5 ms·

Silicon Valley is in denial in face of widespread backlash

107 points by cdrnsf 1mo ago

sergiotapia 1mo ago
I thought this was going to be about h1b and the severe backlash ycombinator partners are facing online.
- ofjcihen 1mo ago
  Nah those articles are rarely allowed to make it to the top
atriarch 1mo ago
This is a multifaceted problem for sure. As the fruit of leveraging LLM use, from my experience, is held in the hands of experienced, skilled, and gray-haired workers, what hope do young kids today have of BEING in this world? The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching it's metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Who, in that world, can spend the fiat and for what? I think many humans would prefer going back to picking potatoes out of the ground for a bit of silver than to lose agency to the machine. Everyone else is either bunker prepping or plugging into the matrix. Will we arrive at the Jetsons? Or Warhammer 40k?
- arionhardison 1mo ago
  This is so closely related to a comment I just made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470026 that I am going to just risk and repost it. > This hit me hard, I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm not sure it's what makes "us human" its what makes humans (us) better than other species. It was intelligence, this was used to create distinction between us and other living beings, different races etc... Now its kind of gone; in some ways. Loss of meaning, purpose, place etc... The one thing we used as a ranking metric is now a commodity, so....? I don't even know how to finish that. So why care, why work...shit just why? Capitalism makes it even worse because we are judged based on what we output, does that even make sense anymore? I think the article is confusing because the "state: is confusing; to me at least. .... 3 responses .... > Thats totally fair, and TBH - I am also very concerned for my wellbeing as well; I and many others are not doing so well because, in my case I no longer see this "vapid" state of existence as ephermial. I have been reading more and more; I guess looking ot knowledge as some eort of ends vs a means to an end for once. Camus, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dostoevsky's underground man etc... Camus: The universe was always going to stay silent when you demand meaning from it; the answer isn't a better metric, it's to push the rock anyway ("imagine Sisyphus happy"). Dostoevsky [underground man]: Refusing to be a piano key in someone's optimized Crystal Palace Stokely Carmichael: "Racism is not a question of attitude, it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism." My conclusion: AI didn't take our meaning, It made me realize I have always been looking in the wrong place and thus reacting ignoratly when I felt "denied" this thing I feel entitled to. Love. Edit: Love; paradoxically, ive felt both entitled to and unworthy of so I'm not sure WTF to do with that. To wit: Our love of self is so closely tied to our output and if we have no output do we have value? Edit: tl;dr - I am not sure I understand the point of anything anymore and many others feel the same way. I do not think this is some "existential crisis" I believe it is a logical conclusion to draw given the evidence presented by the day and age we live in.
  - rickydroll 1mo ago
    You raise a good point. If nothing is special, what's our motivation, our purpose? Maybe our purpose becomes being comfortable with no purpose, and I am surprisingly okay with that. I know that my existence is finite, and the time I spend and what I do with it give it importance. For example, spending my time teaching people how to make telescopes, keep a garden going and growing, and train dogs in field exercises would give it meaning. In the short term, figuring out how to use LLMs to take power away from oligarchs would be a good use of time. Spending more hours working to make somebody else rich, yeah, no. Let's go through the archway in the forest.
    - arionhardison 1mo ago
      This terrifies me but I suspect you are correct. My abject obsession with not being viewed as less fuels my drive to create, earn, produce. I may have to learn just to be. To sit with myself, and just be OK with being.
- spacecadet 1mo ago
  Well even 40k spent 20k years living like the jetsons... There are no analogs for our future. That's one of the core problems here, you have powerful individuals who identify with and aspire to sci-fi, while living in denial of reality. I would argue someone like Musk is more blue pilled and in the Matrix than they think they are...
  - Izkata 1mo ago
    > There are no analogs for our future. WALL-E?
    - spacecadet 1mo ago
      Sure, why not pick idiocracy. You miss the point. People now cannot predict the future, all analogs are simultaneously possible and unlikely. Pick any event we have experienced, 9/11, COVID. Sure, some predictions were close, but nothing like the reality of living through it.
- quadrifoliate 1mo ago
  > The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching its metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Not true at all. If you have a robotic servant that can "do everything" for anywhere close to an affordable amount for even a middle-class person, please post a link and specify what it can do. There a big gap between a tool that can spew out large amounts of code and something you trust to not screw up your house. Once I can tell a robot to do a simple plumbing task in my house, I'll believe in this metamorphosis you're talking about.
  - space_fountain 1mo ago
    Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. I think you're right that plumbing is safe for a bit. Human hands are insanely dexterous
    - csa 1mo ago
      > Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. This will not happen in my lifetime. It may do some. It may even do a lot. It will certainly augment close to 100% the remote jobs. AI will never be able to “do every job that is remote”.
      - _DeadFred_ 1mo ago
