They are both right, the revolution needs to be oriented for ordinary people and college kids to benefit from it or else their attitude is wholly justified. There's basically no reason for them to cheer on a future of trillion dollar corporations using AI services to battle for knowledge work market share.
If AI works you'll be able to make more stuff with fewer people. While that could lead to unemployment historically it's not gone that way. You get more stuff.
Like agricultural employment has gone from ~70% to ~2% but the people who would have dug potatoes make cars, houses, aircraft and the like.
Rightfully so. Unfettered capitalism will only end with a bunch of rich people producing and selling the means of living to the rest of us at just the right markup to keep their feet on our throats. Organized labor needs a resurgence in a big way.
There's a very real possibility that AI proponents completely lose the next generation of adults. The output is not enjoyable to consume, the people who rely on it are not cool, and the effects of using it are unpleasant and hard to defend on aesthetic, intellectual, or moral grounds.
There are real use cases for this technology! But the idea that the generation of superficially plausible text is "the next Industrial Revolution" comes out of the same mindset that has turned a neat technology into a banal hellscape for consumers and employees. We desperately need some leadership in companies or institutions that can place this technology in its proper context, and leverage it without getting manic about it.
> The output is not enjoyable to consume, the people who rely on it are not cool, and the effects of using it are unpleasant and hard to defend on aesthetic, intellectual, or moral grounds.
The AI output you are referring to mostly seems to refer to “AI slop”. It’s not hard to argue that AI slop sucks.
There is a lot that AI does that has created joy for me or people around me:
- whimsical profile pics for online profiles for me, family, and friends
- writing e-mails for community groups — good for a family member who doesn’t have the most sociable writing style
- automating data capture and organization
- automating scheduling with multiple and variable constraints
- catching obvious errors that somehow still happen (e.g., off by one errors)
- filling in gaps in analysis either due to gaps in knowledge or simply an oversight
These are sample of things that I have done or helped people do in the past week, and the results have been well-received.
Maybe I’m part of that solution that you propose, but I have used words similar to “biggest change since…” (I usually say spreadsheets, but I don’t think “Industrial Revolution” is wrong).
Fwiw, I don’t think the result will be dystopian the way most people seem to think that it will. I firmly believe that meat space interactions will gain much more traction, and that will change the way we live and work.
AI has been the “next industrial revolution” since the 70’s and 80’s. We’ll have a few more RoboCop movies and then things will be as they always are after hype cycles
Governments and companies are so bad at selling AI to the population.The reason is the elephant in the room. Everyone or at least most understand the consequences. You can't sit and be amazed at the speed an AI does tasks and not be able to extrapolate what that would mean for jobs.
I wonder how many bright people are choosing not to pursue higher education due to the current message around AI, and what the long-term consequences will be.
Number of industrial revolutions: generously, two (though the distinction between the first and second Industrial Revolution is more or less only of interest to historians).
Number of things called the next industrial revolution: roughly five billion.
(The offending speaker appears to work for a private equity firm that does mostly property stuff, so probably not a leading authority on what is the next Industrial Revolution.)
AI does potentially upend the main developed world model of spend fifteen plus years in education learning skills and then go employ those in work. If AI can do the skilled stuff it changes the economics.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 54.7 ms ] threadLike agricultural employment has gone from ~70% to ~2% but the people who would have dug potatoes make cars, houses, aircraft and the like.
The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963163
Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704443
Well, yeah.
There are real use cases for this technology! But the idea that the generation of superficially plausible text is "the next Industrial Revolution" comes out of the same mindset that has turned a neat technology into a banal hellscape for consumers and employees. We desperately need some leadership in companies or institutions that can place this technology in its proper context, and leverage it without getting manic about it.
The AI output you are referring to mostly seems to refer to “AI slop”. It’s not hard to argue that AI slop sucks.
There is a lot that AI does that has created joy for me or people around me:
- whimsical profile pics for online profiles for me, family, and friends
- writing e-mails for community groups — good for a family member who doesn’t have the most sociable writing style
- automating data capture and organization
- automating scheduling with multiple and variable constraints
- catching obvious errors that somehow still happen (e.g., off by one errors)
- filling in gaps in analysis either due to gaps in knowledge or simply an oversight
These are sample of things that I have done or helped people do in the past week, and the results have been well-received.
Maybe I’m part of that solution that you propose, but I have used words similar to “biggest change since…” (I usually say spreadsheets, but I don’t think “Industrial Revolution” is wrong).
Fwiw, I don’t think the result will be dystopian the way most people seem to think that it will. I firmly believe that meat space interactions will gain much more traction, and that will change the way we live and work.
Euthanasia for the young might be the best we can offer to the next generation.
Rapidly depopulating Earth below 1 bilion people or less seems in our reach.
Somehow I have a feeling that the reaction would have been totally different if it would have been the EECS graduates.
Fear and rejection in certain professions is real and maybe even understandable.
I imagine 25 years ago someone telling music graduates “streaming is the future of music distribution” would have received the same reaction.
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Number of things called the next industrial revolution: roughly five billion.
(The offending speaker appears to work for a private equity firm that does mostly property stuff, so probably not a leading authority on what is the next Industrial Revolution.)