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Kind of goes to show how out of touch and insular the tech exec sphere can be. Almost everyone I interact with in reality has a deep distain for LLMs and their
by davemp 5mo ago
Kind of goes to show how out of touch and insular the tech exec sphere can be. Almost everyone I interact with in reality has a deep distain for LLMs and their touted trajectory.
- cj 5mo ago> Schmidt then drew a parallel between artificial intelligence and the transformative impact of the computer — and was immediately met with boos. That's a shame. I assume the reason for the "deep distain" is rooted in fear of change, fear that LLM will make it harder to have a successful career. That's a pretty negative mindset to have as a college grad just entering the workforce. I'm not an AI fan boy, but we can't cover our eyes and cover our ears and pretend the world isn't changing.
- lazide 5mo agoWhy would a bunch of folks studying for white collar work, be happy with a technology that a bunch of capitalists (literally) keep selling as eliminating white collar workers? notably, I haven’t seen any ACTUAL technical improvements from LLMs, just a massive amount of slop. The ‘improvements’ are in volume of slop, not quality.
- dekoidal 5mo agoYou’re wrong to assume that
- gcr 5mo agoFor college graduates, LLM tech is an existential threat to their livelihoods by making it so much harder to start a career without connections or pedigree.
- new_account_100 5mo agoIf no one is hiring, connections or pedigree need to get extraordinarily elite before you can leverage them to get an entry-level software developer job.
- gcr 5mo agoExactly! Thats a complimentary problem for new grads
- cj 5mo agoDisliking AI for that reason harms you more than helps you.
- happytoexplain 5mo agoIt's very unclear what you're trying to say. Disliking something that is going to harm your future is going to harm you? You might as well say "don't care about your future". But if your dislike was for a different reason, it wouldn't harm you? Both implications seem nonsensical.
- cj 5mo ago“I hate computers, so I refuse to use them” If AI becomes common place at work (I’d argue it already has), it clearly will hurt you if you boycott it out of fear or anger that the tech exists. It’s pretty simple
- discreteevent 5mo ago"Refuse to use them" is a strawman. Of course the graduates will use them. They will do whatever it takes to make a living. What they hate is that either they won't make a living or they will make a worse living because of AI.
- happytoexplain 5mo agoThe context was a specific booing. Nobody said anything like your quote. This is a straw man in the context of this thread. I use AI every day, and I'd give anything for it to be destroyed (though if I had a magical wish, I'd make some more nuanced change, not just destroy it).
- techblueberry 5mo ago> I'm not an AI fan boy, but we can't cover our eyes and cover our ears and pretend the world isn't changing. Why not? Most people do. There are still about 10,000 working blacksmiths in America. Unironically I think we need more lifestyle and technological diversity in the world. End the monopolies that make running your own X harder. More Amish adjacent microcommunities and less monoculture. Federalism for tech / lifestyle creep. The only reason these things seem inevitable is because our shared delusions make it so. We would have more power if we weren’t all so afraid to exercise it.
- happytoexplain 5mo agoThis is a tortured line of reasoning. There's nothing confusing about what's happening - people can have every reason to hate something without it meaning that they are "pretending" nothing is happening or not preparing for it (which may mean fighting to protect people in some way, and planning for losing that battle, in equal measures). It's strange that your comment puts "fear of change" right there next to one of the actual concrete reasons. Usually the people disparaging negative attitudes about AI say "fear of change" to avoid talking about the obvious reasons.
- chrsw 5mo ago> but we can't cover our eyes and cover our ears and pretend the world isn't changing I don't think people are pretending the world isn't changing. I think people are right to be deeply skeptical about the direction we're headed in. More powerful tech companies dug in deeper into our lives, more government surveillance, harder times for small companies and more influence from mega-corps. Lying, cheating and game-rigging at industrial scale powered by machine intelligence. He's lucky all he got were boos.
- philipwhiuk 5mo ago> I'm not an AI fan boy, but we can't cover our eyes and cover our ears and pretend the world isn't changing. You imply that the change is inevitable. AI isn't inevitable. It requires governments to allow the construction of datacentres and for companies to be able to spend vast amounts of money they don't have for the hope of future return, which will inevitably result in a too-big-to-fail cascade which gets money dragged out of the middle/lower class via slogans like "we're all in this together". None of this is required. The idea that humanity is stuck on this future pathway is frankly bunk.