        Just 5% of the population with no hope, no future, and looking at no survival can be extremely disruptive to a society. Take away all the daydream future job options and only leave the difficult labor that breaks peoples bodies by 40 and the youth could become disruptive to society. You can't add in Mana making sure every minute of those jobs left is productive and every dollar paid in wages gets clawed back from workers. People can't function in modern hyper optimizing of all the impacts on workers but no optimization in housing affordability, food affordability, enjoyment options that benefit the average person instead of all optimizations extracting all the previous slack/dollars in life. You can't optimize away all the slack (in affordability, in time, in things to be enjoyed, in xyz, in 123). You can't optimize away all the future opportunity. You can't optimize away all the daydreams and hope and expect society to look anything like our current society.
- stonogo 1mo ago
  > robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Why do people keep positing this? The robots get better every year, but they don't get better fast enough to make me think there will be a robot servant doing anything for anyone in my lifetime. As has been the case for the past fifty years or so, they're either hyperspecialized or remote controlled by people, and neither of those spell doom for the economy.
  - arionhardison 1mo ago
    Honest question, did you foresee the last 2 or 3 years happening as fast as they have? Edit: In terms of AI/LLM's etc..
    - atriarch 1mo ago
      Indeed. The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space, it's game over. We don't need to engineer plumbing robots - they will engineer themselves. We will see a silicon Cambrian Explosion. Maybe next year maybe in 500, but it's inevitable with the current economic incentives.
      - trickypr 1mo ago
        Bold of you to assume that “current economic inventives” will remain around for 500 years, especially given the American-style neo-liberal economy is only like 70 years old.
      - beej71 1mo ago
        What if the creation of such robots destroys the economic incentive for doing so?
      - BobaFloutist 1mo ago
        >The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space Ok, but that's still sci-fi. We've made a huge advancement in automation of knowledge work, but hardware still has no clear path to what you're describing, or even to anything similar to it.
- watwut 1mo ago
  Or, we can go back to reality and observe that people are not obsolete and all human work was not eradicates Then we can take down monopolies, tax large corporations, regulate them, empower anti white colar crime agencies again and regulate finance. That will actually do. Bullshitters and sociopaths are too empowered. That is an issue, and acute one.
- Laurel1234 1mo ago
  > Will we arrive at the Jetsons? Or Warhammer 40k? Maybe Dune: thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
- CamperBob2 1mo ago
  I think many humans would prefer going back to picking potatoes out of the ground for a bit of silver than to lose agency to the machine Translation: I've never picked potatoes for a living
  - dgellow 1mo ago
    Or keep the current world, just without everything having to be done by an LLM Goldberg machine
    - CamperBob2 1mo ago
      Would you say that's a progressive point of view, or a conservative one? I'm not sure what the ideological term is for someone who doesn't argue for a return to the past or advancement into the future, but for permanent retention of current conditions.
      - dgellow 1mo ago
        As I said, just remove the LLMs Goldberg machines. That’s it. The rest can continue to evolve and change
        CamperBob2 1mo ago
        No, thanks, I like mine. It runs on a spare machine in my basement and seems benign enough.
- fatata123 1mo ago
  [dead]
panny 1mo ago
I'm puzzled how people who didn't care about Snowden are suddenly very upset about Flock. I'm glad they finally decided the 4A is important.
- GenerWork 1mo ago
  I'm not. The same people who seemingly magically cared about Flock overnight will move onto something else within the year. There's always something new to be outraged over, Flock is just the flavor of the week.
  - cheesemonk66 1mo ago
    I think this taps in to why big tech companies are unconcerned as well. How many of these people who oppose data centers have stopped utilizing their outputs? How many of these anti AI folks are using AI either at work or in their personal lives? It's just hot to hate AI right now.
  - Sindisil 1mo ago
    Are you trying to dismiss Flock and the like as not worthy of outrage?
- Zsfe510asG 1mo ago
  It is more concrete now. For example the footage that was released about the Kirk shooter showed that you are filmed everywhere, including in residential areas. People are beginning to understand.
- msdz 1mo ago
  My take is that the difference is simply down to visibility, and by extension broader understanding, of the issue: - Cameras film me and my family and neighbors everywhere in daily life => Obviously an issue - Something about secret agencies maybe (?) reading along my messages => “I’ve got nothing to hide in there anyway”
  - CodingJeebus 1mo ago
red_admiral 1mo ago
Something I never thought would happen: ultra-conservative Moms For Liberty and progressive education campaigners agree on something. Namely "get that AI out of our schools". The Butlerian Jihad has started.
- _aavaa_ 1mo ago
  Can't wait for a society dependent on spice and which is still controlled those with political (or super human) powers.
- Grombobulous 1mo ago
  It makes me wonder how the powers will be will manage to split this issue into powerless factions like they did for Occupy Wall St.
  - a34729t 1mo ago
    Lasr time it was identity politics, I think they'll use trans as the wedge for these groups.
    - Grombobulous 1mo ago
      I am curious how that will be coherent but we have all been surprised by incoherence in politics many times over.
  - mindslight 1mo ago
    That die has already been cast. It's stop everything versus "accelerationism" full speed ahead. Both sides will point to how their full world view is coherent and would have sensible results, and will blame the other side for the problems from their own agenda not being allowed to go far enough. The former will succeed at when pushing regulations that merely constitute speed bumps for the big players but hamstring individuals and small businesses, and the latter will succeed at pushing for little government restrictions on the regulated sandboxes of the big players. Regulatory capture complete. I had a terrifying thought while mowing the lawn today that we don't even have an inkling of a feel for how imaginary property laws are going to destroy the usefulness of hosted LLMs for individuals. Ask Claude Jr the easiset way to attach some mechanical actuators to your lawnmower and to write some software, and it's going to respond "sorry, automated lawnmowing runs afoul of patents X, Y, and Z. Please upload your patent license certificates". With LLMs we're currently at the stage where Google used to reliably return good links to cracks/warez/etc, and as we all know that's been thoroughly locked down.
