200 years ago people would have booed the industrial revolution. They shouldn't boo the amazing technology, but instead cheer for this liberation from toil and find ways to equitably distribute its benefits.
> It had the vibe of “These people need to hear the Truth”.
Schmidt anticipated the response, but does not understand it.
He falls flat on his face here precisely because "needing to hear the truth" is a self-contradiction. The very fact that he has to go around saying 'AI is inevitable, suck it up you live in our world now', proves that it's not true. Nothing that is actually inevitable is declared as such. Nobody goes to say "The sun will rise tomorrow!"
And this failure is pretty serious. The kids (and wider public) instinctively understand this dynamic even if Schmidt doesn't.
No matter how it's phrased, the only thing these kids will hear is "We are ruining your life", "We are taking everything from you".
It's all but inevitable than worryingly soon, some of them will go "Nothing to lose? Bet." and we will see far worse violence than the failed property damage against Sam Altman's house.
Eric Schmidt also raped a woman forty years younger than him, the students were objecting to that as much as the AI. Maybe don't schedule public speaking events after being accused of rape if you don't want to get booed.
> Every indie developer should be working to get people off the big tech slop treadmill.
And what exactly are we supposed to do? Just try to ship alternatives to big tech slop? Actively try to work against them? Publish cracked software so they stop earning money?
Genuinely asking, as I'm not sure sure indie developers are the ones who should try to work against these enormous corporations, it's typically the job of the government to ensure society works and is fair, but they seem to currently be on the side of big tech, so indie developers can't realistically do anything about it, unless I'm missing what you're asking for here.
Agreed. The most effective efforts aren't going to come from indie developers. They aren't software issues, more regulatory. Busting up big tech into "baby bells" is the number one thing that needs to be done.
But now that we have essentially "boilerplate for free", I hope the degoogle/demeta/etc and self-hosted efforts are boosted in a way that even my mom can migrate away without much trouble. But that'll probably take real AI and not slop based addiction machines.
> self-hosted efforts are boosted in a way that even my mom can migrate away without much trouble
I love self-hosting, been doing it myself for quite some time already, and also notice a slight uptick among friends and acquaintances also interested in the same. When it comes to businesses, the ones that didn't already host their data in Europe/EU, are now desperately moving the data, but almost none of them go on-prem/self-hosted, for the typical reasons.
So, while there is a slight uptick, I'm not sure this is the "local stacks" moment, and also not sure that's actually what the public wants. I sometimes dream of setting up a company basically focused on helping people do more self-hosting in various ways, but after looking into it more, I always end up with the feeling that people typically don't actually want self-hosting, most people don't seem to care where the data lives. That'd be such a dream business though, so it's hard to let go of the idea :)
I see a few comments on here that read "why is everyone so ungrateful and hysterical about this exciting new technology?" And I don't understand why people are surprised by this. All a young person is going to hear is "We're disrupting the world, automating employment opportunities, automating art and other leisure, innovating misinformation vectors, and also we think this technology might doom humanity. I know we're from the same kinds of companies as the social media giants you already distrust, but still pls give billions of dollars thank"
Silicon Valley has really screwed up here. They are so obsessed with their own importance (this kit is so powerful it can destroy the world!) they have failed to sell/inform the average joe.
It’s a tool. And the next generation probably benefits from learning how to use it effectively.
A good start would have been them not calling this artificial intelligence at all. The hype is largely based on the term "AI" and if it really is simply a (very impressive) auto complete tool it isn't intelligence at all, though as you said can be a very useful tool.
I wouldn't be surprised if AI is also influencing how people talk/write. I felt like I used it is not x it is y a couple of times recently and not sure whether I am just being more aware of it or if it is becoming a part of my own writing pattern because of LLMs.
my best friend is a high school english teacher. he said the worst part is kids keep hearing 'it's inevitable,' the complete integration of AI into every facet of life and thinking is gonna happen no matter what anyone says or does. this is the most manipulative and untrue thing anyone could say to a kid scared of a certain kind of future. its it's own kind of misinformation to tell people that something that will take an exorbitant amount of man power, coordination, resourcing, and experimentation to execute on is 'inevitable.'
he also said the people who argue it's inevitable are always the ones with a profit motive lol, which i disagree with only because in tech many people who have an anti-profit motive also say it's inevitable.
In my 20+ years of career it has definitely felt the most tyrannical rollout of a technology I ever experienced.
