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> But it ain't cheap. So people really don't get to try out AI and form their own opinions....

> I also think people are mad at the world. Times are tough for many. Hearing about a job-killing machine doesn't exactly inspire joy. So I kind of understand the pushback on datacenters and AI and that sort of thing. I don't find it particularly logical; datacenters have existed forever and most money poured into computer programs are basically designed to mess up your life (deny you credit, deny you healthcare, rebook your flight to a terrible time, the list goes on) and so I don't think AI is anything new in that respect. But, if you're mad at the world, you might as well find something to take out your rage on and raging against AI will make you a lot of friends.

Then you need to quit confusing simplistic pattern matching for logic. Details matter, as do degree and scale.

Yes, data centers "existed forever," but compared to a hyper-scalar AI datacenter; they were small, used far less electricity, and their generators were used for backup, not primary power.

Yes, there were computer programs that could "mess up your life," but they were narrow in function so not such an existential threat. I'm sure you understand the difference between a phone tree and Claude Mythos.

And maybe develop a little empathy? You said "people are mad at the world. Times are tough for many." Why is that? Do you think part of that might be that people have gotten the chair kicked out from under them. And along comes AI, which has been promised to be a bigger chair-kicker than anyone's ever seen?

> I work in the AI infra industry and ya know, a lot of our customers have really good ideas that are going to save people a lot of time and effort, so I am OK with the general direction of the field as a whole.

Oh, but why would people be so "illogical" to be mad at such a thing as AI? It's so hard to understand, right? [Insert Upton Sinclair quote here]

> Then you need to quit confusing simplistic pattern matching for logic. Details matter, as do degree and scale.

But that's the core problem of AI fanatics, isn't it. They cannot comprehend how people who saw and used the same thing they did, and came away with "this smells like fancy autocomplete" instead of "this is genuine intelligence!"

But nobody who uses Fable and Sol all day is saying that it's fancy autocomplete. Also, nobody is saying it's genuine intelligence.

As always, the Internet fails to find the middle ground. Frontier models are really useful software engineering tools, not AGI, and not tab completion. To me it feels a lot like using a new programming language, like going from assembly to a Lisp machine or something like that.

> But nobody who uses Fable and Sol all day is saying that it's fancy autocomplete. Also, nobody is saying it's genuine intelligence.

There are lots of people saying both. You are correct there is also a middle ground, but both these opinions are held by many people.

I don't think AI is driving up food and housing and fuel prices. I really don't think AI is a chair-kicker yet. To me, the biggest threat to jobs that AI offers is in the field of software engineering, and yet, it's not the software engineers that are really feeling the pain right now.

Wars in Iran, tariffs, Medicaid cuts, SNAP benefit cuts, rising insurance costs, etc. are what are causing average folks pain, and that is completely unrelated to AI.

>I don't find it logical that people are mad we helped invent the turbo whip 9000. Don't they know whips have always existed??

You're so right

> I don't find it particularly logical; datacenters have existed forever and most money poured into computer programs are basically designed to mess up your life (deny you credit, deny you healthcare, rebook your flight to a terrible time, the list goes on) and so I don't think AI is anything new in that respect.

i can't not read this as "you didn't complain when we did the first bad thing, so you're wrong to complain when we do the next bad thing". that's an argument i hear presented way too often today, and it's just so dishonest.

I think you might be slightly "too deep" in the sense that you mostly encounter AI when someone has deliberately chosen an expensive, capable model to solve a real problem

This is a very relatable comment. I think it's demoralizing to see common objections to AI, it feels to me like we failed and haven't done our communication job. I'm always temped to go, "Yes, but there's worse!"

No, the communication has been pretty clear. A lot of people just don't like the Torment Nexus.