Zsfe510asG 1mo ago
SV is also in denial that AI is the final straw that makes people leave the Internet.
- phainopepla2 1mo ago
  How I wish that were true for more than a tiny fraction of the population
- joegibbs 1mo ago
  Perhaps the World Wide Web but do you see how addicted the average person is to TikTok? 0.1% might decide to lead a tech-free lifestyle (and we can be sure that each will interviewed and get an article written about them).
cocacola1 1mo ago
The industry needs messengers that can put out a positive vision that also aren’t creepy or skeezy seeming dudes. I don’t think Zuck’s WSJ manifesto convinced anyone, plus he’s a terrible messenger.
- watwut 1mo ago
  Non creepy people were rejected by billionaires class, they just dont fit in. And conversely, non creepy people also avoid the tech bro creepy singularity is here crowd.
- Sindisil 1mo ago
  The industry needs to come to grips with the fact that many, many people either have no use for or actively despise GenAI.
  - roto 1mo ago
    Why should they worry about the people that are not going to give them money and likely wont ever be convinced to? They don't need to capture literally every person or whole industries to be successful.
    - AngryData 1mo ago
      And how has such distain for large parts of a population turned out in the past? Short term people sometimes get away with it, longer term and their society crashes when people start taking action. But it doesn't always take a long time if people are inflamed enough about an issue.
    - Sindisil 1mo ago
      Because the negative externalities of GenAI are great enough that the majority will soon recognize them and demand action. But I don't expect that to slow down any of the main drivers for now. Some have too much invested monetarily and emotionally, others have been caught up in the hype cycle.
    - shimman 1mo ago
simianwords 1mo ago
[flagged]
- greekrich92 1mo ago
  There is no equivalence. There is a mass of people who are concerned about "woke." The people who are emotionally invested in AI's success are a tiny minority who have no power to push a backlash. Hmm wait a minute, unless that small minority is politically well connected with a lot of media access. Then they could manufacture a fake backlash. Much like the backlash to "woke!" Ok nevermind it is the same.
  - simianwords 1mo ago
    "its the same but in a more nuanced way that you didn't consider"
  - SpicyLemonZest 1mo ago
    What distinguishes a real backlash from a manufactured backlash, in your view? Every movement includes people who go talk to the media about why you ought to join them.
imglorp 1mo ago
For one thing, saying the quiet part out loud takes the covers off: https://www.artisan.co/blog/stop-hiring-humans https://www.artisan.co/blog/stop-hiring-humans For another, apply AI where it's good but stop forcing it where it doesn't belong. Ask the users, they know.
ilamont 1mo ago
When the bubble bursts and tens of millions of people see their retirement accounts with S&P holdings drop 30%, that's when the knives will really come out.
dmix 1mo ago
Vibecoding meets the long history of viberegulation
ogou 1mo ago
I don't think they are in denial. I think they just don't care about public sentiment. American capitalism has proven over and over that people who hate you will still buy your product, at a premium.
- spwa4 1mo ago
  An alternate interpretation is also possible: that "public sentiment" overemphasizes screaming minorities, and the vast majority just doesn't care.
  - mikewarot 1mo ago
    You haven't seen NIMBY until you've seen what happens when there's even a hint of a new AI data center coming to town. Take the normal complaints about change, and bump them up approximately 3 orders of magnitude, and you'll be in the ballpark.
miiiiiike 1mo ago
My family keeps sending me screenshots of AI generated arguments against building new data centers. Apparently we have too many and they don't understand where the demand is coming from. When I asked how many we'll need over the next 10 years the answer was simple, we'll need to build exactly "Oh, fuck off." data centers in the US over the next 10 years to meet expected demand. We should get on that. I guess video games are a problem too. And social media. They wrote about it on their Facebook Group. The news one, the one where they repost TikToks of people pointing and nodding at another video where someone in a trucker hat is talking about a conspiracy theory, not the one where they talk about Candy Crush. I don’t use AI. Nothing about these conversations makes sense.
- m463 1mo ago
  > My family keeps sending me screenshots of AI generated arguments against building new data centers. obviously from chinese models running a campaign to keep the US from pulling away.
  - m463 1mo ago
    wow: https://www.axios.com/2026/08/28/china-ai-data-center-backlash-bots https://www.axios.com/2026/08/28/china-ai-data-center-backla...
tescreal 1mo ago
If they're in denial, perhaps they see something bigger at play? Governments are likely very interested in the massive-scale capacities for monitoring and analysis these tools enable. The public might not even matter to the suits in the end.
- trickypr 1mo ago
  I think it is more likely they are just drinking their own koolaid (and their friends are too). They are paid to bring in investor dollars, which requires lofty promises.
  - tescreal 1mo ago
    I want to believe that, but I do wonder. The surveillance powers are immense for such technology. Forget the magical "SAI" stuff. It would also be a perfect cause for hyperscaling: total coverage.
1000100_1000101 1mo ago
I thought a big part of the opposition to data centers was due to the massive spike in electricity costs, or even loss of availability in getting power, for regular people while the data center gets a deal. If they actually paid for the new power generation, I doubt there would be much backlash. That it's likely to be used to mine your personal data and be used to create AI slop in exchange for more global warming are just reasons to hate it more, but I think it's not the primary hate point.