Every other world-transforming technology I got in contact with was more organic: the personal computer, the internet, high-speed internet, the smartphone, all of those followed the usual adoption curve. Even technical tools like cloud computing which carried a bit of the anxiety from execs about "being left behind" was much more organic.
AI tools are the only technology where I feel it's been shoved down my throat, it's inevitable and I can't adopt it at my own pace, it needs to happen and it needs to happen now. Not only it's inevitable, the messaging is also chock fully instigating fear, through anxiety, through the feeling of inadequacy if you aren't adopting it.
I sincerely cannot wait until this phase of it bursts, I want to see what's on the other side because right now this side kinda sucks even though I have uses for the technology itself.
To some extent, I also think the global mood around Silicon Valley has soured. I remember just starting university when Facebook was taking off in the UK, and there was genuine buzz and excitement around being able to keep up with all your old friends. Years marched on and we started to uncover all the problems with social media, and their carelessness around their own impacts to society, so most people I know who were excited in 2010 were desperately finding ways not to be there.
Now, a different handful of San Francisco companies are asking for lots of money to disrupt society, and I'm just not interested.
Social media aren't disruptive, things like Facebook and Twitter worked great with chronological feeds. Same with YouTube. God, I miss pre-2012 YouTube when things mostly just got popular organically.
Once they started to have algorithmic feeds and those algorithms got tuned for maximum engagement at the detriment of every other factor, that's when things started to spiral downward.
The Tech Powers That Be has told these young adults that AI will disrupt the job market that they are entering. Maybe decimate white collar work. Granted, maybe this was mostly a few years ago because the ecstatic celebration among the cream of the crop of the parasites seems to have cooled down, maybe because they figured out that telling everyone in office jobs that their tech was supposed to make their lives worse was a bad strategy. But still, that was a narrative that has stuck. So these kinds of people drill that non-consentual thought into young adults’ brain. Then the same kind come to their office job graduation ceremony and take the opportunity to hype AI? Yeah, they struck a nerve that they manufactured themselves.
Two possible conclusions to draw from that.
1. Their social brains are so atrophried and withered from the daily sycophancy (occupational hazard of being very high up on the corporate ladder) that they honestly thought that grads would be happy about AI disrupting the job market (the commoners love when stocks go up?)
2. Signalling to investors that AI Is Still Happening at every damn opportunity is more important than pissing off the people you are supposed to give an inspirational speech to
I would be disappointed if someone took the completion of my degree and the ceremony behind it as an opportunity to push their business. There’s enough advertisements on the internet; We don't need ads in our universities, too.
I saw Dr. Fauci give a commencement speech over the weekend and was cheered for warning people about the massive increase in misinformation/disinformation, how AI is enabling it, and that they need to use their critical thinking skills when confronted with it.
Oh that's interesting. I hadn't seen Fauci anywhere in at least a year or two. I thought he had walked away / disappeared once it became more common knowledge that he himself was creating quite a bit of misinformation/disinformation during the pandemic response.
>warning people about the massive increase in misinformation/disinformation
Such a boring take. Misinformation is easy to disprove, problem is commentary that is neither correct or wrong but holds certain biases. It is also very easy to convince yourself you are "thinking critically", but people can often believe something due to their emotions and only try and apply logic to that belief after. It is like coming up with an answer and then working backwards, rather than starting from first principles.
When you work towards a belief it is easy to mistake noise for signal.
Making it important to say things students like has lead us to the hateful woke / demented right world we now live in.
It's time to make it a large part of education that there are valid points of view that should be taught and heard but that students might disagree with.
And shame on all the professors that use education as their bully pulpit to push only the legitimization of the hateful woke culture.
Can woke people not imagine what they would think if it was the other way around and universities taught racist, sexist hatred instead of woke hatred ?
“Hateful woke culture”? You know the “woke” people are on to something when their critics project their own flaws back onto “woke culture” as a means to delegitimize it.
disagreeing with something is part of discourse? booing is a practice as old as the practice of giving lectures in front of an audience. there's nothing 'newfangled' or 'woke' or 'scary' about booing something.
I've noticed, as a student, that many college students - particularly those not in STEM/engineering fields - have an almost irrational hatred of AI. It's to the point where they'll mock you for using it, even when it provides such an insane productivity boost. I understand the disdain for trying to inject the concept everywhere, and like any new technology, it's apt to be used where it is unneeded, and mentioned when it is irrelevant.
