[joshstrange]

> Most new technologies have been welcomed by the public with open arms.

I'm not going to predict how this is going to turn out in either direction but this statement gives me pause. I don't think that's ever been true. Yes, the siren song is strong but initially most new tech is met with skepticism. Are we so quick to forget "the internet/computers are just a fad"-type thinking?

[simonsarris]

Yeah backlash against railroads was very widespread, from lots of angles (farmers, property owners, canal investors, health-conscious people, religious leaders, etc). Probably the same for cars.

[AlexandrB]

What's new is the inversion of who holds these opinions. With the internet/computers, company leadership was often the skeptical voice while small pockets of individuals would push these technologies from the bottom. AI is the complete opposite with skepticism coming bottom-up and push to adopt coming top-down. The last time this (almost) happened was "The Metaverse" which seemed to be getting a lot of push from the C suite.

This doesn't mean LLMs will be as useless as the metaverse, but a lot of the biggest proponents of the technology within companies are those most clueless about it which feels like a red flag.

[heaney-555]

Exactly, it's utter nonsense. The general public thought the first bicycles, automobiles, computers, mobile phones, smart watches, and AirPods were stupid. And now they are normal. Same with video games and dating apps.

[LogicFailsMe]

I lived it. I had a teacher in high school continually scold me for reading books on programming languages and banned me from writing essays on the future of computers. Apparently, I should have been outside getting my ass kicked by the jocks like any normal kid would be. Why the guy even called up my parents to express his concerns about me. Or there was the time my 2nd grade teacher contacted my parents because I wasreading Run Silent, Run Deep during my submarine phase because that was a book for adolescents, not children. Mel Brooks wrote it best...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYTQ7__NNDI

[SpicyLemonZest]

When ecommerce was getting big, I knew a number of people who thought it was absurd. You can't just send money over the Internet, hackers will steal it! You should use normal payment methods, like writing "fifteen dollars and 56/100------" on a special piece of paper the bank gave you.

[LogicFailsMe]

Never thought I'd see the ycombinator peeps deny the existence of the Luddite mindset, but here we are.

[bgilroy26]

It's more a post GamerGate understanding of a nerds vs the world narrative framing

[Der_Einzige]

The death of Harambe and Cecil the lion ruined the whole world and directly lead to GamerGate/Trump and world wise ride in right wing populaism.

[LogicFailsMe]

Heliocentrism calling...

Yeah, we reject anything new and scary. Gotta wonder what the cavepeople made of the wheel.

Edit: still triggered by heliocentrism in 2026? OK then.

[bsza]

People weren’t as ignorant back then as you think. They had very good reason to reject heliocentrism, namely that constellations don’t grow and shrink in size as the earth moves around. That, they said, would require the universe to be unimaginably big and empty, much more so than any other observation they could make at the time would suggest.

If you have the time, I recommend reading Pliny’s Natural History. I think it really shows how much more open-minded these people were than we give them credit for. They just didn’t have the technology we have.

[LogicFailsMe]

Tell that to Giordano Bruno.

[bsza]

You haven’t even bothered to look up what actually got him executed, have you.

[LogicFailsMe]

Apparently you haven't either and you're trying to weasel out for the church because it wasn't the only reason they executed him. It amazes me that it's okay to have an invisible friend based on 2,000 to 4000-year-old writings by goat herders high on psilocybin, but if you form a parasocial attachment to an AI, that's AI psychosis. ELI5 please?

[bsza]

I'm not your therapist, take this question to them. And I'm not trying to weasel out of anything. You asserted that, in the past, merely claiming that the Earth revolves around the Sun was met with getting burned at the stake by a mob of priests foaming at the mouth. I corrected that, because it's a myth. Please stop sneering at centuries/millenia-old people compared to whom you live like a king, and find another group of people to feel superior to.

[dreamcompiler]

Another reason many people rejected heliocentrism was that you could get excommunicated (or worse!) if you professed to accept it.

[ofjcihen]

I mean Zeppelins were supposed to be the premier form of air travel despite the glaringly obvious issues.

Invoking “heliocentrism” is the HN version of “Ive already drawn you as the virgin and me as the Chad.”

[LogicFailsMe]

A modern equivalent of abandoning zeppelins because of the Hindenberg would be abandoning skyscrapers because of 9/11.

But it's humorous that Sergey Brin has a company dedicated to bringing back zeppelins and that's a lot more fun than Zuck's doomsday bunker or Bezos's doomsday yacht.

[ofjcihen]

Who said I was referencing the Hindenburg?

They had a ton of fundamental problems despite seeming like a good idea at first. It was only after we started using them did we realize they weren’t actually as good of an idea as they seemed.

[LogicFailsMe]

That was ~90 years ago. We're a few branches higher on the tech tree now. Their return has been promised for over 40 years. Only the future itself will answer whether they do.