutely stop eating a meal if I learned AI was involved in creating it. I suppose I wouldn't literally spit it out but I wouldn't take another bite.
- swader999 6mo agoReally? It's just a better way to search for recipes in Mr experience
- TripleTree 6mo agoIf they used AI to search for it that's different. I meant if they used AI to generate the recipe.
- s1artibartfast 6mo agoWhy? What if you found out a human was involved in creating it?
- snielson 6mo agoMy wife runs a food blog and sometimes uses AI to come up with recipes she tests on us first. One of the best dishes she’s ever made (and one of the best I’ve ever eaten) was pork with an apricot sauce. The pork was fine, but the sauce was absolutely incredible! I’d put it on any kind of meat. Funny thing is, I don’t even like apricots, but the sauce was amazing. My wife does have one advantage, which is that she knows when the AI has hallucinated something crazy and makes appropriate adjustments. I guess it's like anything. AI can be a big help to those who already have a threshold level of background knowledge in a field but can cause big problems for those who don't.
- layer8 6mo agoYou can’t write something like this and not share the recipe.
- sillyfluke 6mo agoI must live in the upside down. If there are any ardent anti-AI people I come across they're techies. Whereas non-techies are either oblivious or completely and comically locked-in as caricatured in that South Park episode.
- layer8 6mo agoFrom a recent NBC News poll, “the only topics that were less popular than AI were the Democratic Party and Iran”: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-majority-voters-say-risks-ai-outweigh-benefits-rcna262196 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-majority...
- hnthrowaway0315 6mo agoTBH people in AI may also resent AI, because they are the first to be impacted by AI. They just don't say openly because frankly no one wants to lose his/her job.
- newZWhoDis 6mo agoPortland?
- kbelder 6mo agoThat is really funny.
- tptacek 6mo agoI operate in at least one social circle that is heavily not-technical (local politics) and I do not see this at all.
- kube-system 6mo agoMy experience is somewhat in the middle -- I see educated non-technical people who are strongly against AI because they see it as polluting, "wasting water", and harmful to society. Although many use it anyway. I could totally believe uneducated or less well-adjusted people reacting in the above way, though.
- _aavaa_ 6mo agoNon-technical indeed. The wasting water or pollution argument is getting really tiring.
- digdugdirk 6mo agoI would be careful about this one. While the overall impact (in the global/national aggregate sense) may not be massive, the impact to individual communities nearby these new hyperscale datacenters is far more impactful than most people on this site might think. Look at the grok datacenter in Memphis for one example. The "move fast and break things" mentality in this arena isn't about code anymore, it's being applied to communities.
- _aavaa_ 6mo agoLet’s say we grant the grok example. A) How many other datacenters with similar problems can you name? B) How does this industry compare to every other one on earth, and then look at the disproportionate hate this gets compared to other industries that are substantially worse.
- solid_fuel 6mo agoI'm going to flip this around, I know about the grok data center because I am under the impression it is unusual in terms of approvals and pollution. How many other datacenters with similar problems can you name? If it is indeed not unique, I would appreciate you pointing out some other examples of the same behavior from non-AI related datacenters.
- yfw 6mo agoThe only thing we hear is your jobs are going to be gone but we are still only giving you healthcare if you work.
- satvikpendem 6mo agoI think you're just in a strange bubble of people because those are absolutely comical responses to learning of AI. I do know some people who are for or anti AI to a stronger extent, but most of those I know simply don't give a shit, they'll use AI if it's there, such as for their job or to ask an LLM questions, but otherwise not think about it.
- watwut 6mo agoIf they divorced in few weeks, there is zero chance it was solid before ai disagreement. They were distancing themselves emotionally long before.
- racl101 6mo agoIronically I have noticed it's techies and white collar workers who fear and/or loathe AI the most. Why? Cause they're the most likely whose jobs have been threatened by it or have already been superseded by it. My blue collar work buddies don't feel as strongly or as existential about it. To them, it's just this buzzwordy crap that has ruined entertainment or made the quality of services even worse. It's more of an annoyance than an outright fear and/or loathing of it. Maybe if the bubble pops and the economy tanks and it affects their bottom line they might hate it as much as the aforementioned people.
- solid_fuel 6mo agoI think techies and white collar workers are more likely to see what is coming with AI. Example: in the very best case, every call center worker will be replaced with a chatbot. Service quality will be worse. Any situation out of the norm will be way more frustrating. It will be buggy. It will get into loops. And there will be no human contact to break the cycle. I think that's the dynamic that worries people the most - their bank, their landlord, maybe even their 911 service all replaced with something that is even less responsive and even less accountable.
- whateveracct 6mo agowow people really are getting psychosis from AI (discourse)
- gamblor956 6mo agoI don't think most people in tech are quite aware of the level of visceral AI hatred amongst non-techies. I work in a non-tech industry and I see this all the time from people, but it's not just limited to AI. SV itself evokes hatred in a lot of people on both sides of the spectrum. I can't repeat the worst things I've heard, but Altman and his ilk should be terrified of the mob violence they're instigating.
- anon291 6mo agoPurely American phenomenon, most of the world is pro ai
- GaryBluto 6mo agoNothing has made me lose hope in the masses more than seeing how much bile is being spewed over a net positive innovation. People will hate AI first after others tell them to, then try to come up with illogical (and often hypocritical) reasoning afterwards to try and justify their prejudice.