- throwaway173738 5mo agoWhat’s truly astonishing is that all of that money could be spent on bettering real people’s lives, but instead it gets spent on hubris.
- Sharlin 5mo agoDo you think that protesting that X is happening is the same as pretending that X is not happening? Or are you saying that X is happening anyway, so you might just as well learn to like it? That's some highly dubious rhetoric.
- swader999 5mo agoIt's it fear or anger?
- iugtmkbdfil834 5mo agoWhile I disagree on the assumption, I do agree on the pragmatism of the proposed approach. It is important to see things as they are. The tech is genuinely neat. However, this is not the issue. The issue is that the tech is being hijacked by corps and already on the verge of being annoying. I my corner of the world, I get high level company message of 'use AI' ( which include goals that say so ), but also -- already -- ridiculous sets of limits on how much I an use it ( our context recently got nearly zeroed ; we no longer can upload unsanctioned files ). And if you want something beyond email summarization machine, you need special approvals. This thing is already being neutered at multiple levels and it barely even started to blossom. Add to this clear indicators that our dictators have no intention of being benevolent and it is not exactly a surprise why younger generations are not exactly thrilled. I like this tech and I hate the retardation I am subjected to daily resulting directly from its outputs.
- WilcoKruijer 5mo agoI find this a weird comment. Isn't this the same kind of out of touch? I could write: > Kind of goes to show how out of touch and insular the Hackernews commenter sphere can be. Almost everyone I interact with in reality loves LLMs and their touted trajectory. And it would hold mostly true for me. This goes to show we should all be aware of our respective bubbles.
- ramon156 5mo agoImo there's a priority you should have for the generation below you. Just like how you clean up for your next week's self, you clean up for the next generation. Make sure you don't leave the world on fire before you dip. Two generations have failed at this, now's your chance to break the streak. But maybe I'm just a hippie, who knows.
- Imustaskforhelp 5mo agoAs someone gen-z, I think that we are just the ones facing the double it and give it to the next generation problem. i do not doubt that there were people like you who saw the problems and perhaps even wanted to fix it, but I cant help but wonder where it all went wrong. also there is no guarantee for anything that gen-z wouldn't try to pass it to the next generation either. It's a ticking time bomb, Tick tock.
- throwaway173738 5mo agoI think it’s messed up that we’re busy handing it off to the next generation instead of actually doing anything. We should be making things better for the younger generation not passing the buck to them.
- tristor 5mo ago> As someone gen-z, I think that we are just the ones facing the double it and give it to the next generation problem. As I sometimes have to remind my own gen-z child who now unironically is blaming Millennials for the current situation. The Boomers still hold almost all of the reins of power. I want to note, in 1997 the President was born in 1946 (Bill Clinton), in 2007 the President was born in 1946 (George W. Bush), in 2017 the President was born in 1946 (Donald Trump), and in 2027 the President will have been born in 1946 (Donald Trump). I am 40, at no point in my entire life has anyone in my generation held any meaningful political or economic power in this country. I point this out, because I agree with you, but I also want to point out that a big part of this problem is that Gen-X and Millennials basically never had a chance to impose their generational spirits on the world, they've been completely overshadowed by Boomers their entire lives. Gen-Z is now entering the workforce in a world controlled by a 3 generations back, rather than by the prior generation, and so that problematic attitude of selfishness that Boomers brought to every aspect of life persists because they're still in power. I'm right there with you on breaking the cycle, but that starts with gaining the power to have a choice.
- 10xDev 5mo agoThe numbers speak for itself. What has had the same level of user growth?
- iammrpayments 5mo agoWhat has had the same level of money burning.
- _joel 5mo agoIs that organic growth as people actually want to use it, or it's being foisted upon everyone. I use it everyday willingly, but I'm not sure that's true globally.
- Zigurd 5mo agoThe dot com bubble?
- let_rec 5mo agoIf I use Google Search to do a search and I get an AI answer that I scroll past, do I count an AI user? The numbers are not reliable.
- 542458 5mo agoYou could use ChatGPT/anthropic/etc signups as your proxy if you wanted, and those show similarly spectacular trajectories.
- AlexeyBrin 5mo agoIt is only spectacular because of the free tiers and the artificially lowered costs of the services. Put the real prices on the OpenAI and Anthropic services, remove the free tier and only than you will have a true picture of how many people are willing to pay to use it.
