[soundworlds]

1. So AI companies royally screwed over artists and other culture workers.

2. Culture workers are a big part of who sets the narrative for the general population - especially young people.

3. Less than 1/5 of Gen Z are optimistic about AI and the number is falling: (https://news.gallup.com/poll/708224/gen-adoption-steady-skep...)

The current wave of AI companies did this to themselves. Had things moved more slowly and actively worked with all the affected industries, I suspect people would be far less interested in seeing the technology fail.

[heavyset_go]

> The current wave of AI companies did this to themselves. Had things moved more slowly and actively worked with all the affected industries, I suspect people would be far less interested in seeing the technology fail.

The goal was to raise as much money as possible as fast as possible before the curtain is pulled back to reveal the Wizard's empire of lies.

[tencentshill]

A lot of designers and artists were not hired for their particular style or skills. AI allows "good enough" results for less. Same with coding. It no longer takes skill to meet minimum requirements, just some money. Code monkeys and junior graphic designers will have to upskill somehow, or find other work. Maybe it will balance out eventually, with the AI costing about the same as hiring a junior designer.

[dinfinity]

> The goal was to raise as much money as possible as fast as possible before the curtain is pulled back to reveal the Wizard's empire of lies.

There may be some lies, but a big part of the backlash against AI is that it is too effective. The backlash is growing precisely because people are finally getting out of the "it's just a tool and there will always be a place for humans!"-denial phase and into the "they took our jobs!"-anger phase. They're seeing the writing on the wall many (although surprisingly not all) in the tech sector saw long ago.

Additionally, I'm quite sure it's not backlash against slop, as some might think. People have disliked spam and ads forever, but all in all they'll happily stomach loads of it just to watch some badly written Hollywood or Netflix human slop.

[somesortofthing]

I think AI companies have actually broadly adopted the right strategy. There's no way to sugarcoat or hide that your company's pitch is "your salary is our TAM, btw our product is so powerful it might cause human extinction". Deploying as widely as possible while steamrolling opposition before it can get its bearings is the only viable option for the technology as they describe it.

[samrus]

I call bullshit. They got greedy. The right way would have been to work with both knowledge and culture workers instead of making it an antagonistic relationship. These are the people ai companies need to operate their agents. Its stupid to threaten them and foment resentment

Also dont be ridiculous. We didnt go extinct from the nuke, we wont go extinct from a next token predictor

[nmeagent]

> We didnt go extinct from the nuke

Yet. We've come very close (see e.g. Daniel Ellsberg's The Doomsday Machine or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_close_calls). A catastrophic mistake or miscalculation could trigger a massive exchange at any time; it could happen on any given Thursday.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

> 1. So AI companies royally screwed over artists and other culture workers.

Counterpoint: AI's displacement of culture workers is to this point negligible. Nobody is consuming AI-generated media, except maybe in the trashiest tier of tiktok scrolling. Culture workers feel screwed, but they have not in fact been screwed.

[userbinator]

The "artists and other culture workers" are now the rest of the population, making what they want without needing to passively consume the legacy media.

[samrus]

This is a genuinely great point. It articulates something i could feel happening but couldnt fully recognize. And i guess the AI compananies couldnt wither because they thought screwing over culture workers was free

Also love the term culture workers. Everyone keeps talking about knowledge workers but culture workers play a huge part in society that no one in the AI space mentioned

[threatofrain]

Had things moved slowly? ML is an international race. Every nation has the prerogative of greed.

[zombot]

The looting began with how they trained their models and now they want to continue the looting with how the models are being used. You can't loot entire industries by cooperating with them.

[somelamer567]

America has a proud tradition of offering college students a very broad education. Unfortunately, this trend doesn't seem to have made it to the techbros -- the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world -- who are not only spoilt, sheltered rich kids and uncultured philistines in their own right, but are also college dropouts; shamelessly so. That lack of culture drives their wanton disrespect for others' artistic output.

The entire AI wave is built on the shameless wholesale theft of the hard work of others. This exploitative, extractive business model is really no different from the legalised banditry operated by PE value extraction outfits like Vista and their ilk -- just on a vastly greater scale.

Late stage capitalism stopped building value years ago. It's now all about building wealth pumps and toll booths all over the economy to immorally extract as much value as possible, from as many different people as possible, as efficiently as possible.

[senectus1]

yeah, completely agree. Made worse by the fact that the boomer and gen X generations are really well known for the whole "fuck you I've got mine, i deserve to stay rich and comfortable" attitude....

I get the feeling that shits coming to a head.

[otterley]

Please don’t lump GenX in with boomers. We are the first generation not to have lifetime employment and pensions, the first generation to pay through the nose for higher education, and many of our peers are just barely scraping by at 50 alongside our Millenial and GenZ friends.

[heavyset_go]

Stop the Boomerification of Gen X's voting record and the comparison will go away.

[otterley]

Unfortunately every generation has a plurality that votes “the wrong way.” This includes Millennials: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/age-generati...

It seems to start happening when people hit 30 years of age. Maybe it’s because that’s when they start having children; I’m not sure.

[x3qt]

This is when they stop being simply consumers/receivers and become producers/owners.