Turns out telling an entire generation that AI will replace half their jobs, flood the internet with slop and make billionaires richer didn’t produce boundless techno optimism. Who could have predicted that? The AI industry may have a capability problem, but it definitely has a messaging problem.
to be honest in the age of targeted
advertisementopinion manipulation I would not be surprised if more young people would be happy addicts to it
I’m not even concerned about it replacing jobs, it has proven to be shit at replacing real intelligence, and making the LLM bigger is not a path to AGI. Also my job requires hands, which copilot doesn’t have, so maybe I’m biased.
But I’m concerned about AI being used to spread disinformation and control narratives in favour of the ruling class. I’m concerned about AI datacenters exacerbating climate change. I’m concerned about even further erosion of privacy and mass surveillance. I’m concerned about the inevitable economic crash that will come when they eventually accept that this mess has no path to profitability. I’m concerned about AI psychosis and the way chatbots can seriously mess up a vulnerable mind. I’m concerned about the effects AI will have on children who grow up using it. Probably a few other things too that I’m forgetting about right now.
I’m also concerned about the powers that be trying to force AI to do things it can’t actually accomplish in spite of the fact that human labour is objectively the only real option. It doesn’t matter that it can’t actually do the job, it matters that they spent money on it and will keep hammering at it until reality catches up with them and hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people get hurt when the world burns because they won’t stop chasing sunk costs. The hubris at the top of a lot of companies is thick enough to cause real suffering for a lot of people.
Yeah, that’s another big one I didn’t think of.
I’m also concerned about AI being used to generate non-consentual nude/sexual images of real people, and of minors.
They just gotta use it to know it won’t be taking jobs.
Seriously. Use it for something you consider yourself an expert at. Based on what happens, remember it’s like that for any topic. Yes, even the ones you know little about but it seems to. That’s the state of generative “AI”.
Young adults have to become experts at something to realize that - a prospect that AI makes harder every day.
Oof.
A depressing truth bomb there.
I generally agree, but they are damn good at programming and only getting better. Can they build a software solution without an expert? No. But they can replace many junior devs.
48 percent of people are still that gullible?
Honestly, I hope AI continues to improve and does actually wipe out large swaths of the job market. Maybe then countries will finally have to come to terms with the idea that capitalism is absolute fucking shit and finally consider some sort of UBI or other way to move away from the existing garbage of a global economic system.
What I don’t look forward to is the significant months/years these fucks take to make those decisions, and the pain and suffering it will cause to billions of people. Why do these assholes always have to be dragged into the future kicking and screaming?
I’m not concerned it will take my job I’m concerned some idiot will give it my job despite not being able to do it.
Right now AI is looking a lot like a bubble. Wealthy people keep investing in it, but all the AI companies are losing money way faster than their profits. They’re selling compute at a vast loss, and if they charged full price, no-one would buy it.
With tin-foil hat firmly in place, this is what the owner class hopes to get out of AI:
1. Automate everything. As Corey Doctorow surmises, they want to automate as much as possible, until the working class just isn’t needed anymore, so they can build their Ayn Rand private city utopias (Peter Thiel has plans) and let the rest of us starve somewhere, displaced by the quarries, data centers and automated factories.
2. Create armies of swarming killer drones that are commanded by AI, as Randall Munroe predicted, not only to annex any territory that they can’t buy, but to garrison all the working class they’ve confined to reservations to die of thirst and hunger. And…
3. In the meantime, process all the mass surveillance information in order to predict who is a dissident or a troublemaker or is capable of organizing resistance, so that they can be dispatched early. Also to micromanage their dwindling workforce and make sure women can’t go to an abortion provider.
What is the x-axis on this chart? Time?
“Not Found” error. From the link, I assume you’re deeplinking to a temporary/personal tokenized download.
Ah, my bad. Just search the name (Stromberg, June 2026) and date of the primary research paper the graph came from, I scrolled through it until I found the graph in question.
Let me elieviate your fears. Human capital is listed as a liability, technology investment is CAPEX.
But so many prerequisites for effective AI implementations are relying on improving quality of inputs / training materials and that is an OPEX siphon.
Im a cable lineman, ai isn’t going to install your fiber. It will take over all the middle management roles, so I might have 4 new bosses in the future all trying to micromanage me. Ai is coming for managements jobs, if all you do it push papers and tell confident lies kiss your job goodbye.
While taking the poll to see how folks feel several humanoid robots were beating people to death in the background.
