[arunabha]

I don't think the opposition from the public is because they don't see value in AI. Quite the opposite, every single non tech person I know has used AI tools and can immediately see the value.

The 'backlash' seems to be from the fact that people, esp white collar workers are finally realizing what blue collar folks have been feeling for quite some time. That an overwhelming majority of the technology driven productivity gains accrue to capital owners, not workers and AI is the ultimate productivity tool.

It doesn't help that capital owners no longer feel it necessary to even pretend. Like when CEOs openly salivate at the prospect of firing all workers and replacing them with AI. When people see their electricity rates go up to subsidize billionaires building AI data centers. When they see their real wages falling continually while they are told how good the economy is.

If the gains from AI were shared even a little with the regular people, they might not have the deep sense of unease and sometimes open hostility that we are seeing now.

[Timon3]

> If the gains from AI were shared even a little with the regular people, they might not have the deep sense of unease and sometimes open hostility that we are seeing now.

Additionally the AIs are trained on creations by many of those same regular people. They're not just seeing the profits funnelled upwards, some of those profits are being generated through their own works!

And before someone tries to argue "that's just how art etc. work" - sure, but the difference is quantity. If I get inspired by another artist, I can generate output at the speed of one artist. With current AI models, it's like a big company is training millions of artists on your style to pump out new pieces as fast as possible.

[marginalia_nu]

It's also worth noting that computers have been largely an equalizing force, since you don't need much capital at all to produce software, just a PC and know-how that's freely available online. You can generally build software cheaper alone or in a small group than as a large company.

AI is taking away and monopolizing the means of production, and making what few white collar workers remain rent their productivity. This is a completely different dynamic.

[LiquidSky]

>Like when CEOs openly salivate at the prospect of firing all workers and replacing them with AI.

I saw a series of ads in a train station the other day for some company claiming to offer "AI employees" that had slogans like "our employees never complain about overtime", "our employees don't ask about vacations", etc. and was just shocked at the brazenness of it.

[watwut]

Yeah. And the same people seem puzzled when they see random citizens hating on AI with passion and treating it as a threat.

[lotsofpulp]

It would be funny if the ads were made by a sole proprietor.

[exceptione]

You will find many such Marie Antoinettes in certain social circles, m/v, but mostly m. Living in such a bubble tends to warp one's perspective, also as self-justification. Those people below become resources, accounted for like energy, materials and other consumables. People wouldn't notice it anymore, but it is still a telltale sign how much a company value humans if they delegate herding to a so called Human Resources department.

The default rebuttal is that Human Resources is just a standard term. <= the point

[CatMustard]

> certain social circles, m/v, but mostly m.

What does this mean? Best I can come up with us "male/vemale"

[exceptione]

oops, sry, it is vemale indeed :)

[credit_guy]

> Like when CEOs openly salivate at the prospect of firing all workers and replacing them with AI.

CEOs aren't stupid.

Some CEOs claim they are laying off people because AI has increased productivity and they don't need those people. But that's a lie. Not a straight lie, because lying to investors constitutes security fraud, but their language is carefully chosen so that the overall message is a lie, but they have plausible deniability.

Here's an example: Amazon fired 30000 workers, supposedly because of AI. And here's an excerpt from Nate Jones (prolific AI commentator, who worked for 5 years at Amazon) video [1]:

  > Amazon fired 30,000 people because they needed the money today in order to buy GPUs to desperately try to secure a place in the future of AI cloud. That is the actual story. Now, that story does not sound as nice for Amazon as a future forward story about how we're automating with AI.

[1] https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/amazon-just-laid-off-...

[iJohnDoe]

Well said. It’s like human assembly lines being replaced with robots. Humans did those jobs for a really long time. Then they were replaced by automation.

We’re on a slippery slope, because what happens when AI gets even better over the next 5 years? Robots took time to fully replace one person on an assembly line; it didn’t happen overnight.

Basic income seems more like a reality soon. Or you’re going to have slums and the wealthy.

[jaredcwhite]

Wow this is bubble talk. Who are you talking to?! I regularly engage with people who are totally ambivalent towards genAI at best and horrifed by genAI at worst. The only people "immediately seeing the value" seem to be marketing grifters on LinkedIn.

"The regular people" …what??