But this luddite-like hatred needs also to be addressed. You can't turn your back on a helpful new technology just because it shakes things up. Students need to learn to use it more than constantly boo and ignore it. Especially those in non-STEM fields, where its usage might be more optional currently.
Maybe they see it eradicating their job prospects and being used to cheat and invalidate their hard studying by others who want an insane productivity boost? That’s not fair to them if others are cheating and they’re learning properly.
> particularly those not in STEM/engineering fields - have an almost irrational hatred of AI. It's to the point where they'll mock you for using it, even when it provides such an insane productivity boost.
What "insane productivity boosts" are non-coding fields seeing from AI? If anything, coding is the most affected space, and even there I'm not sure I'd classify it as an "insane" productivity boost yet.
> You can't turn your back on a helpful new technology just because it shakes things up
Watch them :)
Seriously though, this happens every time technology is introduced, for better or worse.
And while it's annoying, it's actually very helpful too, but you need to get further into your understanding than the emotion arguments people usually have front and center in their mind, because there is real criticism that has real value in there, it's just behind all the annoying knee-jerk reactions.
But again, this happens over and over, every time, seemingly in every community. Even HN has these soft spots, maybe not for AI but for example blockchain and cryptocurrencies are still subjects that somehow bring out these knee-jerk reactions to people (again, sometimes for good reasons, although the initial reaction masks the real cause).
Best we can do is listen and actually understand, instead of just brushing it away as "irrational hatred", because it always comes from somewhere, sometimes personal reasons, sometimes illogical reasons, but always because of something.
I find my hatred of AI to be incredibly rational, and the cultlike veneration of the “insane productivity boost” it gives you to be truly irrational (whether or not that boost actually exists).
Productivity as the be-all-and-end-all of personal aspiration exemplifies what is rotten in our industry and society at large: more for the sake of more, faster for the sake of better, no matter the consequences and with certainty no mind for the quality.
As a software engineer I am so deeply ashamed of how quick so many in the field have done a complete 180 on "productivity cannot be measured by lines of code" to wearing lines of code like a badge of honour.
i think 'shake things up' is a doing a lot of work to minimize the impact this tool will have for this demographic in particular. especially for non-STEM college students, so in theory students who read/write a lot and therefore are probably sick of reading a lot of mid-tier, averaging slop.
It had the vibe of “These people need to hear the Truth”.
Schmidt anticipated the response, but does not understand it.
He falls flat on his face here precisely because "needing to hear the truth" is a self-contradiction. The very fact that he has to go around saying 'AI is inevitable, suck it up you live in our world now', proves that it's not true. Nothing that is actually inevitable is declared as such. Nobody goes to say "The sun will rise tomorrow!"
And this failure is pretty serious. The kids (and wider public) instinctively understand this dynamic even if Schmidt doesn't.
No matter how it's phrased, the only thing these kids will hear is "We are ruining your life", "We are taking everything from you".
It's all but inevitable than worryingly soon, some of them will go "Nothing to lose? Bet." and we will see far worse violence than the failed property damage against Sam Altman's house.
There was a time in which they deserved some respect, as a result of free exchange of ideas among intellectuals. That's far behind by now.
And what exactly are we supposed to do? Just try to ship alternatives to big tech slop? Actively try to work against them? Publish cracked software so they stop earning money?
Genuinely asking, as I'm not sure sure indie developers are the ones who should try to work against these enormous corporations, it's typically the job of the government to ensure society works and is fair, but they seem to currently be on the side of big tech, so indie developers can't realistically do anything about it, unless I'm missing what you're asking for here.
But now that we have essentially "boilerplate for free", I hope the degoogle/demeta/etc and self-hosted efforts are boosted in a way that even my mom can migrate away without much trouble. But that'll probably take real AI and not slop based addiction machines.
I love self-hosting, been doing it myself for quite some time already, and also notice a slight uptick among friends and acquaintances also interested in the same. When it comes to businesses, the ones that didn't already host their data in Europe/EU, are now desperately moving the data, but almost none of them go on-prem/self-hosted, for the typical reasons.
So, while there is a slight uptick, I'm not sure this is the "local stacks" moment, and also not sure that's actually what the public wants. I sometimes dream of setting up a company basically focused on helping people do more self-hosting in various ways, but after looking into it more, I always end up with the feeling that people typically don't actually want self-hosting, most people don't seem to care where the data lives. That'd be such a dream business though, so it's hard to let go of the idea :)
Why can't they be as excited as people already invested into Datacenters? /s
It’s a tool. And the next generation probably benefits from learning how to use it effectively.
