Everybody's Weirded Out by AI–Except the People Who Foist It on Us

sergiomattei

> But would it have improved my comprehension? The research says no. I don’t know, I find myself doing things I would’ve never done before AI. I find myself doing more projects outside of work. I discover new problem domains and are less afraid of tackling the unknown. I code in languages I don’t know and start learning how they work. I can get anything explained to me, at any time, in a somewhat coherent manner, by a tutor that won’t get tired or annoyed. Look— I’m not exactly thinking AI is free of criticism, but it’s definitely a revolution in access to information and at least to me that’s a big deal.

EGreg

If I may, I think it has to do with this... and it's about to get weirder and weirder unless you change the paradigm: https://safebots.ai/declarative.html

dboreham

I mean, I'm concerned about the societal impacts too, but this article is pure nonsense as far as how useful today's AI tools are. I know multiple people with very high paid jobs who have told me they simply couldn't do that job now without AI. I create software much quicker and better than I have in the past 40 years using AI tools. I've learned all kinds of things technical and otherwise from LLMs. This writing is about as useful as the people who said calculators would mean nobody understands mathematics, or that watching tv would turn everyone into a zombie (obviously it was smart phones that did that).

Legend2440

Everyone? Speak for yourself. I'm not weirded out by it.

mattas

"Everybody's Weirded Out by AI-Except the People Who Live in Zip Codes Starting with 940, 941, 944, 950 and 951"

kenforthewin

> A study by MIT found that students who use AI to write show far less brain activity than those who used classic Google searching (with AI off) or those who used neither. Other studies find that students who use AI retain far less of the information that ends up in their writing, possibly as a result of “cognitive offloading” and “cognitive surrender.” I'm unconvinced that AI will make us all dumber. In the public perception, at least among students, AI is viewed as a cheating tool. What kinds of students gravitate towards cheating tools to complete their coursework? On the other hand, the opportunity for AI to act as a personal tutor, meeting you at your own skill and knowledge level, is limitless.

pstuart

That was not a very insightful article. It's super easy, and in most cases, correct to hate on AI. But that ignores a couple key facts: * It's not going to go away and will only get more sophisticated whether we like it or not. * It has legitimate super powers that can enable people do things that would either be impossible or insanely expensive. I've been fascinated by tech my whole life and have watched various waves of technology transform society: * solid state electronics enabling portability and functionality hitherto not possible * integrated circuits bringing down the cost and increasing the capability of electronics, including microprocessors * the personal computer revolution * mobile telephony * the internet * smart phones * AI Most of those wonders have come with significant societal costs (e.g., silicon valley promised a revolutionary new industry without pollution, but instead gave us multiple superfund sites to clean up the toxic materials they haphazardly dumped without care, etc.) We can't stop AI but we should try to have serious conversations how how to live in a non-dystopian world that it threatens to bring us. The small flaw with that idea is that those in power have no fucks to give in that regard and will sell out humanity if it means they can have the deluxe bunker package and enough slaves to serve them.

arjie

It's funny how this works. When Apple came out with the iPad Reddit absolutely hated it. No one would want it. It's a crappy product. Who even needs 4 iPhones glued together and so on and so forth. This all reads like that. It's just completely divorced from reality.

Reason077

Elon Musk himself used to be quite anti-AI, often saying that it was an “existential risk to humanity” or more dangerous than nuclear weapons. He seems to have changed his mind now that he owns a major AI company.

tanseydavid

This piece is a little odd for me. I don't understand the logic behind this: "read Kant and found it to be dense and impenetrable...an AI generated summary would have helped" followed by "Would it have improved comprehension? No." Why? Because "research says so." Wut? (still waiting for one or more HN commenters to freak out because the article has gasp! multiple em-dashes)

lbrito

>The only field where people are being replaced wholesale is in computer programming, where AI is making leaps in capability. I'll give the author a pass because he's not in the industry, but even an outsider looking closely enough would know that this is not true. Companies have been laying off while using AI as an excuse, but before AI it was the end of ZIRP, and before that it was something else. Also the layoff peak was 2023.

xnx

Blanket claims like "Everbody" are trivially falsifiable. I'm not "weirded out" by AI, and I'm not foisting it on anyone. There's a strange vein of aggressive-denialism that anyone could find AI genuinely useful (bordering on miraculous) even if it hasn't yet cured cancer, led to 100% unemployment, solved nuclear fusion, etc.

metalman

There are a lot of people getting very weird while useing AI, another big bunch of people who hate AI, and of course AI itself is weird, but I have no direct contact with AI while it finds my web sites and sends me work through some process that remains opaque to me. I have become quick to close any page that has strange gramar of phrasing, and no longer accept any claims or declarations that I cant verify indipendently. Having always been very very picky about any media I consume, I find it easy to avoid seeing anything that has been made useing AI. The whole upshot for me has been to spend more time doing real stuff and making money, which attracts more people to spend time with me.