'It's like having a dumb friend': Young San Franciscans hate AI | Hacker News Reader

'It's like having a dumb friend': Young San Franciscans hate AI

sfgate.com

46 pointsturtlegrids15 comments

I have some dumb friends and they are way more fun to be around than LLMs are

I'm not too surprised the younger generation has a healthy distaste for AI. AI represents a lot of negatives in the world today, which is kind of the icing on the shit pie for the young. They were already facing a pretty uphill battle ahead of them, then ChatGPT shit all over any hopes they really had. It is gutting the entry level positions already (or at least is being used as the scapegoat for this behavior by Execs). It is poised to collapse entire industries. It is already starting to speed up the further enriching the rich and enpooring the poor

Be really honest: if you were to go back to who you were as an 18 year old, with all of your hopes and dreams ahead, would you be looking at AI positively?

I would probably have given up.

It’s not collapsing anything, rather its calling into question the true value of all economic activities.

Which is actually healthy.

The real question is - should society have jobs for the sake of jobs? Or should society go all in on finding the optimal mix of inputs for production? Why not go a step further - what’s the optimal mix of businesses in the economy? Do we really need as many as all that exists?

Frankly software firms have been able to get away with being insanely bloated because of the very favourable economics of the business.

What’s this new trend with allegations how people have jobs for the sake of having jobs?

People have jobs because this is an organised way for us to provide value to other humans and give our lives meaning; a way for us to express ourselves; to earn money that puts food on the table and helps raise our children.

That last one in particular is turning AI into an enemy for a LOT of people, and it’s hard to blame them.

I am in a sort of soft agreement

I do think that we could stand to work a little less, and probably most people would choose to work less given the option. That said, work is important. People who are chronically unemployed always sort of become broken, in my experience anyways.

I do remember that we are promised to work less thanks to this tech, and yet somehow the opposite happens. We have to work more, and we are paid less (if we are able to get a job).

> People who are chronically unemployed always sort of become broken

The causal link may be unclear but I recall there was research showing that at different ages people decline faster once they retire. Sense of purpose is a real thing.

I would argue that only the latter is truly a job. The other points are things we have tied to jobs (like hobbies), but, perhaps, we should strive to decouple from them so that we can pave a way that doesn't need dedicating one self to jobs to survive.

Honestly, me too.

People need to understand just how saturated San Francisco is with ads for AI companies right now. I know what these companies do, but I'm still amazed at how niche and bizarre the ads come across. They use an enormous amount of public space to advertise something only relevant to a few hundred people. Locals have a deep resentment of these companies.

i am not sure,

some companies are marketing themselves as AI despite barely using AI and customers demanding AI and with a belief it's superior to anything else.

While i see the articles where they say average person hates AI?

which one is true?

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