- mikewarot 1mo ago
  Well, they're already bidding up generating capacity contracts for upcoming years. The net effect is raising everyone's electric bills today for a data center that might not even get built in the future. The real kick in the pants is the ever present danger that you'll end up with a data-center that generates its own power on site, using turbo-generators running 24/7/365 because the grid and generation doesn't have anywhere near the required slack (aka resilience, aka redundancy) to take on hundreds of gigawatts of new base load. In addition to the noise, you also get particulates and pollution. If they do manage to avoid local generation, you're still left with the noise of cooling systems, and the waste heat island.
phendrenad2 1mo ago
> the backlash to data centers, Flock and AI glasses It seems reasonable that these three things are part of ONE "backlash", but I don't believe they are. I think these are three separate issues with three different, mostly overlapping, groups of people who are giving "backlash". Data centers themselves are subject to two different sources of b-lash. There are people who heard that datacenters use up "all the water". Then there are people who are broadly anti-AI because they don't want to lose their job (and home, and health insurance, and live under a bridge with all the other displaced people). The backlash against Flock is predictable and unfortunate. Well, we defunded the police, and let political axe-grinders fill our DA seats with hyper-progressive activists. "Just put up cameras, it worked in the UK!" seems like the natural move, but it was a trap. People want to feel safe, and don't want to be spied on. We're going to have to have a functioning justice system at some point, aren't we? The backlash against AI glasses is more visceral, more primal. People get shy on camera, so making everyone be potentially on camera at all times, or random times, is fueling a kind of anxiety that isn't going to just go away. hey, we've been here before, with google glass. Google was smart enough to discontinue it immediately.
- lux-lux-lux 1mo ago
  > Well, we defunded the police, and let political axe-grinders fill our DA seats with hyper-progressive activists. When did this happen?
leonidasrup 1mo ago
Of course Silicon Valley is in denial, when their bonuses depend on AI. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
- antonvs 1mo ago
  That quote is referenced twice in the article, including in the subtitle.
goldenarm 1mo ago
My relatives and friends are fed up with enshittification and hostile tech, some are about to stop using tech entirely. Big tech is too short-termist to realize it, but we are about to destroy a lot of economical value if we destroy the internet and the trust behind it.
_fat_santa 1mo ago
When it comes to the AI backlash, I think a big problem is that we have absolute terrible messengers and they are spreading terrible messages. If I go on X, the vibe there around AI is amazing. You have folks constantly talking about cool things that they get their agents to do. Agents can help you make things you didn't have the knowhow to make, teach you things at a level that you couldn't get just by searching Google and take care of the boring parts of your life so you can spend more time doing the things you care about. Overall things are very positive and makes you excited for the future. Contrast that with the public comments by AI executives. Pretty much all of the messages fall flat at best or are just outright doomery at worst. It's such a stark contrast and while I'm personally really excited for the future, I can totally see how someone who isn't plugged into that world to get a very grim view of the future. And even when they run ads about AI, it's always the worst examples (thinking of that Gemini ad that talked about writing a letter to your family with AI). I really wish the industry could have a better messenger around this stuff. Don't talk about how it can help you do stuff you already know how to do, run an ad about how it can enable you to do stuff you couldn't do before. I think the best example of this is a bike mechanic fixing a Reevo bike and writing firmware using Claude Code so it no longer required an app to work[1]. The author outright said he didn't know how to code or do anything in that area but was able to figure it out with the help of AI. I think a message like that around AI is awesome but no all we hear about is how AI will take your job. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPrtVGimBYs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPrtVGimBYs
- expedition32 1mo ago
  The vast majority of people don't work in tech they have real jobs just trying to survive and feed their families. They don't have time for cult nonsense.
- joegibbs 1mo ago
  Yeah their comments are things like “AI is going to take all your jobs, our latest model is very dangerous, we’ve got ethicists deciding what you can and can’t say to the models, we’re the only ones who can be trusted to control this technology, our revenue is going to be equal to the GDP” Then they wonder why people are making the implication that their future plans are to completely take over society and run it according to their own whims.
0gs 1mo ago
you know, ascribing states of mind like denial to entities like "Silicon Valley" is almost as bad as ascribing consciousness LLMs
insane_dreamer 1mo ago
> One of the big stories of the last decade plus has of course been the story of rising inequality, and of working class Americans becoming economically and politically disempowered. What serves as a better totem to this sentiment better than a megaproject erected under the cover of a panoply of NDAs to build a mass job automator for a trillion-dollar tech company? The sad thing is, tech is supposed to be about solving problems to make people's lives better. But instead of investing $$$$ in tech to solve people's problems, we're investing $$$$ to add to their problems.
mac3n 1mo ago
Did this all begin with SBF and Effective Altruism? Looks like here's a lot of overlap in the cast of characters.
- mac3n 1mo ago
  "SBF and the Effective Altruists" could make a good punk band name

