4 ms·

>while consumers just want to know "what is this product going to actually do for me," and care less about whether it is implemented with the buzzword du jour.

>while consumers just want to know "what is this product going to actually do for me," and care less about whether it is implemented with the buzzword du jour. I would say that undersells the (not neutral, actively negative) impact of AI to many. What many people hear is "made with the tech that plagiarizes, leaves artists (and soon you as well) without a job, and makes things generic and bland!" You might as well market it as "created by child labor".

afavour 4mo ago
I wouldn’t over index in the artist side of things. A lot of people don’t really think about that at all, just look at how readily Spotify was adopted despite taking a ton of money away from artists. But “AI is coming for your job” is very resonant.
- red-iron-pine 4mo ago
  spotify still pays artists. it's just a shitty deal. most big ai will never compensate anyone
  - happymellon 4mo ago
    Is it really much different to how much artists got from radio? Most artists never got radio money because it went into a label slush fund and was spent retaining the tent pole artists.
    - jasonlotito 4mo ago
      The big difference was radio wasn't on-demand. You couldn't just listen to a complete album. If you wanted to listen to your favorite artist, you couldn't do that on the radio without listening to a lot of other stuff.
      - happymellon 4mo ago
        Most artists didn't make money from album sales. They received some money up front in a contract to record the album, and the label make the money from sales. There is a reason the bands toured and sold teeshirts.
    - mukbangpervert 4mo ago
      The overall economics are wildly different. Radio didn't pay much, but it was promotion for the album. Spotify doesn't pay much, and it _replaces_ the album.
      - happymellon 4mo ago
        CD sales didn't pay much, because it all went to the labels.
        mukbangpervert 4mo ago
        A million album sales generates $2-3m for the artist under a typical label deal. 150,000,000 streams typically generates $560k _before_ the label cut. Your posts make clear that you're a wildly immoral person -- not just because you repeatedly lie and distort to defend your position -- but the crux of your argument is "artists had a mediocre deal, so it is fine that the new deal is dramatically worse". There's no way to respond to that.
        happymellon 4mo ago
        > but the crux of your argument is "artists had a mediocre deal, so it is fine that the new deal is dramatically worse". No it's not. I'm saying that artists have always had a shit deal, singling out Spotify doesn't help the systematic problems. I don't use Spotify, I purchase via Bandcamp but that's also because long term its cheaper for me. > Your posts make clear that you're a wildly immoral person I'm immoral because I don't think that artists have ever had it good? Alright Mr. RIAA. https://sociallifemagazine.com/the-archive/90s-record-deals-exploitation-labels/ https://sociallifemagazine.com/the-archive/90s-record-deals-...
        mukbangpervert 4mo ago
        "Is it really much different to how much artists got from radio?" is a weird way of stating that artists should be paid more. If you actually want to defend artists... I suggest _not_ drawing equivalence between the old (bad) deal, and the new (much worse) deal.
  - afavour 4mo ago
    For a lot of artists they’re paid a rounding error. The core question is whether they’re paid enough to make a living from and the answer is no.
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    Spotify pays artists the smallest amount they can possibly get away with without getting sued. Which is a tiny amount. Spotify is owned by music industry giants who needed a new money-grabbing scheme when the older schemes of the 70s-90s failed in the internet era.
- Twirrim 4mo ago
  Kids of varying ages that I've spoken to often talk about the environmental impact (mind you, I live in a fairly liberal/left leaning part of the country), among other things. At the risk of over generalising, I mostly hear a lot of shit talk from younger generations, distrust from millennials, and more excitement and interest from Gen-x-ish and older. As with many things, there's a certain level of hypocrisy to the shit talking, because teachers are at the schools are complaining to parents about the kid's use of AI, and pointing out that they will automatically fail any writing that seems to be using AI.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago
    AI has been a culturally radioactive PR disaster of truly epic proportions. Aside from whether or not it works, there are so many established catastrophically negative talking points - steals from creators, destroys the environment, is coming for your job - I'm not sure its reputation can be recovered.
    - diegolas 4mo ago
      if the internet did AI will as well. after all the internet was (and is) full of scams and p*dos, yet people use it the whole day, for everything.
