alt Hacker NewsI don't think most people in tech are quite aware of the level of visceral AI hatred amongst non-techies. I've personally witnessed the worst Thanksgiving dinnertable fight I've ever seen (after someone revealed that their recipe was AI-generated, a couple people literally spat out the food they were enjoying and threw their plates in the trash), and a divorce (a very solid marriage between two people who were once both staunchly anti-AI unraveled within weeks after one of them changed their tune and adopted AI at work).
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I operate in at least one social circle that is heavily not-technical (local politics) and I do not see this at all.
Well, Sam Altman and Jensen Huang are going around bragging about how many people they're going to push out of employment. Might have something to do with it.
From a recent NBC News poll, “the only topics that were less popular than AI were the Democratic Party and Iran”: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-majority...
My wife runs a food blog and sometimes uses AI to come up with recipes she tests on us first. One of the best dishes she’s ever made (and one of the best I’ve ever eaten) was pork with an apricot sauce. The pork was fine, but the sauce was absolutely incredible! I’d put it on any kind of meat. Funny thing is, I don’t even like apricots, but the sauce was amazing. My wife does have one advantage, which is that she knows when the AI has hallucinated something crazy and makes appropriate adjustments. I guess it's like anything. AI can be a big help to those who already have a threshold level of background knowledge in a field but can cause big problems for those who don't.
There is very strong anti-AI sentiment among "techies" too. It's just not absolute or generalized (AI is a huge umbrella term).
Politics really is a substitute for religion in America
The remarkable part of your anecdote is the behavior. Seems to me some humans nowadays are less tolerant of any difference in opinion, AI is just the current reason to pick a fight.
Wonder why that is, and if we'll grow out of it peacefully.
This was obviously a fictional thanksgiving dinner. Nobody is this geezed up about AI assistance.
Ironically I have noticed it's techies and white collar workers who fear and/or loathe AI the most. Why? Cause they're the most likely whose jobs have been threatened by it or have already been superseded by it.
My blue collar work buddies don't feel as strongly or as existential about it. To them, it's just this buzzwordy crap that has ruined entertainment or made the quality of services even worse. It's more of an annoyance than an outright fear and/or loathing of it.
Maybe if the bubble pops and the economy tanks and it affects their bottom line they might hate it as much as the aforementioned people.
I don't think most people in tech are quite aware of the level of visceral AI hatred amongst non-techies.
I work in a non-tech industry and I see this all the time from people, but it's not just limited to AI. SV itself evokes hatred in a lot of people on both sides of the spectrum.
I can't repeat the worst things I've heard, but Altman and his ilk should be terrified of the mob violence they're instigating.
From my own perspective, the "visceral hatred" isn't so much at AI (which I use almost exclusively to generate funny pictures of myself and coworkers) but at the executives that view it as a way to enshittify society.
turning myself (an overweight bearded guy) into an animated hula dancer and turning my coworker into the Terminator and sinking into molten steel don't seem to inspire the same hatred. unless you don't like hula dancers.
I must live in the upside down. If there are any ardent anti-AI people I come across they're techies. Whereas non-techies are either oblivious or completely and comically locked-in as caricatured in that South Park episode.
If they divorced in few weeks, there is zero chance it was solid before ai disagreement. They were distancing themselves emotionally long before.
The only thing we hear is your jobs are going to be gone but we are still only giving you healthcare if you work.
wow people really are getting psychosis from AI (discourse)
TBH people in AI may also resent AI, because they are the first to be impacted by AI. They just don't say openly because frankly no one wants to lose his/her job.
I think you're just in a strange bubble of people because those are absolutely comical responses to learning of AI. I do know some people who are for or anti AI to a stronger extent, but most of those I know simply don't give a shit, they'll use AI if it's there, such as for their job or to ask an LLM questions, but otherwise not think about it.
I've found that most non-tech people are indifferent or, at worst, utterly bored by any mention of AI.
The tech people are the ones that have the strongest opinions one way or the other.
Not just non-techies. Plenty of techies share that same visceral hatred. Some of them even use these tools themselves, because it’s a complicated issue with nuances.
It's quite prevalent in tech too-- however, folks tend to be quiet because the "use AI for everything or else" hammer is being used across the industry.
Most SV people live in a bubble inside of a bubble. They don’t understand how their words come across to a significant portion of the population. If they did they would shut the fuck up.
Surely there must have been underlying tensions in that marriage.
(I don't feel at all confident in that statement; I am requesting reassurance.)
Crypto doesn't get that much hatred, since you don't need to participate in the space even in non-techies circles. But it doesn't affect them and it can be safely ignored in its own bubble.
Mentioning "AI" in non-techies circles is a bad idea. It tells you that many here are in a massive bubble and unaware of the visceral hate against AI because it directly affects them and they cannot opt-out.
Given that AI takes more than it gives back (jobs, energy, water, houses) of course you will get anti-AI activists.
> after someone revealed that their recipe was AI-generated, a couple people literally spat out the food they were enjoying and threw their plates in the trash
Not entirely unwarranted given the track record of LLMs as a chef though:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/pak-n-save-sav...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o
Of course it was two years ago and it's unlikely to happen again, but that's the drawback of the “move fast and break things” attitude: sometimes you've broken public perception and it's hard to fix afterwards.
> a couple people literally spat out the food they were enjoying and threw their plates in the trash
That was an unnecessarily extreme reaction, like AI 3d printed the ingredients.
Spitting your food out because the AI generated the recipe is so clearly irrational that I chuckled a bit on reading that