[blululu]

>> Public hostility toward AI now looks stronger than ordinary skepticism toward a new technology. People have reasons for that response, including fraud, misinformation, privacy invasion, concentration of power, and job displacement. Job displacement carries its own emotional weight because it threatens status, livelihood, and social usefulness, which gives the fear an existential edge. >>This essay explores why anti-AI sentiment may be gaining force.

The article lists off all the obvious and credible reasons why people are opposed to AI in the intro paragraph. It then spends the next 25 paragraphs advancing a very clever pet theory derived psychology about what might be going on here. While interesting in its own right, the article misses the obvious concerns that it raised in the intro paragraph.

[klik99]

The company whos blog it is is "AI-assisted clinical documentation" - I feel this is an attempt to explain anti-AI sentiment as an unreasonable aversion to AI rather than the real reasons for anti-AI sentiment. There's a weird trend in the AI industry to pathologize people who don't like AI.

[JoshTriplett]

It's not "weird", it's hostile marketing. "How do we overcome the negative sentiment we see as an obstacle in order to sell to people who don't want it, or people who will be around people who don't want it?" It's an entirely natural, commonplace, awful thing. See also "how do we market cigarettes" and "how do we maximize social media engagement" (the latter being one reason outrage gets amplified).

[klik99]

I find it weird because I've seen traces of it before in people who believed in the singularity 20 years ago, people who really believed that anti-AI was pathological. Back then the stakes didn't seem as real and immediate as now, and now you can see it on pro-AI reddit subs. But I agree that language and attitude is co-opted for marketing purposes, for example last year when there was a lot of talk about doomerism.

[JoshTriplett]

Yeah. There are many critical safety concerns, and somehow people with vested interests in AI have tried to spin that as "oh, it's astroturf marketing by the AI companies to make it seem like their products are dangerous and therefore powerful, just ignore it". Which is simultaneously trying to promote the products and dismiss the opposition. It's infuriating, and blatantly wrong, but it's also a natural consequence of "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"[1].

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/

[chrisjj]

> I feel this is an attempt to explain anti-AI sentiment as an unreasonable aversion to AI rather than the real reasons for anti-AI sentiment

Disagreed. It in an attempt to paint the real reasons for anti-"AI" sentiment as unreasonable, period.

[rolph]

its ok, you can say gaslighting, but its not only AI industry. the trend is a spread