    - thatguy0900 4mo ago
      Does it's reputation even matter? Everyone with money is pushing it, heavily. The government is even stepping in to stop any kind of punishment when it's factually shown that they are stealing water. The people will learn to tolerate it whether they like it or not, eventually.
      - TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago
        The data center roll-out is weird, and far beyond anything that can be justified rationally. But this administration is aggressively pro-grift and anti-reality, so I would suspect that's as likely to be about some kind of corruption/grift/Ponzi as about real capability. I try to distinguish between the actual tech, which spans light and dark, and the financial and economic engineering around it, which is definitely a darker shade of black.
- Aurornis 4mo ago
  > how readily Spotify was adopted despite taking a ton of money away from artists Spotify was praised as an alternative to piracy that gave some money to artists at a price that consumers wouldn’t complain too much about. You don’t have to look at Spotify, though. Look at all of the people who won’t even pay Spotify or Netflix rates for content because they know they can pay $0 to pirate it.
  - dh2022 4mo ago
    Sorry my friend, but Netflix is not a good product. It has a limited selection and, at least for my account, a lot of commercial ads. I am not pirating but I calculated that if I were to pirate I would spend less time downloading the movie than the cumulative time spent watching commercials on Netflix. bTW - I stopped watching Netflix.
    - Aurornis 4mo ago
      Netflix was just an example. > I calculated that if I were to pirate I would spend less time downloading the movie than the cumulative time spent watching commercials on Netflix. I don’t know what plan you were on, but mine doesn’t have ads. This kind of proves my point, though: People don’t want to pay for things (including the ad-free level) so they use it to justify piracy as being superior for various reasons.
      - dh2022 4mo ago
        The selection is still shitty though, even with no ads. Piracy is a superior choice.
        Aurornis 4mo ago
        > Piracy is a superior choice. And there it is. Netflix was just an example. There are other services.
        dh2022 4mo ago
smcl 4mo ago
Another signal that prominent mentions of "AI" in your marketing sends is "this product is going to shoe-horn AI into this somehow". Plenty of products that people use every day at home or in work - Google search, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Jira, and more - have had some kind of AI-first redesign. In each case some AI functionality has been placed prominently either somewhere that you accidentally press it or in place of something that previously worked. Even my iPhone brings up this brightly coloured keyboard expecting me to do something with AI, and I don't actually know what causes it. So I think it's much simpler than solidarity with creators, artists or even workers more generally. It's that "AI" as a brand stinks, people are connecting it with annoying, low quality experiences and shitty low-effort art.
- jordanb 4mo ago
  I'm pissed off that Android took over the power button to activate their AI agent bullshit.
  - stvltvs 4mo ago
    Search your settings for Power Button, Side Button, or whatever. You should be able to change the setting for a long press.
    - owebmaster 4mo ago
      Changing it back doesn't change the fact that it was changed for AI-maxxing
  - nathan_compton 4mo ago
    I've recently switched to grapheneos. I have a high tolerance for shit not working, but its been fine.
  - DANmode 4mo ago
    Google, not Android. I assure you, the Android Open Source Project made no such change.
AlienRobot 4mo ago
I think that undersells the real problem. In many cases "AI" signals some sort of betrayal to users, because it shows that the developer CAN drastically change the GUI to implement features it wants to implement, except in practice "AI" isn't a feature that provides tangible benefits to the user. So you get the feeling of "you could have done this this WHOLE time?" + the fact they didn't do it for you but just to say they are using AI now. If the developer wanted to please the users, they would instead implement features that users have been demanding for a while. That got a lower priority so that AI that nobody asked for could be implemented.
ExtremisAndy 4mo ago
I think you may be right. I enjoy tech and programming, but hardly any of my friends/family do. And nearly everyone in my inner circle (an admittedly small number of people, considering I'm an extreme introvert) condemns and avoids AI both for the reasons you mentioned and because they refuse to "outsource my brain to AI!" In fact, the only time I personally encounter a lot of pro-AI commentary is when I come here to HN (and, obviously, there are plenty of anti-AI people on this site too). I personally appreciate it and use it, but I'm still "old-fashioned" in the sense that I only ask it for very specific things and always read through what it produces. I'm honestly not entirely sure how I'm supposed to feel about all this. These are interesting times, to say the least.
