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Comment by sqdbps | Hacker News Reader

What about the AI advancements in early disease screening and treatment that Sundar highlighted in the beginning of the keynote? Why not mention that as a counterbalance to quoting professional critics and at least touch on the undisputed benefits from this stuff.

What's truly “horrifying” is the somewhat prevalent phobic attitude towards technological innovation and invention, be that industrial robots ‘taking all the jobs’ or this reaction to the Duplex demo.

Our current technological achievements were largely made possible with help from the media and our prominent thinkers in cheerleading the advancements and shaping the public’s option.

Now it's the critical voices that get affirmed and amplified.

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I think hacker news suffers from being too close to tech to really get a normal person's perspective. These advances are technologically marvelous, sure, but they are ethically bankrupt. At best, they make human interaction worse, and at worst, they enable robocallers and standardize thought. Tech optimism has become toxic because SV fails to realize how each cool new feature can be bastardized and abused.

You really can't think of a better possible outcome of technology that enables humans and computers to interact in a way that's more natural for the humans?

Not only are they ethically bankrupt, it feels like the sole goal is to eliminate all human interaction and more importantly solve problems that do not exist.

Ex. I do not mind making a 60 second phone call to make a reservation vs. 30 seconds of figuring out how to tell Google what to do.

In this case Google is solving problems for rich socially awkward nerds. Not the majority of people.

I completely disagree with your line of thought. Automation is something that do make lives easier, and just because your personal experience tells you something, it doesn't mean that it will be the same for everyone. Like many others stated before, this is marvelous for the social awkward and the deficient, while also bringing a personal assistant for people with tight schedules or unable to make such calls for various reasons. Also, keep in mind that this kind of feature will most likely be present in your average Android smartphone, so basically everyone with access to one will be able to use it.

How many of you have immigrant parents who, where English is a second language, would have great difficulty performing the kind of verbal gymnastics that you take for granted?

My mother is an immigrant and speaks 4 languages, and I am learning my third. This is a ridiculous argument; if this is so important to you, advocate for Google translate integration into email.

I haven't seen any backlash about AI being used to detect diseases better/sooner.

The fact that we see a backlash about something that treats humans as an API, and don't see a backlash about something that helps all humans, seems like there is no prevailing innovation-phobic attitude. No?

The industrial robots taking jobs thing is at least pragmatic to discuss - we could just accept the capitalistic inevitability of it, or we could talk about ways to move the human workforce on to other tasks.

The problem is that of general attitude, I mean this shit is cool, people should be excited about it, instead people are being trained to be pessimistic and to invoke some vague notions about 'ethics’ to justify aversion to change.

Skepticism and questioning are fine but the media is trying to turn people into luddites because they feel they were wronged by internet firms.

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