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Comment by zoogeny | Hacker News Reader

I often question my own bias on this because in my interactions with local non-tech people, the adoption of AI has pretty much affected everyone I know and it is by my estimation a majority positive reaction. I live in a fairly rural part of the PNW.

So when I read "People hate what AI is doing to our world." it honestly feels like either I am completely deluded or the author is. It feels like a high school bully saying "No one here likes you" to try to gaslight his victim.

I mean, obviously there are many vocal opponents to AI, I see them on social media including here on HN. And I hear some trepidation in person as well. But almost everyone I know, from trades-people to teachers, are adopting AI in some capacity and report positive uses and interactions.

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The bulk of the anti-AI sentiment I see is from people who spend a huge amount of time online (or on HN). Not regular folks.

Most people don't care if something is written by an AI as long as it is reasonable, and reflects the intent of the human who prompted the AI.

If consuming material online (videos, web sites, online forums) is not something you do a lot of, you're relatively unimpacted by LLMs (well, except the whole jobs situation...).

> teachers

Given all the borderline apocalyptic articles how students are using it to cheat and teachers have no way to stop them, I'd be honestly surprised by that.

All I can offer is my anecdotal experience. One teacher was describing his usage to generate quizzes on material. He gets course material in the form of pdfs, uploads it to the AI and gets it to generate questions.

On the flip side, one of my other teacher friends has instituted a no phone policy in his classroom.

Yeah, a friend of mine is a teacher and is using it to generate material for the classroom all the time, and it dramatically increases her productivity. The school administrators have also been pretty impressed by it, and told her to keep it up more or less.

There was an article about a year ago concerning the students' using AI to complete work, and teachers using AI tools to detect if AI tools were being used to complete the work, so (even a year ago) you found this absurd scenario where it was just robots checking the work of other robots. Did a quick search for said article but couldn't find it. Anyway, humorous. Coupled with the WaPo article today about people "speed-running" their degrees, it's wacky, wacky world for "education". https://archive.is/bPi82

It's easy to chalk it up to "fear of the unknown", when in reality it's both good and bad depending on who's wielding it. It can be used to tear down or build up, solve problem or create problems just like every advance before it. So while I'm generally excited with where it can go, I guess I don't mind being reminded there can be downsides.

Fascinating, because I've seen the exact opposite across the PNW.

That is why I question my own bias. One possible explanation is that I am AI positive. So when people test out "What do you think about AI?" my own responses are generally positive. That probably filters out people who don't want to argue or contradict.

This kind of effect would work both ways. People who are non-confrontational in general will choose to keep quiet if their opinions differ. In this view, both pro-AI and anti-AI sides might find themselves having their bias confirmed due to opposing views self-silencing to avoid conflict.

Anecdotally, I was just there and ran into a couple of anti-AI people and it's not like I was bringing it up. All I got was they were worried about the water and the heat produced. I wonder if someone has done an analysis of old-search vs AI-search, I most definitely get the info quicker that I want with AI, does that make up for the LLM cost, I have no idea.

I'd say that the molotov cocktails being thrown at the house of an AI company CEO being met with mostly praise and a little bit of apathy is a good hint you might actually be in a bubble

I don't agree, in fact I would say if I was surrounded by people glorifying violence that would suggest I was in an extreme minority.

It reminds me of similar late-stage-capitalism like activity, from the assassination of the insurance company CEO, the fire-bombing of Tesla's, etc. It is hard to disentangle hate that is based on economic inequality or power imbalance from hate directed explicitly at AI. That is especially true since one narrative suggests that both types of inequality (economic and power) may be accelerated by an unequal distribution of access to AI.

So we might end up in an argument over whether the hate that drives the violence is towards AI at all, or if that is merely a symptom of existing anti-capitalist sentiment that is on the rise.

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