jordanb 4mo ago
Also the product itself is likely to suck. One thing that the tech world has become obsessed with is increasingly non-deterministic products. Products that do what they think what the user wants to do rather than what they actually want to do. They've also fallen in love with changing things for the sake of change. I had a friend buy a Tesla and one thing that ruined the car for him is that the menu would change overnight. He'd know how to turn the fog lights on, for instance, but next time he had to do it, the menu had moved someplace else. AI is the ultimate non-deterministic product. You can ask it to do the same thing repeatedly and get different results every time! This is one hell that the cyberpunk people didn't anticipate. If you watch cyberpunk movies from the 80s or 90s the tech all works kinda like how a microwave or vcr would of worked back then: the device had discrete controls and it did one thing reliably. The closest vision back then to what we're getting now is the moody ship's computer from hitchhiker's guide.
- frollogaston 4mo ago
  The touchscreen is the only thing that's kept me from leasing a Tesla the past 8 years.
  - queenkjuul 4mo ago
    And now it's one of two things keeping me from ever doing so in the future
  - kjkjadksj 4mo ago
    Not the hitler salute?
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - frollogaston 4mo ago
      Correct
      - 4mo ago
Aurornis 4mo ago
> What many people hear is "made with the tech that plagiarizes, leaves artists (and soon you as well) without a job My unpopular opinion is that many or maybe most people don’t care about this. They don’t care about where the content came from or if the artists get paid for the work. If they can get something (an answer to their question, some output that finishes their homework, some writing for a work assignment) more easily and with less cost or effort then they want it that way. Look at piracy for a similar topic: It’s not even a derivative work, it’s just taking straight from the artists while bypassing their payment ask. Yet even on Hacker News every piracy thread fills up with piracy apologia and people saying artists shouldn’t expect to be paid for their digital output or that IP rights shouldn’t exist. Many people just don’t care about this stuff even when it’s direct source content taken 1:1 without paying. They definitely don’t care if the tool they’re using to do their homework or write that work email was trained on it.
- ricardobayes 4mo ago
  I think there is some nuance between an individual downloading something (and in many countries it is outright legal or at least, alegal) and building billion-dollar companies on it.
  - Aurornis 4mo ago
    We’re talking about the consumers, though. They don’t care how the free or cheap thing arrives. They like that they didn’t have to pay as much. The same argument is used to justify normal piracy: The consumer thinks they’re stealing from the corporation who distributes it, not the artist.
- RiverCrochet 4mo ago
  Downloading artists' songs is not equivalent to people using AI to generate sounds/images and claiming they are an artist. I really don't have a problem with people using AI to generate sounds/images for their own personal enjoyment, but taking what it generates and then telling others that you "made this" or are an artist is deception. > artists shouldn’t expect to be paid for their digital output The issue is the notion that an artist gets to control what one does with their personal property that isn't the artist's property. No one is saying artists shouldn't get paid. Artists should get paid but setting up a system that surveils everything I hear and see to enforce it is too much. > Many people just don’t care about this stuff I agree with this though I don't follow your tie-in to piracy. Most people do not really care about music, and the industry has known this and delivers most music through ad-supported channels and shapes what music production it can to fit this. The ugly truth is that there's probably a lot of people who wouldn't mind listening to AI radio, it's probably coming, and it will be good enough that a sizeable percentage of the population will enjoy it and not care. The real art has always been outside of the industry though, and that won't change in the AI age.
butlike 4mo ago
What it also hits on for the average person is the uncanny valley. It just feels bad to talk to something mimicrying a person. It feels like talking to an invader at a deep, survival level.
reluctant_dev 4mo ago
Outside of frontier model providers, the vast majority of "AI" branded products/features just don't feel high quality. AI generated media (art, music, etc) is very repulsive to interact with and so many products feel like they have led with AI solutions to problems that don't exist.