- 542458 5mo ago> It is only spectacular because of the free tiers The thesis under discussion is "most people hate AI", not "most people will pay for AI". People who hate AI won't sign up to use the tools if they're free or paid QED AI service signups regardless of paid status are useful datapoints for "how many people don't hate AI".
- wincy 5mo agoSo who has driven the 1000x increased usage of AI in the past year or two? My mother is in her 60s and uses Gemini every day. These data centers aren’t being built for no reason.
- dominotw 5mo agocurious what does she use it for?
- flohofwoe 5mo agoThat's also because traditional google.com has become a product search engine instead of a knowledge search engine. So far at least, the AI results are mostly free of product placement and thus automatically 10x more useful than the first few pages of search engine results (but probably not for long).
- thfuran 5mo agoI have many times now searched Google for an error message or similar and either gotten no results or been unable to get it to search for what I actually told it to search for instead of some vaguely similar but completely unhelpful phrase. The LLMs will find a link to a bug tracker or stack overflow. It’s crazy how much worse Google search results are now than they used to be.
- add-sub-mul-div 5mo agoYes, Google search was good until they made it bad for profit and people still used it anyway because they'd lost the ability to do without it. We're in the era of being trained to rely on AI in the same way. If you think it will remain good, you haven't paid attention to the last ten years.
- new_account_100 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
- bko 5mo agoIn reality they like LLMs because they're the highest user of them. Pew reported 64% of U.S. teens used AI chatbots, while a Harvard study found 51% of ages 14–22 had used generative AI at some point. What you answer on a survey is meaningless. Look at their actions. And no they're not being pressured to use LLMs, standards or expectations have not gone up dramatically. https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/09/students-are-using-ai-already-heres-what-they-think-adults-should-know https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/09/stu...
- teeray 5mo ago> In reality they like LLMs because they're the highest user of them It is possible to be a user of LLMs and to despise them.
- gcr 5mo agoYour last sentence is factually not true. Friends across five different companies report that LLM adoption is now a key metric in their performance review.
- thfuran 5mo agoIt’s mostly not students working those sorts of jobs. But I know people taking architecture and design courses that are heavily pushing LLM use. Hopefully that doesn’t exist outside of SF, though.
- daveguy 5mo agoYeah, "not being pressured to use them" conveniently sidesteps the fact they are RLHF trained to be as engaging (aka addictive) as possible.
- atwrk 5mo agoThat is not a contradiction. Just look at social media use where you can observe the same. People can hate on AI e.g. because they see it as a symbol of inequality and billionaires deciding important things over our heads and also actively use it.
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- itsalwaysgood 5mo agoProbably too early for this, but I'm reminded of the Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil. Evil acts made real by the decisions of those at the top, and the rest of us reject the acts. But quitely we accept these acts by being satisfied with verbal protest. In other words, we always do whatever is easiest, and rarely are willing to sacrifice our way of life to make real change. One person can never make a difference when fighting against people's desire to 'take it easy'. Humans will always compete, there's never any rest. AI is never going away. The crowd is booing but they will never act. Circus and Bread has become Casino and Colleseum. The competition never stops.
- keybored 5mo agoThus Evil speaks.
- itsalwaysgood 5mo agoEvil wins when the Good do nothing. How hard should we 'try', how much time should a person spend working, learning, versus living?
- intrikate 5mo agoAre 'working' and 'learning' not part of 'living?'
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- bigfishrunning 5mo ago> The crowd is booing but they will never act. The only way to act is to not produce or consume (to the best of your ability) any slop, and be loud about it. We are being absolutely overrun with low-quality art, prose, and software, and making the production of such unprofitable (and even unfashionable) is the only reasonable action you can take.
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- Kiro 5mo agoIf that's true you're equally out of touch and live in an echo chamber.
- new_account_100 5mo agoThe only people who are really correct are the moderates.
- echelon 5mo ago> Almost everyone I interact with in reality has a deep distain for LLMs and their touted trajectory. The Western media is stoking these fears. Asia is embracing AI. Japan is using it in anime. India is going wild with large and small business usage. All of my friends in India report how popular it is, and how they're using it to get work done. I don't even have to mention China. I am sick of how our media is brainwashing people to hate one of the most important technological developments in our lifetime. They tried doing this during the internet era too. When I was a kid, every newspaper was going on about how awful the internet was. Didn't stop me from jumping on IRC and learning to program. Every single time disruption happens, there's a cacophony of ire and disdain. Musicians that hated "electronic" music. Digital photography. This one just happens to be broader and even more impacting, so you're hearing it everywhere. These tools are immensely useful. They can empower individuals with superpowers, like wearing an exoskeleton. The conversation is never about monopolization or consolidation of power, which is how this should be articulated. Instead, it's always "AI bad" or "think of the water". That is 10000% the wrong framing.
