devaluation of expertise,
College students working hard to gain expertise in specific areas are faced with the prospect that this very expertise is being "democratized" by AI, putting it in the hands of literally anyone. Sure, true expertise is still needed to "validate" (and train) the AI, etc, etc, but that's a small consolation.
Relatedly, a year ago I was excited to learn the Rust language. Now I don't see the point (And I'm building tools with Rust). I'm sure this sentiment extends across fields.
It had the vibe of “These people need to hear the Truth”.
Schmidt anticipated the response, but does not understand it.
He falls flat on his face here precisely because "needing to hear the truth" is a self-contradiction. The very fact that he has to go around saying 'AI is inevitable, suck it up you live in our world now', proves that it's not true. Nothing that is actually inevitable is declared as such. Nobody goes to say "The sun will rise tomorrow!"
And this failure is pretty serious. The kids (and wider public) instinctively understand this dynamic even if Schmidt doesn't.
No matter how it's phrased, the only thing these kids will hear is "We are ruining your life", "We are taking everything from you".
It's all but inevitable than worryingly soon, some of them will go "Nothing to lose? Bet." and we will see far worse violence than the failed property damage against Sam Altman's house.
Blame wealth for making the corruption of the courts too damn obvious. Now they’re not taken seriously.
There was a time in which they deserved some respect, as a result of free exchange of ideas among intellectuals. That's far behind by now.
And what exactly are we supposed to do? Just try to ship alternatives to big tech slop? Actively try to work against them? Publish cracked software so they stop earning money?
Genuinely asking, as I'm not sure sure indie developers are the ones who should try to work against these enormous corporations, it's typically the job of the government to ensure society works and is fair, but they seem to currently be on the side of big tech, so indie developers can't realistically do anything about it, unless I'm missing what you're asking for here.
Why can't they be as excited as people already invested into Datacenters? /s
As everything regarding college campuses opinion nowadays, it's down to politics. It's not about AI, it's about how this comes in a time in which Silicon Valley is aligning itself with a right-wing government.
This explains why when China shows up with progress the news are actually well received, why opposition to data centers aligns itself with left-wing ethos (environmental, minorities) even if it, on its face, has a ridiculous impact on either, why there's more concern for job losses the closer the industry align with the left (Anyone curious about what financial advisors think of AI? No?), why the technology is seemingly at the same time absolutely useless and the end of white collar jobs, and thus a disaster either way, etc etc.
There are a lot of real valid concerns, it's an incredibly serious matter, if anything it needs more political attention, but the current discourse is a complete flood of utter idiocy and doesn't deserve respect, nor attention.
It’s a tool. And the next generation probably benefits from learning how to use it effectively.
The hype has gotten in the way of reality.
he also said the people who argue it's inevitable are always the ones with a profit motive lol, which i disagree with only because in tech many people who have an anti-profit motive also say it's inevitable.
Every other world-transforming technology I got in contact with was more organic: the personal computer, the internet, high-speed internet, the smartphone, all of those followed the usual adoption curve. Even technical tools like cloud computing which carried a bit of the anxiety from execs about "being left behind" was much more organic.
AI tools are the only technology where I feel it's been shoved down my throat, it's inevitable and I can't adopt it at my own pace, it needs to happen and it needs to happen now. Not only it's inevitable, the messaging is also chock fully instigating fear, through anxiety, through the feeling of inadequacy if you aren't adopting it.
I sincerely cannot wait until this phase of it bursts, I want to see what's on the other side because right now this side kinda sucks even though I have uses for the technology itself.
The only part here with which I disagree is that I feel very similarly about the smartphone.
Now, a different handful of San Francisco companies are asking for lots of money to disrupt society, and I'm just not interested.
Once they started to have algorithmic feeds and those algorithms got tuned for maximum engagement at the detriment of every other factor, that's when things started to spiral downward.
The Tech Powers That Be has told these young adults that AI will disrupt the job market that they are entering. Maybe decimate white collar work. Granted, maybe this was mostly a few years ago because the ecstatic celebration among the cream of the crop of the parasites seems to have cooled down, maybe because they figured out that telling everyone in office jobs that their tech was supposed to make their lives worse was a bad strategy. But still, that was a narrative that has stuck. So these kinds of people drill that non-consentual thought into young adults’ brain. Then the same kind come to their office job graduation ceremony and take the opportunity to hype AI? Yeah, they struck a nerve that they manufactured themselves.