harrall 4mo ago
I’m in constant code switch mode. Among a larger % of my tech friends, AI is cool. Among my non-tech friends, AI has been uncool. Among by artist friends, AI has been really uncool for years. I’m personally in a “water is wet” position.
- wartywhoa23 4mo ago
  You'll get to switch less soon as your tech friends get lost in their codebases, loose skills or jobs altogether and pick the side of your artist ones.
kakacik 4mo ago
Apart form all other comments which are mostly from IT insider perspective, which most mankind simply doesn't have, AI means real rather than potential job loss in future. I've talked to doctors, drivers, lawyers etc. and most white collar and many blue collar jobs feel the threat. Which, based on various news, feel justified even if not immediate. Even if its not the same llm per se, but the word "AI" is already tarnished as scum backstabbing negative entity, I literally don't know a single person who sees it these days positively.
- autoexec 4mo ago
  > Apart form all other comments which are mostly from IT insider perspective, which most mankind simply doesn't have, AI means real rather than potential job loss in future. I mean, I haven't seen AI being used to replace even the most menial jobs. Plenty of companies have been trying to use AI to do things, but embarrassing and costly failures and negative customer response has made progress very slow. How can a lawyer or a doctor be worried about AI replacing them when AI can't even replace the 15 year old worker taking orders at the McDonald's drive thru? At this point I'm not fully convinced of even potential job loss from AI.
damnesian 4mo ago
It only takes one attempt to contact a corporation using their new AI system to scar you, it's that dehumanizing. And millions of people know exactly what I mean.
intended 4mo ago
Also translates as “this is going to be enshittified and make your life worse eventually.” Whatever reasons there were to be excited about tech have been subsumed by the things to be worried about.
wouldbecouldbe 4mo ago
I think its more that AI is generally really badly implemented. It means we get a less qualitative experience, mainly on support, but also writing etc.
mintplant 4mo ago
Reading the comments in this thread, I think it's difficult for some folks here to accept that many, many people outside their bubble genuinely despise what they're doing, and it's not just a misunderstanding or a matter of branding.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
kenjackson 4mo ago
I actually don’t think most consumers care about that at all. Consumers loved Napster. They have no problem stealing from artists outright, let alone indirectly. I think to consumers AI denotes lack of accountability or oversight. They think it might work - but it might not and no one will care. For example, I’m doing work in standardized test prep and there are tons of new AI products and no one likes it. Consumers feel as if they will get subtle but important things wrong. Most of these companies are now trying to hide that they are using AI generated questions.
- TRiG_Ireland 4mo ago
  There was a lot of outrage over the use of AI-generated images on the Leaving Cert exam in Ireland recently.
  - egsgsgst 4mo ago
    outrage lol
rustystump 4mo ago
It also signals low effort or subpar quality too. Hey look we slapped gpt on our healthcare app. Is it useful? Not really but the ceo is excited about it
ozim 4mo ago
Hard to agree. No one cares about plagiarism and artists. I bet lots of people would even be happy that artists get smacked because they see only high profile and rich artists. Normal people don’t care about AI and are not afraid that it will take their jobs. They are pissed off because of they are paying customers they expect some level of respect. AI bots are slap in the face, they ask basic stuff that human operator should infer from the conversation. But you are hit with a dummy that doesn’t solve any of your issues and have to spend time explaining yourself. Funny part is that’s exactly the same as low income lvl 1 support. But there is no comparison study. My idea is people are equally pissed off by lvl 1 support that they have to explain stuff in detail and get no real resolution.
- fluoridation 4mo ago
  Mostly agreed. Practically speaking, phone support reps just follow a flowchart and scripts, so there's effectively no difference between getting an AI or a person (except in those cases where the STT can't make out what you're saying, but that can happen with a person too). But as you've correctly pointed out, it's about respect, and I suspect most people do find it slightly more disrespectful to be forced to talk to an AI instead of another person.
groundzeros2015 4mo ago
Young people do not care about plagiarism.
zombot 4mo ago
Agreed, but it still appeals to investors because it promises to concentrate more money and power in the hands of those who own the hardware that runs the LLMs.

