[SirensOfTitan]

You might absolutely be correct, but there is a bias within our field to overly focus on the technology at the expense of everything else.

You are speaking about well-off engineers as a fairly famous top 1% engineer. You need to consider your own bias here. What aren't you seeing?

I think labor organization is absolutely vital now, and it can certainly mix favorably with techno-optimism, but it is silly for us as an industry to sit back and let our jobs be forever changed without a seat at the table. It is silly to ignore the ways in which this technology could negatively change the median knowledge worker's ability to survive and thrive.

[simonw]

I emphasized the career status of the people I'm describing here precisely because it's important to acknowledge how different perspectives are affected by privilege in this kind of conversation.

[pibaker]

In practice this sounds exactly like when organizations go "we are located on the traditional land of X people" and then do absolutely nothing about, say, the X people who are still around and living in poverty.

It feels like something you acknowledge to alleviate your own sense of guilt. Not something others would find useful.

[simonw]

I honestly don't feel particularly guilty here. I'm trying to help other people find beneficial ways to use this stuff, I feel good about doing that.

[Henchman21]

So what's the aggregate perspective of the 99%? You've described the 1% well, but that's only... well to be honest it is probably quite a bit less than 1% of all humans.

Any thoughts? What do you think the average work-a-day Joe thinks about all this?

[simonw]

I'd love to know that. Anecdotally plenty of regular people love it and plenty more hate it.

Have you seen a study on this that you find credible?

[logicprog]

This seems like a very credible, thorough, and telling survey from Pew on what average people think about AI: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/03/how-the-us-p...

Key findings (to me):

- Way more people think AI will have a negative effect on the US over the next 20 years than think it will have a positive effect (35% vs 17%)

- Even more people think increased usage of AI will personally harm them than benefit them (43% vs 24%)

- Women and men have a huge gap on this: 53% of men say increased use of AI makes them feel more excited than concerned, versus 30% of women (probably due to deepfakes, but also likely due to women being more likely to be progressive, and the big anti-AI memes going around progressive spaces).

- 64% of people think AI will net eliminate jobs over the next 20 years versus just 14% that think it will even just not make much of a difference

It's also worth noting that AI experts were wildly out of touch with those attitudes compared to the general population.

[simonw]

Thanks, that study is really useful.

It does however suffer from the (maybe insurmountable?) problem that "AI" is an extremely vague term with many potential interpretations.

I expect the "AI experts" in that study may have had a different definition in mind than the general public.

I remain much more skeptical about the impact of AI image/video/audio generation on society than I do LLMs, but LLMs themselves have such a wide array of potential uses that their impact will vary wildly depending on what they're being used for.

[SirensOfTitan]

LLMs are obviously a transformative technology, but I think as tech people we have to be deeply thoughtful about how we ensure humans can apply meaning through their work.

A lot of my peers not in tech are worried about their capacity to work. And work isn’t just about making money but finding meaning. LLMs if not used correctly can transform meaningful labor into some perverse form of consumption.

[vostrocity]

You might call me paranoid, but I’m avoiding AI boosterism in my public persona because I can imagine a future backlash against its advocates.