The hype has gotten in the way of reality.
he also said the people who argue it's inevitable are always the ones with a profit motive lol, which i disagree with only because in tech many people who have an anti-profit motive also say it's inevitable.
Every other world-transforming technology I got in contact with was more organic: the personal computer, the internet, high-speed internet, the smartphone, all of those followed the usual adoption curve. Even technical tools like cloud computing which carried a bit of the anxiety from execs about "being left behind" was much more organic.
AI tools are the only technology where I feel it's been shoved down my throat, it's inevitable and I can't adopt it at my own pace, it needs to happen and it needs to happen now. Not only it's inevitable, the messaging is also chock fully instigating fear, through anxiety, through the feeling of inadequacy if you aren't adopting it.
I sincerely cannot wait until this phase of it bursts, I want to see what's on the other side because right now this side kinda sucks even though I have uses for the technology itself.
Now, a different handful of San Francisco companies are asking for lots of money to disrupt society, and I'm just not interested.
Once they started to have algorithmic feeds and those algorithms got tuned for maximum engagement at the detriment of every other factor, that's when things started to spiral downward.
The Tech Powers That Be has told these young adults that AI will disrupt the job market that they are entering. Maybe decimate white collar work. Granted, maybe this was mostly a few years ago because the ecstatic celebration among the cream of the crop of the parasites seems to have cooled down, maybe because they figured out that telling everyone in office jobs that their tech was supposed to make their lives worse was a bad strategy. But still, that was a narrative that has stuck. So these kinds of people drill that non-consentual thought into young adults’ brain. Then the same kind come to their office job graduation ceremony and take the opportunity to hype AI? Yeah, they struck a nerve that they manufactured themselves.
Two possible conclusions to draw from that.
1. Their social brains are so atrophried and withered from the daily sycophancy (occupational hazard of being very high up on the corporate ladder) that they honestly thought that grads would be happy about AI disrupting the job market (the commoners love when stocks go up?)
2. Signalling to investors that AI Is Still Happening at every damn opportunity is more important than pissing off the people you are supposed to give an inspirational speech to
Such a boring take. Misinformation is easy to disprove, problem is commentary that is neither correct or wrong but holds certain biases. It is also very easy to convince yourself you are "thinking critically", but people can often believe something due to their emotions and only try and apply logic to that belief after. It is like coming up with an answer and then working backwards, rather than starting from first principles.
When you work towards a belief it is easy to mistake noise for signal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone
How's that ballroom coming along?
It's time to make it a large part of education that there are valid points of view that should be taught and heard but that students might disagree with.
And shame on all the professors that use education as their bully pulpit to push only the legitimization of the hateful woke culture.
Can woke people not imagine what they would think if it was the other way around and universities taught racist, sexist hatred instead of woke hatred ?
“Woke” is a reaction to hateful culture.
“Hateful woke” is the modern “reverse racism”.
That stopped ( as seen here ).
And, worse, social media has let those angry students drive debate, which has led to the rise of the hateful woke.
And, still worse, students are no longer being educated to be critical but to accept one side and hate the other.
But this luddite-like hatred needs also to be addressed. You can't turn your back on a helpful new technology just because it shakes things up. Students need to learn to use it more than constantly boo and ignore it. Especially those in non-STEM fields, where its usage might be more optional currently.
What "insane productivity boosts" are non-coding fields seeing from AI? If anything, coding is the most affected space, and even there I'm not sure I'd classify it as an "insane" productivity boost yet.
Watch them :)
Seriously though, this happens every time technology is introduced, for better or worse.
And while it's annoying, it's actually very helpful too, but you need to get further into your understanding than the emotion arguments people usually have front and center in their mind, because there is real criticism that has real value in there, it's just behind all the annoying knee-jerk reactions.
But again, this happens over and over, every time, seemingly in every community. Even HN has these soft spots, maybe not for AI but for example blockchain and cryptocurrencies are still subjects that somehow bring out these knee-jerk reactions to people (again, sometimes for good reasons, although the initial reaction masks the real cause).
Best we can do is listen and actually understand, instead of just brushing it away as "irrational hatred", because it always comes from somewhere, sometimes personal reasons, sometimes illogical reasons, but always because of something.
Productivity as the be-all-and-end-all of personal aspiration exemplifies what is rotten in our industry and society at large: more for the sake of more, faster for the sake of better, no matter the consequences and with certainty no mind for the quality.