afavour 4mo ago

I wouldn’t over index in the artist side of things. A lot of people don’t really think about that at all, just look at how readily Spotify was adopted despite taking a ton of money away from artists. But “AI is coming for your job” is very resonant.

red-iron-pine 4mo ago
spotify still pays artists. it's just a shitty deal. most big ai will never compensate anyone
- happymellon 4mo ago
  Is it really much different to how much artists got from radio? Most artists never got radio money because it went into a label slush fund and was spent retaining the tent pole artists.
  - jasonlotito 4mo ago
    The big difference was radio wasn't on-demand. You couldn't just listen to a complete album. If you wanted to listen to your favorite artist, you couldn't do that on the radio without listening to a lot of other stuff.
    - happymellon 4mo ago
      Most artists didn't make money from album sales. They received some money up front in a contract to record the album, and the label make the money from sales. There is a reason the bands toured and sold teeshirts.
  - mukbangpervert 4mo ago
    The overall economics are wildly different. Radio didn't pay much, but it was promotion for the album. Spotify doesn't pay much, and it _replaces_ the album.
    - happymellon 4mo ago
      CD sales didn't pay much, because it all went to the labels.
      - mukbangpervert 4mo ago
        A million album sales generates $2-3m for the artist under a typical label deal. 150,000,000 streams typically generates $560k _before_ the label cut. Your posts make clear that you're a wildly immoral person -- not just because you repeatedly lie and distort to defend your position -- but the crux of your argument is "artists had a mediocre deal, so it is fine that the new deal is dramatically worse". There's no way to respond to that.
        happymellon 4mo ago
        > but the crux of your argument is "artists had a mediocre deal, so it is fine that the new deal is dramatically worse". No it's not. I'm saying that artists have always had a shit deal, singling out Spotify doesn't help the systematic problems. I don't use Spotify, I purchase via Bandcamp but that's also because long term its cheaper for me. > Your posts make clear that you're a wildly immoral person I'm immoral because I don't think that artists have ever had it good? Alright Mr. RIAA. https://sociallifemagazine.com/the-archive/90s-record-deals-exploitation-labels/ https://sociallifemagazine.com/the-archive/90s-record-deals-...
        mukbangpervert 4mo ago
        "Is it really much different to how much artists got from radio?" is a weird way of stating that artists should be paid more. If you actually want to defend artists... I suggest _not_ drawing equivalence between the old (bad) deal, and the new (much worse) deal.
- afavour 4mo ago
  For a lot of artists they’re paid a rounding error. The core question is whether they’re paid enough to make a living from and the answer is no.
- inigyou 4mo ago
  Spotify pays artists the smallest amount they can possibly get away with without getting sued. Which is a tiny amount. Spotify is owned by music industry giants who needed a new money-grabbing scheme when the older schemes of the 70s-90s failed in the internet era.
Twirrim 4mo ago
Kids of varying ages that I've spoken to often talk about the environmental impact (mind you, I live in a fairly liberal/left leaning part of the country), among other things. At the risk of over generalising, I mostly hear a lot of shit talk from younger generations, distrust from millennials, and more excitement and interest from Gen-x-ish and older. As with many things, there's a certain level of hypocrisy to the shit talking, because teachers are at the schools are complaining to parents about the kid's use of AI, and pointing out that they will automatically fail any writing that seems to be using AI.
- TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago
  AI has been a culturally radioactive PR disaster of truly epic proportions. Aside from whether or not it works, there are so many established catastrophically negative talking points - steals from creators, destroys the environment, is coming for your job - I'm not sure its reputation can be recovered.
  - diegolas 4mo ago
    if the internet did AI will as well. after all the internet was (and is) full of scams and p*dos, yet people use it the whole day, for everything.
  - thatguy0900 4mo ago
    Does it's reputation even matter? Everyone with money is pushing it, heavily. The government is even stepping in to stop any kind of punishment when it's factually shown that they are stealing water. The people will learn to tolerate it whether they like it or not, eventually.
    - TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago
      The data center roll-out is weird, and far beyond anything that can be justified rationally. But this administration is aggressively pro-grift and anti-reality, so I would suspect that's as likely to be about some kind of corruption/grift/Ponzi as about real capability. I try to distinguish between the actual tech, which spans light and dark, and the financial and economic engineering around it, which is definitely a darker shade of black.
Aurornis 4mo ago
> how readily Spotify was adopted despite taking a ton of money away from artists Spotify was praised as an alternative to piracy that gave some money to artists at a price that consumers wouldn’t complain too much about. You don’t have to look at Spotify, though. Look at all of the people who won’t even pay Spotify or Netflix rates for content because they know they can pay $0 to pirate it.
- dh2022 4mo ago
  Sorry my friend, but Netflix is not a good product. It has a limited selection and, at least for my account, a lot of commercial ads. I am not pirating but I calculated that if I were to pirate I would spend less time downloading the movie than the cumulative time spent watching commercials on Netflix. bTW - I stopped watching Netflix.
  - Aurornis 4mo ago
    Netflix was just an example. > I calculated that if I were to pirate I would spend less time downloading the movie than the cumulative time spent watching commercials on Netflix. I don’t know what plan you were on, but mine doesn’t have ads. This kind of proves my point, though: People don’t want to pay for things (including the ad-free level) so they use it to justify piracy as being superior for various reasons.
    - dh2022 4mo ago
      The selection is still shitty though, even with no ads. Piracy is a superior choice.
      - Aurornis 4mo ago
        > Piracy is a superior choice. And there it is. Netflix was just an example. There are other services.
        dh2022 4mo ago