107 points by cdrnsf 1mo ago

sergiotapia 1mo ago

I thought this was going to be about h1b and the severe backlash ycombinator partners are facing online.

ofjcihen 1mo ago
Nah those articles are rarely allowed to make it to the top

atriarch 1mo ago

This is a multifaceted problem for sure. As the fruit of leveraging LLM use, from my experience, is held in the hands of experienced, skilled, and gray-haired workers, what hope do young kids today have of BEING in this world? The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching it's metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Who, in that world, can spend the fiat and for what? I think many humans would prefer going back to picking potatoes out of the ground for a bit of silver than to lose agency to the machine. Everyone else is either bunker prepping or plugging into the matrix. Will we arrive at the Jetsons? Or Warhammer 40k?

arionhardison 1mo ago
This is so closely related to a comment I just made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470026 that I am going to just risk and repost it. > This hit me hard, I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm not sure it's what makes "us human" its what makes humans (us) better than other species. It was intelligence, this was used to create distinction between us and other living beings, different races etc... Now its kind of gone; in some ways. Loss of meaning, purpose, place etc... The one thing we used as a ranking metric is now a commodity, so....? I don't even know how to finish that. So why care, why work...shit just why? Capitalism makes it even worse because we are judged based on what we output, does that even make sense anymore? I think the article is confusing because the "state: is confusing; to me at least. .... 3 responses .... > Thats totally fair, and TBH - I am also very concerned for my wellbeing as well; I and many others are not doing so well because, in my case I no longer see this "vapid" state of existence as ephermial. I have been reading more and more; I guess looking ot knowledge as some eort of ends vs a means to an end for once. Camus, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dostoevsky's underground man etc... Camus: The universe was always going to stay silent when you demand meaning from it; the answer isn't a better metric, it's to push the rock anyway ("imagine Sisyphus happy"). Dostoevsky [underground man]: Refusing to be a piano key in someone's optimized Crystal Palace Stokely Carmichael: "Racism is not a question of attitude, it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism." My conclusion: AI didn't take our meaning, It made me realize I have always been looking in the wrong place and thus reacting ignoratly when I felt "denied" this thing I feel entitled to. Love. Edit: Love; paradoxically, ive felt both entitled to and unworthy of so I'm not sure WTF to do with that. To wit: Our love of self is so closely tied to our output and if we have no output do we have value? Edit: tl;dr - I am not sure I understand the point of anything anymore and many others feel the same way. I do not think this is some "existential crisis" I believe it is a logical conclusion to draw given the evidence presented by the day and age we live in.
- rickydroll 1mo ago
  You raise a good point. If nothing is special, what's our motivation, our purpose? Maybe our purpose becomes being comfortable with no purpose, and I am surprisingly okay with that. I know that my existence is finite, and the time I spend and what I do with it give it importance. For example, spending my time teaching people how to make telescopes, keep a garden going and growing, and train dogs in field exercises would give it meaning. In the short term, figuring out how to use LLMs to take power away from oligarchs would be a good use of time. Spending more hours working to make somebody else rich, yeah, no. Let's go through the archway in the forest.
  - arionhardison 1mo ago
    This terrifies me but I suspect you are correct. My abject obsession with not being viewed as less fuels my drive to create, earn, produce. I may have to learn just to be. To sit with myself, and just be OK with being.
spacecadet 1mo ago
Well even 40k spent 20k years living like the jetsons... There are no analogs for our future. That's one of the core problems here, you have powerful individuals who identify with and aspire to sci-fi, while living in denial of reality. I would argue someone like Musk is more blue pilled and in the Matrix than they think they are...
- Izkata 1mo ago
  > There are no analogs for our future. WALL-E?
  - spacecadet 1mo ago
    Sure, why not pick idiocracy. You miss the point. People now cannot predict the future, all analogs are simultaneously possible and unlikely. Pick any event we have experienced, 9/11, COVID. Sure, some predictions were close, but nothing like the reality of living through it.
quadrifoliate 1mo ago
> The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching its metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Not true at all. If you have a robotic servant that can "do everything" for anywhere close to an affordable amount for even a middle-class person, please post a link and specify what it can do. There a big gap between a tool that can spew out large amounts of code and something you trust to not screw up your house. Once I can tell a robot to do a simple plumbing task in my house, I'll believe in this metamorphosis you're talking about.
- space_fountain 1mo ago
  Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. I think you're right that plumbing is safe for a bit. Human hands are insanely dexterous
  - csa 1mo ago
    > Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. This will not happen in my lifetime. It may do some. It may even do a lot. It will certainly augment close to 100% the remote jobs. AI will never be able to “do every job that is remote”.
    - _DeadFred_ 1mo ago
      Just 5% of the population with no hope, no future, and looking at no survival can be extremely disruptive to a society. Take away all the daydream future job options and only leave the difficult labor that breaks peoples bodies by 40 and the youth could become disruptive to society. You can't add in Mana making sure every minute of those jobs left is productive and every dollar paid in wages gets clawed back from workers. People can't function in modern hyper optimizing of all the impacts on workers but no optimization in housing affordability, food affordability, enjoyment options that benefit the average person instead of all optimizations extracting all the previous slack/dollars in life. You can't optimize away all the slack (in affordability, in time, in things to be enjoyed, in xyz, in 123). You can't optimize away all the future opportunity. You can't optimize away all the daydreams and hope and expect society to look anything like our current society.
stonogo 1mo ago
> robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Why do people keep positing this? The robots get better every year, but they don't get better fast enough to make me think there will be a robot servant doing anything for anyone in my lifetime. As has been the case for the past fifty years or so, they're either hyperspecialized or remote controlled by people, and neither of those spell doom for the economy.
- arionhardison 1mo ago
  Honest question, did you foresee the last 2 or 3 years happening as fast as they have? Edit: In terms of AI/LLM's etc..
  - atriarch 1mo ago
    Indeed. The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space, it's game over. We don't need to engineer plumbing robots - they will engineer themselves. We will see a silicon Cambrian Explosion. Maybe next year maybe in 500, but it's inevitable with the current economic incentives.
    - trickypr 1mo ago
      Bold of you to assume that “current economic inventives” will remain around for 500 years, especially given the American-style neo-liberal economy is only like 70 years old.
    - beej71 1mo ago
      What if the creation of such robots destroys the economic incentive for doing so?
    - BobaFloutist 1mo ago
      >The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space Ok, but that's still sci-fi. We've made a huge advancement in automation of knowledge work, but hardware still has no clear path to what you're describing, or even to anything similar to it.
watwut 1mo ago
Or, we can go back to reality and observe that people are not obsolete and all human work was not eradicates Then we can take down monopolies, tax large corporations, regulate them, empower anti white colar crime agencies again and regulate finance. That will actually do. Bullshitters and sociopaths are too empowered. That is an issue, and acute one.
Laurel1234 1mo ago
> Will we arrive at the Jetsons? Or Warhammer 40k? Maybe Dune: thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
CamperBob2 1mo ago
I think many humans would prefer going back to picking potatoes out of the ground for a bit of silver than to lose agency to the machine Translation: I've never picked potatoes for a living
- dgellow 1mo ago
  Or keep the current world, just without everything having to be done by an LLM Goldberg machine
  - CamperBob2 1mo ago
    Would you say that's a progressive point of view, or a conservative one? I'm not sure what the ideological term is for someone who doesn't argue for a return to the past or advancement into the future, but for permanent retention of current conditions.
    - dgellow 1mo ago
      As I said, just remove the LLMs Goldberg machines. That’s it. The rest can continue to evolve and change
      - CamperBob2 1mo ago
        No, thanks, I like mine. It runs on a spare machine in my basement and seems benign enough.
fatata123 1mo ago
[dead]

