People Are Increasingly Worried AI Will Make Daily Life Worse
People Are Increasingly Worried AI Will Make Daily Life Worse
A Pew survey finds that a majority of Americans are more concerned than excited about the impact of artificial intelligence—adding weight to calls for more regulation.
People Are Increasingly Worried AI Will Make Daily Life Worse::A Pew survey finds that a majority of Americans are more concerned than excited about the impact of artificial intelligence—adding weight to calls for more regulation.
People are increasingly worried, full stop.
Doom loop news cycle doesn't help.
Social media even moreso than news, for younger audiences. Doom posts gets engagement.
I think people have always been like this. Listen to any two people talk, it is just natural that they will talk about something that makes them nervous. It is like salmon returning to the spawning ground, humans discussing fears.
I remember when we had the word Neurotic. And it described someone frankly more sane than anyone I know now.
Learn, don't just watch news. Get perspective.
So what should we do instead? And no, going outside is not an option.
Cheer up, it may never happen.
Yeah, cruel fact about humanity. All these great technologies could give us luxury space communism in 100 years or so, but that won't happen. Shitty people will be shitty and these technologies will be used for shitty purposes or intentionally stunted.
We could already be having that, maybe minus the space part.
Go to any McDonald's drive thru with the automated ordering. You will realize it is already making life worse.
I don't like Worried Al. I want Weird Al back.
Weird Al never went away. He still drops albums from time to time.
He has announced he's likely finished releasing albums due to timeliness concerns and waning interest in the format. He'll probably just release singles as he comes up with them from now on.
Even the occational movie.
That picture fucked me up tho
Trumpy smooches
There's a issue with this title, and it's not the word "AI".
It's the word "Will".
It already did.
I came here to say this. We've had threats of "AI" for a while, and initially, it should have been better, but it wasn't. Look at the latest voice assistant from your favorite large corporation spy gadget, like an echo dot. The voice assistant sucks. It constantly misunderstands you, half the time you get feedback like "I don't understand" despite asking for something you've asked for before, in the same way you've asked before, and had it do something before, but now, no, fuck you.
Responses are repetitious and boring, like "playing (song) by (artist) on (streaming service)" or "turning on x lights".... Always the same, always boring. Ask about almost anything beyond a function, and usually you get a quote snippet from a webpage you've never heard of, which only mentions whatever you asked for and doesn't provide any actual information 90% of the time. It would be more useful for it to respond with "I found this on the web" followed by the sounds of hippos farting.
This is the "AI" we had until now, and it's the AI we constantly interact with. None of the star trek computer level intelligence where you can ask your assistant to increase the illumination, and have it do something because it understands the intent behind what you're saying, not just running a select statement on your literal words... And that's even if it understands at all. You don't see Will Riker standing there arguing with the computer like "no, I asked for a coffee" while the replicator is populated by a cookie.
Then LLMs go into widespread use and the system shits out stuff like chat GPT which most people can't seem distinguish from talking to a person, and now we live in this hellscape. AI chatbots are now selling us shit, replying to our emails, posing as real people even....
And I'm just talking about speech-based AI.... Don't get me started on the insanity of image AI.
It already has. Autocorrect has gone to compete shit. Online news reports have become nothing but buzz words. Internet searches have become useless.
All of these are results of companies switching from simple algorithms that were already proven to work just fine to "artificial" intelligence which is practically useless at this point for anything other than deep fakes or eldritch horror images.
Online news reports have become nothing but buzz words
Wasn't that the case for the past decade or so already?
I don't see such an amazing difference in daily news unless maybe you're reading some already worthless tabloid rags. Journalism has to be searched for and usually paid for. Free "news" sites were always clickbait and pointless reposts of real sources.
It's already made my experience worse every time I need customer service.
