Comment by kkukshtel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kkukshtel | Hacker News Reader

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What I see a lot of in my own industry (games) is that people that don't like AI either 1) see something that changes how they think of it and start the slow path of adoption or 2) continually dig their heels in and/or refuse to update their priors.

As technical qualms were solved and many other capability issues with AI have been solved, the continual heel digging and goal posting by group 2 has started to just feel more akin to a religious stance than something based on any specific fact. There is no version of AI that they want to see, they will oppose it on moral(-ish) grounds on sight, etc.

AI has real issues, but like you, observing this re-adjustment in realtime has been really interesting, especially as it seems to come from people I share 99% overlap in interest and politics with, but who hate AI like they do.

It also feels akin to de-radicalizing MAGA or something. The rejection or idea that they are wrong causes a whole worldview to collapse in something akin to ego death, so instead of facing that possibility they just insist they are right.

I suspect most of it comes down to the tacit promise of what happens once everything works as intended, as a matter aside from any technical imperfections. The marketing material and the target financial valuations aren't predicated on the notion that you get to be incredibly productive, fulfilled, and get to spend all day making cool things and solving interesting problems. The sales pitch is that you can be made to work incredibly hard as the ever-growing machine drags the relative value of your having a brain to zero, and that, at such a moment as it reaches its perfection, everyone below the VP level can be safely shoved into a blender and all intelligence, expertise, and execution can be rented out from OpenAI without any operational hiccups.

If the point is that we all get shoved in a blender, and the people building the blender are actively salivating over what they'll be able to pawn the resultant slurry off for——does being told that the economic efficiency of the blender is inevitable or that you may get shoved into a Vitamix instead of a Kenmore——does any of that move the needle on your projected life satisfaction post-blender?

What is the alternative here? If you assume everyone is already going into the blender, that means everyone is going into the blender and it doesn't matter anyways. If we don't go into a blender, but you spent the most crucial 4 years of your career saying everyone is going into a blender, I fear for what your career prospects will look like on the other side of that potential blender-less future.

> has started to just feel more akin to a religious stance than something based on any specific fact

It can be an ethical stance based on facts, rather than religious-like. AI has no shortage of ethical issues that could stop someone from using it.

Comparing these people to religious or MAGA types - who believe in things that are false or at least unprovable - is farcical.

I think you should spend more time reading what people who oppose AI think about what AI is capable of doing. Many people still don't understand that it can search the web.

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