1. Most of the negativity about AI seems to relate to the economic effects, not the technology itself.
2. From what I've seen, the average person is still unable to identify AI created content, websites, etc. The website this post is about is clearly vibe coded (looks like everything including the copy is from Claude) but I'd guess that only a small fraction of the people who see it will recognize that.
In the UK we are in droughts, and we are being told to restrict our water usage. Somehow if you run a data centre then the rules don't apply.
If the water company is telling me to restrict how much I wash my clothes then corps need to feel some of the pressure too.
For the work, I don’t think it’s just “costing the job” fear. It’s so many more things. Someone everyone is even more overworked, the amount of babysitting they require which everyone just seem to not talk that much about. Design docs and code that are increasingly weirder to read, sometimes make sense and other time look like they make sense but not really, the docslop, commit messages slop, I can go on.
It’s mix of people issue where it’s race to bottom to increase utilization, which leads to less than ideal experience. Technology is great but it’s definitely getting more trust than it should when we accept the output. I think everyone would be much happier, and technology would have much better reputation if everyone just slows the f down and uses it bit more reasonably. What is reasonable, you figure that out by slowing down and actually thinking about the problem you are trying to solve … not just prompt your way out for everything.
> Design docs and code that are increasingly weirder to read, sometimes make sense and other time look like they make sense but not really, the docslop, commit messages slop, I can go on.
The "average person" I'm referring to is not an engineer/developer. It's an office worker, grandmother, HVAC technician, etc. Non-techies who use the internet for entertainment and information.
From where I sit, most of them can't tell an AI-generated image from a real one (when the latest models are used), don't read something and think "it looks like Claude wrote this", etc.
AI is in growth phase, and as more people use it more they will be able to tell particularly as they interact first hand with it.
Going back to your original point, people don't hate "slop" because they think it will cost their job (maybe some people). People hate slop, because they are forced to read it most of the day and if you want to do your job well closely babysit, verify and rearrange. The overall expectation of quality has declined over quantity.
I'm not saying its not productivity booster. But the way its used to increase quantity and then map it to productivity. This results in to two things (1) more work for people so worse WLB (2) increased dissatisfaction with work because the quantity is high and maybe you can call it X% productivity boost, but maybe with X/2% productivity boost you may get Y% quality boost, wlb and satisfaction with your work.
Have you ever looked at the content and interactions on social platforms like Facebook? I hate to be that guy, but it's not only that the average person is just not that smart, it's that the average person doesn't care.
If the AI content tells them what they want to hear or seems informative or entertaining, they'll eat it up.
It's the same reason some of the most obvious scams continue to fool millions upon millions of people.
Into which of those categories do we place "company guts its support-system into uselessness by firing all the people and putting in 'AI' which mainly runs customers in circles"?
Is it an economic effect because the company was enticed into it by the promise of cost-cutting, or is it a technology issue because the "AI" system can't handle exceptional situations? Perhaps it's a third thing, where "AI" is an excuse for one side to violate a social/legal norm.