- qsera 5mo agoIndia is doing what exactly?
- intended 5mo agoThat stood out to me as well. I am curious.
- Mashimo 5mo agoAre you sure it's the just western media and not the bigger western society in it's totality?
- mbgerring 5mo agoThe people running these companies give interviews every few months where they gleefully proclaim that AI will eliminate thousands of jobs. The people building this technology are the ones creating the hatred you’re seeing.
- wvbdmp 5mo agoIdk what people you interact with, but my personal sample of “normal people” post AI generated pics and videos in their WhatsApp status and adorn their homes with AI generated imagery for christmas. They may not actively use LLMs or even know what they are, but they’re satisfied with Google’s AI overview and they love using voice assistants. These aren’t people from any particular sphere I sought out or which self-selected, but neighbors, colleagues, extended family, the chef at a local restaurant etc. People with disdain for AI are probably largely limited to one “elite” or another. Of course this goes for practically any cause. It’s basically impossible to to get large-scale momentum behind anything that goes against prevailing economic interests. Of course he was still out of touch with that particular group, and if they all try really hard, maybe they can get some narrative out there, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Unless corpos discover how they can use these clashing views for market segmentation or something.
- mbgerring 5mo agoI live in San Francisco, and my personal sample of “normal people” think AI generated imagery looks like shit, abhor the proliferation of slop, and are doing their best to avoid this stuff at all costs.
- csande17 5mo agoIn my experience there's a bit of a generation gap here (particularly outside the SF tech bubble). Parents excitedly gave e.g. giclée prints of AI-generated art of their adult children's pets to them as gifts last Christmas, but were met with muted-to-negative responses.
- NikolaNovak 5mo agoInteresting, because I find hacker news to have both more adoption but also more disdain (as two overlapping subgroups of IT workers / geeks) for AI, and is more informed and worried about future. In my non-IT life: 1. Vast majority of people have limited awareness and even less care about AI. In fact, they cheerfully consume AI generated Facebook, tiktok and YouTube videos, let alone articles, websites, reviews and emails - my electrician, factory and plumbing male friends like nothing better than to watch random 25 second reels of scantily clad AI women after a hard day work. Other people are enjoying non-existent huskies howling and kittens mewowing, listen to AI muzak on spotify, are amazed by non-existent weird creatures, etc. They are peripherally aware thay chatgpt can make you a nicer email or tell you about something but honestly cannot be bothered much. And then there's the faction that enjoys consuming manufactured outrage. They fall for AI emails and scams and generally blissfully consume massive amounts of ai daily without being aware of it. 2. There are young passionate anti AI zealots who are not in IT. Their passionate cries all too frequently fall on death ears because they have no actual fundamental thorough correct understanding of what GenAI / LLM is, its failure modes, actual consumption, or socio-political risk. At best, they post under every AI video "won't somebody think of the water!". Which, fair enough. 3. It's really only the technically aware folks that I find have any real sense of understanding or concern about AI dangers (as well as being the ones using / championing it the most). It can even be both in same person - as a parent I'm extremely concerned what will employment and political future be for my kids - so I took a part time role as AI focal for my team to better understand and perhaps shape / guide it). (Yes, I'm quite aware of the risk this is all a "only those who share exact same concerns I do are legit " perspective. I welcome counter arguments :).
- mark_l_watson 5mo agoYeah, I mostly agree with you on both points. 1. Tech execs are all in for making money. A small tangent: my wife and I used to enjoy the All In Podcast, but now those four guys mostly lie (my opinion) in ways to profit themselves and their rich friends - really out of touch, and now they are kind-of boring. Used to be a fun podcast. 2. I am a super techie, retired now (I have 55 patents, written many books on AI, many great jobs): I am a little shocked at how most non-tech people I talk with don’t like AI: some because of energy use/data centers forced on unwilling communities, many fear for their or their children's or grandchildren’s jobs, etc.
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- swedishuser 5mo ago> Almost everyone I interact with in reality has a deep distain for LLMs and their touted trajectory. Same here, but I honestly think that's largely due to the threat is poses to their (and my) profession.
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 5mo agoyou live in some alternative reality, then.