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Comment by davnicwil | Hacker News Reader

I find it so interesting how many comments about AI start with a disclaimer that of course it's very useful, before pointing out a negative of any sort.

I do it too so it's not a criticism, but I find it kinda interesting culturally. It's a reflection I think of the environment that we've created for ourselves, or has been created for us (or some combo) where somehow you can't point out an unqualified negative of this tech.

This to me is actually one of the clearest bubble signals, just because if it really were as good as all that, it'd be completely redundant to remind everyone of that when criticising it.

I think it might be a sort of weird collective psychological thing where we must not admit what seems pretty clear, just for fear of breaking from norms.

But, of course, yeah it's very useful for some stuff and I use it all the time :-)

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Part of the problem is that there is so much overlap between GenAI's biggest boosters and people who reflexively welcome on any tech change as an unalloyed good. People can be really fanatical about this stuff. Any nuanced discussion of tradeoffs or negative externalities draws insults of being a Luddite.

My own general thoughts are that AI is extremely useful in discrete cases, will cause an immense amount of cultural and societal harm overall, and there's no clear political path to a healthier development trajectory. I don't think that's an uncommon stance, but people espousing something like that get a lot of hate in a lot of discussions.

I can easily imagine an arms control style series of agreements between the handful of leading AI companies and countries which are imperfect but still quite effective at mitigating the harms without stifling the upsides, but it seems clear that the current leading actors in this space have zero interest in that.

It happens everywhere with every topic on the internet. You need to let your fellow tribemates know you're in the same tribe before you say anything negative, otherwise they will discard your argument and flame you to death.

Go into any subreddit and you see the exact same pattern.

i think its cognitive dissonance. everyone is using it pretty frequently and so to criticize it creates this tension like "if its not actually worthwhile then why am i using it so much?" and the most prolific response to that dilemma is to write it off as saying "well of course its useful in many ways" ... with the unspoken second half of that sentence being "it's useful in the ways i use it"

It's a very wide technology, there's going to be use cases where it works well. I think without the "of course it's useful" then you'd just be flooded with examples of where it works well as counterpoints whether they're relevant or not. Critics have to set the stage that they're criticizing a particular use case or aspect of the technology and not the whole thing all at once.

More than a bubble signal, the “but it is so useful” disclaimer is what makes it a tragedy of the commons.

“I know it is ruining all that I hold dear, but what else can I do but profit from it like everyone else?”

To be fair that is also true to the Internet itself, it's very useful but has negative side-effects.

but when you criticise it you don't feel obliged to point out it's of course useful. This is just obvious unstated.

Well I think theres a lot of social pressure to disclaim "yes of course its useful" because if all you do is say "hey AI has this problem," you'll have AI bros replying to you telling you about all the good and saying you're misrepresenting AI.

I agree and I think there is also a more insidious meta aspect: for every comment like this there is the worry that some X multiple more people hold that view but won't say it.

Everyone else also thinks like that and so isn't normally unambiguously critical, so you end up not knowing who really thinks that way and who's just doing it because of the game theory.

It could even be practically nobody. There's no way to tell until the deadlock breaks.

I find it interesting how many AI comments say it's useful, but they can never say what the use is.

I think you're describing political commentary habits becoming general writing habits.

It works with just about anyone but try and say something positive about Trump and, if you don't add a qualifier like that, the first reply is going to be something like, "I guess you like ICE murdering babies." And then the conversation you wanted to have gets completely derailed.

The majority of people's opinions on the subtopics of complex or controversial topics have to align with their opinion on the overall topic.

AI is bad so it must both be useless and be using up all the water.

> I find it so interesting how many comments about AI start with a disclaimer that of course it's very useful, before pointing out a negative of any sort

People have to post very defensively online, otherwise some "um ackshully" guy will be immediately jumping down their throat

If you write anything negative about AI without stroking the ego of the AI bros first by praising their machine best friends they will be all over you calling you a luddite

Yes, this is really stereotypical HN: You can't really post an unqualified generalization here, because someone will inevitably jump out of the woodwork with a canned "You said X is generally Y, but here is counterexample X0 which is not Y! Your post is incorrect!"

Yeah. It's all over on HN for sure. I associate it a lot with Reddit too

Upvote-based systems and their consequences have been a disaster for online discourse

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