Your worse experience saves the company money! Why do you hate the economy, consumer?! /s
I’m worried because AI is supposed to be sorting trash, cleaning sewers, and other laborious work. Instead we got AI trying to take the jobs of artists. 🤦🏽♂️
That's just the most visible part because artists are constantly complaining about it in the news. In fact the news loves reporting doom scenarios for everything (because in the end that's what the consumer clicks on.)
But for laborious work you just need robots, not AI. Robots already took over a huge chuck of dangerous, laborious work and will continue to take more.
This just in: people are gullible as fuck and will believe anything the media (and certain overzealous social media owning billionaires) tells them.
It is not shocking that people are worried about AI impacting their lives negatively when nearly all of the main stream coverage of it centers around all of the ways, both real and conspiratorial, that it will hurt them.
No, people are concerned other people are using AI for dirty shit that will end up making lives harder for 90% of us ... you all know which 90% ...
every new technology makes life more easy and convenient and noisy and annoying and depressing and bad
As always, the problem aren't the tools. It's the psychopath executives, marketers, venture capitalists, etc, that are going to bring us Boring Dystopia 2.0 by using these tools mostly for evil. It's already happening. It's going to speed up, and it's going to permeate everything. Massive layoffs, intrusive surveillance, misinformation, etc.
Combined with the Internet of Shit...it's going to suck in brand new ways. And then people will be surprised and wonder how we got here.
Of course they're worried. They're being told to be worried.
The general sentiment towards AI in the comments is mixed. There are concerns about the potential negative impacts of AI, particularly on jobs and the economy, but also recognition of the benefits that AI can bring.
Main Points Pro AI:
- AI can make life easier and more efficient, with examples given such as not needing to carry cash or visit a bank, and being able to read library books without going to the library.
- AI can potentially solve problems and provide more tools for problem-solving.
- Some people have jobs that wouldn't exist without technology, including AI.
- AI can automate mundane and repetitive tasks, freeing up humans to do more creative and complex work.
Main Points Against AI:
- AI can lead to job displacement, with concerns that it will be used to replace human workers, particularly by the wealthy and corporations.
- There are concerns about the potential for AI to be used to exploit the poor and increase wealth inequality.
- Some people have had negative experiences with AI, such as in customer service or automated ordering systems.
- There are fears that AI will be used by those in power to control and manipulate, rather than benefit, the average person.
- There is a concern that the current economic system is not equipped to handle the changes that AI will bring, potentially leading to social and economic instability.
Main points against AI, specifically points #2 and #4, do appear similar. However, I believe these concerns can be alleviated if we, as average individuals, adapt AI into our own contexts. If our current roles could potentially be replaced by AI, we should strive to harness this technology to augment our work. We should take an active role and participate in the changes AI brings, rather than merely being subjects of these changes. While corporations may have access to AI on a larger scale, we too have access to this technology and can utilize it to our advantage. My frustration would stem from a lack of access to these tools, not from the changes they bring about.
I hear you, but aren't pro-points 1 and 4 something we already have via good old automation? Can it even get any better on those points by using the-technology-currently-known-as-AI?
Same for con-points 1, 2, 4, really. Thinking of automation for point 1 (human assembly lines vs robotic used in car manufacturing, for instance). And stuff like social media algorithms have been around and exploiting one class for the benefit of another for quite a bit now. Though, admittedly, point 4 can always get worse.
AI is making my life way easier and better so far.
So easy that your employers will no longer need you in a year or two.
I actually see it the other way around. We will not need the employers. I used to be an employee and now I am independent and doing the work that would normally require a team of people and big money backing it all up. I think this is going to become more and more apparent as time goes on as while yes, AI will benefit corporations, it also equally benefit individuals. Corporations are the ones who are most in trouble. Cute that they think they are going to be the winners here.
Yup so far. It's the beginning of the curve now when everything is new and awesome.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Said the same above but will share here too. I actually see that curve another way. We will not need the employers. I used to be an employee and now I am independent and doing the work that would normally require a team of people and big money backing it all up. I think this is going to become more and more apparent as time goes on as while yes, AI will benefit corporations, it also equally benefit individuals. Corporations are the ones who are most in trouble. Cute that they think they are going to be the winners here.