smcl 4mo ago

Another signal that prominent mentions of "AI" in your marketing sends is "this product is going to shoe-horn AI into this somehow". Plenty of products that people use every day at home or in work - Google search, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Jira, and more - have had some kind of AI-first redesign. In each case some AI functionality has been placed prominently either somewhere that you accidentally press it or in place of something that previously worked. Even my iPhone brings up this brightly coloured keyboard expecting me to do something with AI, and I don't actually know what causes it. So I think it's much simpler than solidarity with creators, artists or even workers more generally. It's that "AI" as a brand stinks, people are connecting it with annoying, low quality experiences and shitty low-effort art.

jordanb 4mo ago
I'm pissed off that Android took over the power button to activate their AI agent bullshit.
- stvltvs 4mo ago
  Search your settings for Power Button, Side Button, or whatever. You should be able to change the setting for a long press.
  - owebmaster 4mo ago
    Changing it back doesn't change the fact that it was changed for AI-maxxing
- nathan_compton 4mo ago
  I've recently switched to grapheneos. I have a high tolerance for shit not working, but its been fine.
- DANmode 4mo ago
  Google, not Android. I assure you, the Android Open Source Project made no such change.

AlienRobot 4mo ago

I think that undersells the real problem. In many cases "AI" signals some sort of betrayal to users, because it shows that the developer CAN drastically change the GUI to implement features it wants to implement, except in practice "AI" isn't a feature that provides tangible benefits to the user. So you get the feeling of "you could have done this this WHOLE time?" + the fact they didn't do it for you but just to say they are using AI now. If the developer wanted to please the users, they would instead implement features that users have been demanding for a while. That got a lower priority so that AI that nobody asked for could be implemented.

