Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI (opens in new tab)

(bsky.app)

20 pointspoisonfountain8d ago9 comments

9 comments

As someone who's in his late 20s and didn't (consciously) witness the dotcom crisis I want to ask the older people here: was this also part of the dotcom bubble era? Were people working in bookstores angry at Amazon, people working in retail fashion angry at fashion ecommerce stores, etc?

epoxyhockey8d ago

The dotcom boom (it wasn't a crisis) was about putting brick and mortar stores online and making shopping more convenient and price efficient. The younger generation was much more enthusiastic about shopping online, and being initial drivers of it. I remember the $25 off (no minimum order) coupons to basically get free stuff every week. The older generations still preferred to go to a store. It was a much slower progression taking 10-years for the older generations to become comfortable with shopping online.

AI is being driven by the more enthusiastic older generation (in my view) and it's not just about taking a fraction of brick and mortar sales away, it's about systematically replacing the full breadth of white collar jobs, especially the entry level jobs. You know, the jobs that college grads are vying for.

seanmcdirmid8d ago

Not really. Secretaries and typists aged out of the job market, Barnes and Nobles was still booming and attracted all the bookstore scorn, people still bought things in stores anyways.

lioeters8d ago

Ex-CEO of Google telling a crowd of young graduates entering society, "You will work for AI." Then trying to counter the boos with remarks like: "If you get offered a chance to ride on the rocket ship, you don't ask questions you just get on."

This is not only about AI the technology, it's the deserved anger against the privileged and powerful for their utter mismanagement of society. The youth sees through the bullshit. Good on them, there may be hope for humanity after all.

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yacin8d ago

Out of touch exec commencement speeches will continue until morale improves.

stavros8d ago

Honest question, are people against AI, or against AI being solely in the hands of a few massive companies, thus concentrating wealth even more? Are people against local models as well? What if they could run Claude at home (maybe with the same power requirements as now, but maybe with much less upfront cost).

rvz8d ago

Figure 1 - Former Google CEO with a vested interest in AI companies who just wants to watch the world burn tokens for the 'benefit of humanity'.

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