panny 1mo ago

I'm puzzled how people who didn't care about Snowden are suddenly very upset about Flock. I'm glad they finally decided the 4A is important.

GenerWork 1mo ago
I'm not. The same people who seemingly magically cared about Flock overnight will move onto something else within the year. There's always something new to be outraged over, Flock is just the flavor of the week.
- cheesemonk66 1mo ago
  I think this taps in to why big tech companies are unconcerned as well. How many of these people who oppose data centers have stopped utilizing their outputs? How many of these anti AI folks are using AI either at work or in their personal lives? It's just hot to hate AI right now.
- Sindisil 1mo ago
  Are you trying to dismiss Flock and the like as not worthy of outrage?
Zsfe510asG 1mo ago
It is more concrete now. For example the footage that was released about the Kirk shooter showed that you are filmed everywhere, including in residential areas. People are beginning to understand.
msdz 1mo ago
My take is that the difference is simply down to visibility, and by extension broader understanding, of the issue: - Cameras film me and my family and neighbors everywhere in daily life => Obviously an issue - Something about secret agencies maybe (?) reading along my messages => “I’ve got nothing to hide in there anyway”
- CodingJeebus 1mo ago

red_admiral 1mo ago

Something I never thought would happen: ultra-conservative Moms For Liberty and progressive education campaigners agree on something. Namely "get that AI out of our schools". The Butlerian Jihad has started.

_aavaa_ 1mo ago
Can't wait for a society dependent on spice and which is still controlled those with political (or super human) powers.
Grombobulous 1mo ago
It makes me wonder how the powers will be will manage to split this issue into powerless factions like they did for Occupy Wall St.
- a34729t 1mo ago
  Lasr time it was identity politics, I think they'll use trans as the wedge for these groups.
  - Grombobulous 1mo ago
    I am curious how that will be coherent but we have all been surprised by incoherence in politics many times over.
- mindslight 1mo ago
  That die has already been cast. It's stop everything versus "accelerationism" full speed ahead. Both sides will point to how their full world view is coherent and would have sensible results, and will blame the other side for the problems from their own agenda not being allowed to go far enough. The former will succeed at when pushing regulations that merely constitute speed bumps for the big players but hamstring individuals and small businesses, and the latter will succeed at pushing for little government restrictions on the regulated sandboxes of the big players. Regulatory capture complete. I had a terrifying thought while mowing the lawn today that we don't even have an inkling of a feel for how imaginary property laws are going to destroy the usefulness of hosted LLMs for individuals. Ask Claude Jr the easiset way to attach some mechanical actuators to your lawnmower and to write some software, and it's going to respond "sorry, automated lawnmowing runs afoul of patents X, Y, and Z. Please upload your patent license certificates". With LLMs we're currently at the stage where Google used to reliably return good links to cracks/warez/etc, and as we all know that's been thoroughly locked down.