ExtremisAndy 4mo ago

I think you may be right. I enjoy tech and programming, but hardly any of my friends/family do. And nearly everyone in my inner circle (an admittedly small number of people, considering I'm an extreme introvert) condemns and avoids AI both for the reasons you mentioned and because they refuse to "outsource my brain to AI!" In fact, the only time I personally encounter a lot of pro-AI commentary is when I come here to HN (and, obviously, there are plenty of anti-AI people on this site too). I personally appreciate it and use it, but I'm still "old-fashioned" in the sense that I only ask it for very specific things and always read through what it produces. I'm honestly not entirely sure how I'm supposed to feel about all this. These are interesting times, to say the least.

jordanb 4mo ago

Also the product itself is likely to suck. One thing that the tech world has become obsessed with is increasingly non-deterministic products. Products that do what they think what the user wants to do rather than what they actually want to do. They've also fallen in love with changing things for the sake of change. I had a friend buy a Tesla and one thing that ruined the car for him is that the menu would change overnight. He'd know how to turn the fog lights on, for instance, but next time he had to do it, the menu had moved someplace else. AI is the ultimate non-deterministic product. You can ask it to do the same thing repeatedly and get different results every time! This is one hell that the cyberpunk people didn't anticipate. If you watch cyberpunk movies from the 80s or 90s the tech all works kinda like how a microwave or vcr would of worked back then: the device had discrete controls and it did one thing reliably. The closest vision back then to what we're getting now is the moody ship's computer from hitchhiker's guide.

frollogaston 4mo ago
The touchscreen is the only thing that's kept me from leasing a Tesla the past 8 years.
- queenkjuul 4mo ago
  And now it's one of two things keeping me from ever doing so in the future
- kjkjadksj 4mo ago
  Not the hitler salute?
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - frollogaston 4mo ago
    Correct
    - 4mo ago

Aurornis 4mo ago

> What many people hear is "made with the tech that plagiarizes, leaves artists (and soon you as well) without a job My unpopular opinion is that many or maybe most people don’t care about this. They don’t care about where the content came from or if the artists get paid for the work. If they can get something (an answer to their question, some output that finishes their homework, some writing for a work assignment) more easily and with less cost or effort then they want it that way. Look at piracy for a similar topic: It’s not even a derivative work, it’s just taking straight from the artists while bypassing their payment ask. Yet even on Hacker News every piracy thread fills up with piracy apologia and people saying artists shouldn’t expect to be paid for their digital output or that IP rights shouldn’t exist. Many people just don’t care about this stuff even when it’s direct source content taken 1:1 without paying. They definitely don’t care if the tool they’re using to do their homework or write that work email was trained on it.

ricardobayes 4mo ago
I think there is some nuance between an individual downloading something (and in many countries it is outright legal or at least, alegal) and building billion-dollar companies on it.
- Aurornis 4mo ago
  We’re talking about the consumers, though. They don’t care how the free or cheap thing arrives. They like that they didn’t have to pay as much. The same argument is used to justify normal piracy: The consumer thinks they’re stealing from the corporation who distributes it, not the artist.
RiverCrochet 4mo ago
Downloading artists' songs is not equivalent to people using AI to generate sounds/images and claiming they are an artist. I really don't have a problem with people using AI to generate sounds/images for their own personal enjoyment, but taking what it generates and then telling others that you "made this" or are an artist is deception. > artists shouldn’t expect to be paid for their digital output The issue is the notion that an artist gets to control what one does with their personal property that isn't the artist's property. No one is saying artists shouldn't get paid. Artists should get paid but setting up a system that surveils everything I hear and see to enforce it is too much. > Many people just don’t care about this stuff I agree with this though I don't follow your tie-in to piracy. Most people do not really care about music, and the industry has known this and delivers most music through ad-supported channels and shapes what music production it can to fit this. The ugly truth is that there's probably a lot of people who wouldn't mind listening to AI radio, it's probably coming, and it will be good enough that a sizeable percentage of the population will enjoy it and not care. The real art has always been outside of the industry though, and that won't change in the AI age.

butlike 4mo ago

What it also hits on for the average person is the uncanny valley. It just feels bad to talk to something mimicrying a person. It feels like talking to an invader at a deep, survival level.

reluctant_dev 4mo ago

Outside of frontier model providers, the vast majority of "AI" branded products/features just don't feel high quality. AI generated media (art, music, etc) is very repulsive to interact with and so many products feel like they have led with AI solutions to problems that don't exist.

