undefined

points

[-]

Is there room for people who are already in the acceptance phase? We started aggressively adopting AI in my company this year. I think I disliked (though never hated) it for a few days, but it’s a systemic change that I can’t just push back against. I don’t believe that strong public opinion can stop technological development either—just take nuclear for example.

I think that the concerns underlying the outrage are real and honestly valid, but the question I’m asking now isn’t “how to stop it” but “what now”? Because economies are cyclical and if it wasn’t AI it’d have been something else that would threaten our survival, and there are many good alternatives right now: climate change and war.

by gensym2 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

> We started aggressively adopting AI in my company this year. I think I disliked (though never hated) it for a few days, but it’s a systemic change that I can’t just push back against.

I'm right there with you. I think AI will be bad as a whole for the world, but I use it for work every day and am pushing my team to use it more. I think it's a really effective tool for my company even if it's going to be bad for the world overall.

> I don’t believe that strong public opinion can stop technological development either—just take nuclear for example.

I see nuclear as an example of where public opinion did stop development. In the US at least, we've basically given up on nuclear power, much to our detriment.

Another example of this is human cloning, which seemed inevitable back when Dolly the sheep was first cloned.

by asdfasgasdgasdg1 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

I don't think AI is going to be as easy to give up on as nuclear. Nuclear has some long term/diffuse benefits, but in the short run it's just one among many types of electricity generation. AI is a whole category, not one substitutable member of an already common category. Us giving up on AI development would be more like giving up on electricity generation than like giving up on nuclear.

Human cloning is a solution with no corresponding problem. We can make more humans very easily, if we have someone willing to bear those humans and take care of them.

If AI becomes demonstrably useful, opting out will be incredibly challenging, since we cannot force other countries to disarm.

by 2 hours ago|

parent|

prev|

[-]

deleted

by evmaki1 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

The industry has pushed socially disruptive technologies in several waves (mobile phones, algorithmic social media, short-form content) with seemingly no buy-in from the greater public, nor any meaningful consequences for the ills imposed. Many are now looking at our current crop of tech leaders and billionaires and maybe correctly detecting a bit of indifference to the grievances of the masses of normal people who have been forced to live in successively more deteriorated societies shaped by technologies that they've had no voice in shaping.

AI is just the next wave, and the impact is more tangible than ever – it literally takes your job, and it's being pushed on you by enormously wealthy people who don't understand you, your life, and what's important to you. The sad thing is, AI can be beneficial to people if wielded in the right way, but we are in a polarized environment where productive conversations no longer feel possible: you're either an AI bro or a luddite. I think anyone (myself included) who has spent time developing B2C products that incorporate AI quickly discovers just how touchy of a subject this is, and it's due imo to the sins of the accelerationist crowd that never wastes time understanding the needs and perspectives of normal people.