HN Explorer

What is the actual percentage of people For and Against AI?

1 points by Zeruxe ↗ HN
Ive started to think about it lately, a google search just doesn't yield a satisfiable result.

What do you guys think ? How many people are actually against AI?

Sometimes it feels like the majority are starting to be skeptical, but maybe that's just the environment im surrounded by.

32 comments

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verdverm
The ratios are very different in The Worried West vs The Rest
Zeruxe
I mean you are probably right, I think I came by a survey that showed that the concern is higher in "wealthier countries"

What more interested in is if people are just against AI itself, or just worried about how it's being developed and deployed.

Besides, "the worried west" also probably takes up the majority of the AI usage.

nperez
I don't think it's a binary. Even among people who are pro-AI, there are uses of AI that almost everyone is against. I doubt most people have a problem with a lightweight model that runs on a laptop and does grammar checks, but models that are wildly energy-inefficient or used for war + crime + scams are a different story.
lf88
I agree. I am extremely worried about the development of frontier AI models. I would like to see an immediate stop of further developments of such models and a permanent, global, ban on superintelligence.

On the contrary, I think that less capable models could be used for several, largely positive, applications.

I also think that narrow AI models developed for specific scientific applications (e.g., protein folding, weather predictions...) are in general beneficial for humanity.

Zeruxe
sorry but are we really gonna be calling it superintelligence now ? haha

I totally agree with the benefits of the smaller models, but it's the large frontier models, potentially or accidently removing the security barriers from those can cause things far worse than the "hugging face" incident..

lf88
Building a super-intelligent AI is the stated goal of major AI companies. It may or may not be possible, but due to the recent surge in capabilities of frontier models I would not take any risk.

Frontier models are, indeed, already too capable and too dangerous. I would have been more comfortable if a stop of the development occurred 12 months ago. However, the second best moment to press the "stop" button is now.

verdverm
> too capable and too dangerous

I see negligence as I look past the fear mongering from our dysfunctional media ecosystem

verdverm
> we really gonna be calling it superintelligence now

I will not be, we engineered it, so it is an artificial type of intelligence, and given the dumb things they do with consistency, I find it quite the stretch to call it super or intelligent

I think the current generation more closely resembles a spaghetti throwing machine at the first point of difficulty, this is not how intelligent beings like ourselves approach these situations.

JKCalhoun
And I'm a fatalist regarding AI. I put aside whether I'm for or against. AI just is and we have to deal with it.

Below the fatalism though, I've been excited for this day ever since I saw "2001" in the matinee theater as a kid (and also as a kid: played against a Tic Tac Toe computer at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago).

And that I can run some of these models locally? Heady times for my inner kid.

I've tried (and struggled) to understand how they work as well so that I am not ignorant on the subject—so that I can have an opinion a little better than a layman's.

allturtles
> I've been excited for this day ever since I saw "2001" in the matinee theater as a kid

You've been excited for the arrival of AI ever since you saw a movie about a murderous AI who tries (and mostly succeeds) to wipe out the entire human crew of its ship? Dr. Strangelove also got you psyched up for a nuclear war, I guess?

JKCalhoun
Ha ha, yeah, well, I understood the film to be fiction.
knottn
Yeah, to be against ai on some level is to be against computing. An abacus is ai, for some looser definitions of ai. But we can all accept our mortality while we give first priority, breath by breath, to staying alive.
orionblastar
I am for AI, but it is a puppet come to life like Pinocchio, and needs a Jiminy Cricket for a conscience. The AI needs morals and ethics; otherwise, it causes trouble and bad results.
Zeruxe
but then, who is to program these so called morals and ethics? I feel like there would be an unavoidable BIAS when integrating morals into it..
lf88
This goal seems flawed to me. There's no universal agreement on "morals and ethics". Superficially people may agree on some general principles, but if you go into the details you'll likely find substantial differences.
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lf88
According to all the recent polls the vast majority of the population in the western world is worried about AI and wants stricter regulations. I would say it's about time!
BugsJustFindMe
> What do you guys think?

Your survival under capitalism depends on you being needed. And if right now AI helps you do things, tomorrow AI makes you unnecessary. The thing to worry about here isn't AI. The thing to worry about here is a society that has no plan to stop forcing everyone to labor to eat while simultaneously devaluing their labor.

There are three important analytic boundaries:

1) Some people are less employable right now because of AI.

2) The limit approaching everyone else will be less employable in the future because of AI if it keeps progressing (this includes even manual labor eventually), and we have no reason yet to believe that it won't keep progressing.

3) AI might suddenly stop progressing for unpredictable reasons, but right now that doesn't seem likely.

anenefan
It's down to how it's used and whether or not it's an efficient or worthwhile use of resources.

For the many positive things A.I. can or could do, the negatives are bound up into many concerns or considerations;

  Will the products be better or substantially better given the A.I's overall cost?

  Down the track will it make things on average cheaper?

  How soon before much of it's use is primarily monitoring people online and off ... and then just how long before  everyone will be expected to have a 24 hr a day/ all year long  A.I. buddy / minder / nanny / *cop*  just like the tech tools presently expect everyone has to have a mobile phone?
AI is very useful, but for the amount of data centres planned, people are asking what possible additional legitimately beneficial usage can there be waiting in the wings - there is great scepticism that it's more likely an elaborate path to make a small group of people filthy rich.
goatlover
AI as a tool to augment human intelligence that everyone has access to if they want to use it is fine. As long as it's humans using the tool to do work, be creative, help us live better lives, make improvements. Not vice versa. And as long as it's optional, not forced on everyone.

Anything beyond that is highly questionable and potentially dangerous.

Zeruxe
I just find it hard to understand the tool arguement from time to time. This isn't like when spinning jenny came out, or when the calculator came out.

It's so much better,smarter,more effective and affects so many different parameters.

silverFork
In my opinion Ai development should have been iterative rather than full blast in order to evaluate the outcomes and side effects of each pass before proceeding further. Well that is not what happened and it is a full blast hurricane in both development and finance.

The ai big boys are all seeking to be winners and the race was about supremacy. It is probably too late to draw the line now and that is what they wanted from the onset . They big boys are all hoping to collect rent for eternity from this technology. It will make a lot of people obsolete.

If say a tech could collect $ trillions from a dinky software, they think that they can up that for eternity given that ai has extracted all the knowledge that humanity has in technology, science and humanities.

Now the race among the big boys is about who can paint it better, claiming the each one is amore sensitive and caring. The PR and anti-PR firms work to paint the image that they seek for themselves and their competition before IPOs hit the street.

Asking who is for and against Ai at this point, does nothing. It is a done deal. It is here and will not disappear.

luxuryballs
Intelligence = Smart

Artificial = Not Real

AI is Not Real Smart

CompoundStock
maybe artists—because before AI, when you saw a realistic drawing that blew your mind, you'd ask yourself “Who drew this?” but now it's more like “it's ai dude”