harrall 4mo ago

I’m in constant code switch mode. Among a larger % of my tech friends, AI is cool. Among my non-tech friends, AI has been uncool. Among by artist friends, AI has been really uncool for years. I’m personally in a “water is wet” position.

wartywhoa23 4mo ago
You'll get to switch less soon as your tech friends get lost in their codebases, loose skills or jobs altogether and pick the side of your artist ones.

kakacik 4mo ago

Apart form all other comments which are mostly from IT insider perspective, which most mankind simply doesn't have, AI means real rather than potential job loss in future. I've talked to doctors, drivers, lawyers etc. and most white collar and many blue collar jobs feel the threat. Which, based on various news, feel justified even if not immediate. Even if its not the same llm per se, but the word "AI" is already tarnished as scum backstabbing negative entity, I literally don't know a single person who sees it these days positively.

autoexec 4mo ago
> Apart form all other comments which are mostly from IT insider perspective, which most mankind simply doesn't have, AI means real rather than potential job loss in future. I mean, I haven't seen AI being used to replace even the most menial jobs. Plenty of companies have been trying to use AI to do things, but embarrassing and costly failures and negative customer response has made progress very slow. How can a lawyer or a doctor be worried about AI replacing them when AI can't even replace the 15 year old worker taking orders at the McDonald's drive thru? At this point I'm not fully convinced of even potential job loss from AI.

damnesian 4mo ago

It only takes one attempt to contact a corporation using their new AI system to scar you, it's that dehumanizing. And millions of people know exactly what I mean.

intended 4mo ago

Also translates as “this is going to be enshittified and make your life worse eventually.” Whatever reasons there were to be excited about tech have been subsumed by the things to be worried about.

wouldbecouldbe 4mo ago

I think its more that AI is generally really badly implemented. It means we get a less qualitative experience, mainly on support, but also writing etc.

mintplant 4mo ago

Reading the comments in this thread, I think it's difficult for some folks here to accept that many, many people outside their bubble genuinely despise what they're doing, and it's not just a misunderstanding or a matter of branding.

deleted 4mo ago
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kenjackson 4mo ago

I actually don’t think most consumers care about that at all. Consumers loved Napster. They have no problem stealing from artists outright, let alone indirectly. I think to consumers AI denotes lack of accountability or oversight. They think it might work - but it might not and no one will care. For example, I’m doing work in standardized test prep and there are tons of new AI products and no one likes it. Consumers feel as if they will get subtle but important things wrong. Most of these companies are now trying to hide that they are using AI generated questions.

TRiG_Ireland 4mo ago
There was a lot of outrage over the use of AI-generated images on the Leaving Cert exam in Ireland recently.
- egsgsgst 4mo ago
  outrage lol

rustystump 4mo ago

It also signals low effort or subpar quality too. Hey look we slapped gpt on our healthcare app. Is it useful? Not really but the ceo is excited about it

ozim 4mo ago

Hard to agree. No one cares about plagiarism and artists. I bet lots of people would even be happy that artists get smacked because they see only high profile and rich artists. Normal people don’t care about AI and are not afraid that it will take their jobs. They are pissed off because of they are paying customers they expect some level of respect. AI bots are slap in the face, they ask basic stuff that human operator should infer from the conversation. But you are hit with a dummy that doesn’t solve any of your issues and have to spend time explaining yourself. Funny part is that’s exactly the same as low income lvl 1 support. But there is no comparison study. My idea is people are equally pissed off by lvl 1 support that they have to explain stuff in detail and get no real resolution.

fluoridation 4mo ago
Mostly agreed. Practically speaking, phone support reps just follow a flowchart and scripts, so there's effectively no difference between getting an AI or a person (except in those cases where the STT can't make out what you're saying, but that can happen with a person too). But as you've correctly pointed out, it's about respect, and I suspect most people do find it slightly more disrespectful to be forced to talk to an AI instead of another person.

groundzeros2015 4mo ago

Young people do not care about plagiarism.

zombot 4mo ago

Agreed, but it still appeals to investors because it promises to concentrate more money and power in the hands of those who own the hardware that runs the LLMs.