Any examples?
It's insane in an education environment, it makes learning new concepts and skills a lot easier. Depending on the subject, it's like having a teacher with infinite patience.
I can also generate pretty picture now.
I am imagineering a highly detailed VR Theme Park inspired by parks like EPCOT, Disneyland, Universal, Efteling, and worlds fairs. A big part of this is coding and wow…Chat GPT 4 Pro with the code interpreter is saving me a lot of time. My output has speed up 5x over the last month or so. Back in May it would save me time as much as waste with hallucinations, but it has majorly improved with very few hallucinations these days. I can tell it what I want and it will spit out the code nearly perfect every time in seconds. The only down side is it cannot work on my larger scripts yet so I still have to write those myself, but it can help with smaller portions of it which still saves me time. Also it is utterly amazing at reading error logs. You know the massive ones with thousands of lines, most irrelevant. It can zero in on the lines I need to know about so fast that that alone is worth the $20 monthly fee. I am loving it. I cannot wait for it to get better as personally I rather not write any code and my core skill is in imagineering and the overall experience.
Because everything is full of rediculous doom scenarios that don't even make sense and no one talks about the great things it enables.
How can having more tools to solve problems make things worse? I can't think of any problem in my life that more tools and methods would work against solving it.
"[Eli] Whitney believed that his cotton gin would reduce the demand for enslaved labor and would help hasten the end of southern slavery. Paradoxically, the cotton gin, a labor-saving device, helped preserve and prolong slavery in the United States for another 70 years."
What problems will get solved? “Our ads aren’t effective enough? We have to pay people to do things when we could be putting it into profits? We’re charging less rent than we think people will pay, but we don’t know how much? People have gotten savvy to my latest scam.”
The capital holding class will be the ones using ai to their benefit. The dishonest will join them. We may get some concessions here and there, but they own them.
Well, for one clearly this creates more mechanisms to exploit the poor. Especially if we chose to regulate as slowly as we have with other tech in the past.
If you manage to keep your job then sure, you'll be way more efficient. I guess AI will help you with your job search and resume if you're laid off, but maybe companies won't need as many people as they used to. 🤷
The AI is in the hands of interests who think you are the problem.
(They don't like me either.)
Every other technical innovation has made the average person's life worse. Why would this one be any different?
I'm rather enjoying my electricity, my antibiotics, my vaccines against respiratory viruses, my access to unlimited information and pornography, My ability to drive cars that are pretty reliable, my ability to travel anywhere in the world at any time at doable prices, technology has treated us pretty well.
I guess I could've made the cutoff like 100 years ago instead of infinite.
This is not true. You are living in a warm house and have fresh water and food and a lot of nice furniture. We don't think about these things but that's because they are default now.
That's a lot of assumptions. Poor people don't go on the internet?
I have a very well paying job that wouldn’t exist without technology.
I read library books without going to the libtary or carrying around paper, thanks to technology
I pay for stuff without having to carry cash or ever visit a bank, thanks to technology
Cars are technology too, as are flush toilets and furnaces
You don’t sound like an average person.
No other innovation has been able to replace human creativity or general human thought. Computers came close but they required specialized knowledge to build AND to use so displaced workers had an opportunity to adapt and upskill.
displaced workers had an opportunity to adapt and upskill.
Learn to code.
This isn't really what happened or how the world works at large. It just made a bunch of rich dudes much richer, and west virginians a lot poorer. And yeah it changed the world in the broad scope of things yada yada thats besides the point 😉
I think in recent years a lot of "innovation" has been pure marketing fluff and had no real potential to change the world. This one really might. I've tempered my expectations, because tech bros really want us to believe there is magic to AI, but eventually it might actually change the world.