Two possible conclusions to draw from that.
1. Their social brains are so atrophried and withered from the daily sycophancy (occupational hazard of being very high up on the corporate ladder) that they honestly thought that grads would be happy about AI disrupting the job market (the commoners love when stocks go up?)
2. Signalling to investors that AI Is Still Happening at every damn opportunity is more important than pissing off the people you are supposed to give an inspirational speech to
Such a boring take. Misinformation is easy to disprove, problem is commentary that is neither correct or wrong but holds certain biases. It is also very easy to convince yourself you are "thinking critically", but people can often believe something due to their emotions and only try and apply logic to that belief after. It is like coming up with an answer and then working backwards, rather than starting from first principles.
When you work towards a belief it is easy to mistake noise for signal.
>AI will lower your wages!!
>AI will be used to track you!!
>AI will surveil you and profile you like never before!!
Then they get surprised why they get booed. Even personally, I don’t think I met any person IRL that sees AI in a positive way. The only people who cheer for it are the techbros-AI-wrappers who want to sell you some slop SaaS, or the ones who benefit from its market manipulation and price gouging.
It's time to make it a large part of education that there are valid points of view that should be taught and heard but that students might disagree with.
And shame on all the professors that use education as their bully pulpit to push only the legitimization of the hateful woke culture.
Can woke people not imagine what they would think if it was the other way around and universities taught racist, sexist hatred instead of woke hatred ?
“Woke” is a reaction to hateful culture.
“Hateful woke” is the modern “reverse racism”.
What is wrong is reporting the new student politics without the appropriate derision for the simplistic, biased views of students, and not condemning their simplistic, biased professors who inculcate only those biased views, who no longer teach students to respect and investigate other views, who instead teach them to violently deny people the right to air other views on campus.
That stopped ( as seen here ).
And, worse, social media has let those angry students drive debate, which has led to the rise of the hateful woke.
And, still worse, students are no longer being educated to be critical but to accept one side and hate the other.
Why would you think that will happen? You seem aware of, for instance, the Industrial Revolution and what it has ultimately resulted in.
Come on, we're all adults and well-aware that if companies find a way to make people more productive, it just means they'll expect more, not that we'll get more free-time.
In most places with any sort of economic opportunity, I have a very hard time believing that part time earnings would get you housing on par with a full time earner in 1976.
But this luddite-like hatred needs also to be addressed. You can't turn your back on a helpful new technology just because it shakes things up. Students need to learn to use it more than constantly boo and ignore it. Especially those in non-STEM fields, where its usage might be more optional currently.
Watch them :)
Seriously though, this happens every time technology is introduced, for better or worse.
And while it's annoying, it's actually very helpful too, but you need to get further into your understanding than the emotion arguments people usually have front and center in their mind, because there is real criticism that has real value in there, it's just behind all the annoying knee-jerk reactions.
But again, this happens over and over, every time, seemingly in every community. Even HN has these soft spots, maybe not for AI but for example blockchain and cryptocurrencies are still subjects that somehow bring out these knee-jerk reactions to people (again, sometimes for good reasons, although the initial reaction masks the real cause).
Best we can do is listen and actually understand, instead of just brushing it away as "irrational hatred", because it always comes from somewhere, sometimes personal reasons, sometimes illogical reasons, but always because of something.
What "insane productivity boosts" are non-coding fields seeing from AI? If anything, coding is the most affected space, and even there I'm not sure I'd classify it as an "insane" productivity boost yet.
Productivity as the be-all-and-end-all of personal aspiration exemplifies what is rotten in our industry and society at large: more for the sake of more, faster for the sake of better, no matter the consequences and with certainty no mind for the quality.
Every new technology brings with it much promise, MUCH bigger hype, grave disappointment once the people who have been using it wrong fail, and then the new batch of winners. This happens any time there's a big leap in our tools, and AI is no exception.
Productivity is how we make things better. We have enough food for everyone because we've leveraged new tools to make the task more productive (the fact that the food is unevenly distributed is a separate problem).