Zsfe510asG 1mo ago

SV is also in denial that AI is the final straw that makes people leave the Internet.

phainopepla2 1mo ago
How I wish that were true for more than a tiny fraction of the population
joegibbs 1mo ago
Perhaps the World Wide Web but do you see how addicted the average person is to TikTok? 0.1% might decide to lead a tech-free lifestyle (and we can be sure that each will interviewed and get an article written about them).

cocacola1 1mo ago

The industry needs messengers that can put out a positive vision that also aren’t creepy or skeezy seeming dudes. I don’t think Zuck’s WSJ manifesto convinced anyone, plus he’s a terrible messenger.

watwut 1mo ago
Non creepy people were rejected by billionaires class, they just dont fit in. And conversely, non creepy people also avoid the tech bro creepy singularity is here crowd.
Sindisil 1mo ago
The industry needs to come to grips with the fact that many, many people either have no use for or actively despise GenAI.
- roto 1mo ago
  Why should they worry about the people that are not going to give them money and likely wont ever be convinced to? They don't need to capture literally every person or whole industries to be successful.
  - AngryData 1mo ago
    And how has such distain for large parts of a population turned out in the past? Short term people sometimes get away with it, longer term and their society crashes when people start taking action. But it doesn't always take a long time if people are inflamed enough about an issue.
  - Sindisil 1mo ago
    Because the negative externalities of GenAI are great enough that the majority will soon recognize them and demand action. But I don't expect that to slow down any of the main drivers for now. Some have too much invested monetarily and emotionally, others have been caught up in the hype cycle.
  - shimman 1mo ago

simianwords 1mo ago

[flagged]

greekrich92 1mo ago
There is no equivalence. There is a mass of people who are concerned about "woke." The people who are emotionally invested in AI's success are a tiny minority who have no power to push a backlash. Hmm wait a minute, unless that small minority is politically well connected with a lot of media access. Then they could manufacture a fake backlash. Much like the backlash to "woke!" Ok nevermind it is the same.
- simianwords 1mo ago
  "its the same but in a more nuanced way that you didn't consider"
- SpicyLemonZest 1mo ago
  What distinguishes a real backlash from a manufactured backlash, in your view? Every movement includes people who go talk to the media about why you ought to join them.

imglorp 1mo ago

For one thing, saying the quiet part out loud takes the covers off: https://www.artisan.co/blog/stop-hiring-humans https://www.artisan.co/blog/stop-hiring-humans For another, apply AI where it's good but stop forcing it where it doesn't belong. Ask the users, they know.

ilamont 1mo ago

When the bubble bursts and tens of millions of people see their retirement accounts with S&P holdings drop 30%, that's when the knives will really come out.

dmix 1mo ago

Vibecoding meets the long history of viberegulation

ogou 1mo ago

I don't think they are in denial. I think they just don't care about public sentiment. American capitalism has proven over and over that people who hate you will still buy your product, at a premium.

spwa4 1mo ago
An alternate interpretation is also possible: that "public sentiment" overemphasizes screaming minorities, and the vast majority just doesn't care.
- mikewarot 1mo ago
  You haven't seen NIMBY until you've seen what happens when there's even a hint of a new AI data center coming to town. Take the normal complaints about change, and bump them up approximately 3 orders of magnitude, and you'll be in the ballpark.

miiiiiike 1mo ago

My family keeps sending me screenshots of AI generated arguments against building new data centers. Apparently we have too many and they don't understand where the demand is coming from. When I asked how many we'll need over the next 10 years the answer was simple, we'll need to build exactly "Oh, fuck off." data centers in the US over the next 10 years to meet expected demand. We should get on that. I guess video games are a problem too. And social media. They wrote about it on their Facebook Group. The news one, the one where they repost TikToks of people pointing and nodding at another video where someone in a trucker hat is talking about a conspiracy theory, not the one where they talk about Candy Crush. I don’t use AI. Nothing about these conversations makes sense.

m463 1mo ago
> My family keeps sending me screenshots of AI generated arguments against building new data centers. obviously from chinese models running a campaign to keep the US from pulling away.
- m463 1mo ago
  wow: https://www.axios.com/2026/08/28/china-ai-data-center-backlash-bots https://www.axios.com/2026/08/28/china-ai-data-center-backla...

tescreal 1mo ago

If they're in denial, perhaps they see something bigger at play? Governments are likely very interested in the massive-scale capacities for monitoring and analysis these tools enable. The public might not even matter to the suits in the end.

trickypr 1mo ago
I think it is more likely they are just drinking their own koolaid (and their friends are too). They are paid to bring in investor dollars, which requires lofty promises.
- tescreal 1mo ago
  I want to believe that, but I do wonder. The surveillance powers are immense for such technology. Forget the magical "SAI" stuff. It would also be a perfect cause for hyperscaling: total coverage.

1000100_1000101 1mo ago

I thought a big part of the opposition to data centers was due to the massive spike in electricity costs, or even loss of availability in getting power, for regular people while the data center gets a deal. If they actually paid for the new power generation, I doubt there would be much backlash. That it's likely to be used to mine your personal data and be used to create AI slop in exchange for more global warming are just reasons to hate it more, but I think it's not the primary hate point.

mikewarot 1mo ago
Well, they're already bidding up generating capacity contracts for upcoming years. The net effect is raising everyone's electric bills today for a data center that might not even get built in the future. The real kick in the pants is the ever present danger that you'll end up with a data-center that generates its own power on site, using turbo-generators running 24/7/365 because the grid and generation doesn't have anywhere near the required slack (aka resilience, aka redundancy) to take on hundreds of gigawatts of new base load. In addition to the noise, you also get particulates and pollution. If they do manage to avoid local generation, you're still left with the noise of cooling systems, and the waste heat island.

phendrenad2 1mo ago

> the backlash to data centers, Flock and AI glasses It seems reasonable that these three things are part of ONE "backlash", but I don't believe they are. I think these are three separate issues with three different, mostly overlapping, groups of people who are giving "backlash". Data centers themselves are subject to two different sources of b-lash. There are people who heard that datacenters use up "all the water". Then there are people who are broadly anti-AI because they don't want to lose their job (and home, and health insurance, and live under a bridge with all the other displaced people). The backlash against Flock is predictable and unfortunate. Well, we defunded the police, and let political axe-grinders fill our DA seats with hyper-progressive activists. "Just put up cameras, it worked in the UK!" seems like the natural move, but it was a trap. People want to feel safe, and don't want to be spied on. We're going to have to have a functioning justice system at some point, aren't we? The backlash against AI glasses is more visceral, more primal. People get shy on camera, so making everyone be potentially on camera at all times, or random times, is fueling a kind of anxiety that isn't going to just go away. hey, we've been here before, with google glass. Google was smart enough to discontinue it immediately.

lux-lux-lux 1mo ago
> Well, we defunded the police, and let political axe-grinders fill our DA seats with hyper-progressive activists. When did this happen?

leonidasrup 1mo ago

Of course Silicon Valley is in denial, when their bonuses depend on AI. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

antonvs 1mo ago
That quote is referenced twice in the article, including in the subtitle.

goldenarm 1mo ago

My relatives and friends are fed up with enshittification and hostile tech, some are about to stop using tech entirely. Big tech is too short-termist to realize it, but we are about to destroy a lot of economical value if we destroy the internet and the trust behind it.

_fat_santa 1mo ago

When it comes to the AI backlash, I think a big problem is that we have absolute terrible messengers and they are spreading terrible messages. If I go on X, the vibe there around AI is amazing. You have folks constantly talking about cool things that they get their agents to do. Agents can help you make things you didn't have the knowhow to make, teach you things at a level that you couldn't get just by searching Google and take care of the boring parts of your life so you can spend more time doing the things you care about. Overall things are very positive and makes you excited for the future. Contrast that with the public comments by AI executives. Pretty much all of the messages fall flat at best or are just outright doomery at worst. It's such a stark contrast and while I'm personally really excited for the future, I can totally see how someone who isn't plugged into that world to get a very grim view of the future. And even when they run ads about AI, it's always the worst examples (thinking of that Gemini ad that talked about writing a letter to your family with AI). I really wish the industry could have a better messenger around this stuff. Don't talk about how it can help you do stuff you already know how to do, run an ad about how it can enable you to do stuff you couldn't do before. I think the best example of this is a bike mechanic fixing a Reevo bike and writing firmware using Claude Code so it no longer required an app to work[1]. The author outright said he didn't know how to code or do anything in that area but was able to figure it out with the help of AI. I think a message like that around AI is awesome but no all we hear about is how AI will take your job. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPrtVGimBYs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPrtVGimBYs

expedition32 1mo ago
The vast majority of people don't work in tech they have real jobs just trying to survive and feed their families. They don't have time for cult nonsense.
joegibbs 1mo ago
Yeah their comments are things like “AI is going to take all your jobs, our latest model is very dangerous, we’ve got ethicists deciding what you can and can’t say to the models, we’re the only ones who can be trusted to control this technology, our revenue is going to be equal to the GDP” Then they wonder why people are making the implication that their future plans are to completely take over society and run it according to their own whims.

0gs 1mo ago

you know, ascribing states of mind like denial to entities like "Silicon Valley" is almost as bad as ascribing consciousness LLMs

insane_dreamer 1mo ago

> One of the big stories of the last decade plus has of course been the story of rising inequality, and of working class Americans becoming economically and politically disempowered. What serves as a better totem to this sentiment better than a megaproject erected under the cover of a panoply of NDAs to build a mass job automator for a trillion-dollar tech company? The sad thing is, tech is supposed to be about solving problems to make people's lives better. But instead of investing $$$$ in tech to solve people's problems, we're investing $$$$ to add to their problems.

mac3n 1mo ago

Did this all begin with SBF and Effective Altruism? Looks like here's a lot of overlap in the cast of characters.

mac3n 1mo ago
"SBF and the Effective Altruists" could make a good punk band name