My great hope for AI is that it kills social media by making 99% of content and comments untrustworthy and not worth consuming.

IMHO shrugging it off as “superficially plausible text” is the extreme to the other side.

We’re past plausible text since GPT-2 and it’s undeniable that the technology is making waves right now and is having an impact.

As you can’t judge the impact of the Industrial Revolution by the first steam engines, you can’t dismiss the impact the technology is having right now.

When the leading CEOs are saying the next generation will be unemployed due to AI... uh yeah, you're gonna lose them!

> There's a very real possibility that AI proponents completely lose the next generation of adults.

The college-age students I interact with hate AI content from other people, but they love using AI for their own work.

They'll pump AI generated memes and AI altered images all day long. Then they'll use ChatGPT to do their homework and write their resume, then look for an AI tool that will spam apply to jobs for them. Then when they get the job they plan to use ChatGPT to level the playing field with more experienced, older peers.

That's not even getting into the AI entrepreneurs who think they're going to use AI to start a company or find a winning strategy to trade memecoins or bet on PolyMarket so they don't have to get a job at all.

I think the next generation is all-in on AI for their own use. They see it as their advantage over the boomers occupying all the good jobs. They think ChatGPT is their cheat code for getting into these companies and taking those jobs.

They have to frame it this way, because the market has invested in it being "the next internet" kind of event.

> comes out of the same mindset that has turned a neat technology into a banal hellscape for consumers and employees

I'm going to say up front that I'm not as familiar with this period of history as I should be, but -- would it be totally unfair to say the same of the "Industrial Revolution"?

I'm not gonna say they're equivalent by any means, but my understanding is the "Industrial Revolution" was hellish for many people. Maybe the mistake is the framing that "the revolution" or "the next big thing" is always a good thing?

maybe what we really need is a butlerian jihad

> a very real possibility that AI proponents completely lose the next generation of adults

I doubt it. AI seems fundamentally useful. If the guys at the top can’t get their shit together with messaging and strategy, and it increasingly looks like they can’t, they’ll be replaced before an entire generation is potentially rendered permanently uncompetitive. (And to be clear, there is no rush to adopt.)

> We desperately need some leadership in companies or institutions that can place this technology in its proper context

We need the public debate to stop being set by Altman, Musk et al. We need our generation’s Dickens, Tolstoys, Sinclairs and Whitmans.

What are the ways potential futures with AI, on the spectrum from the familiar sci-fi AGI to more-subtle forms, could work? What are the novel ways it might not? How does capitalism need to evolve? Electoral democracy? Labour organization? If I think to the last few years of television and movies, Westworld is the only one to have contributed anything original to the discourse since Isaac Asimov’s era of science fiction.

That will happen inevitably, we are throwing spaghetti at the wall right now, and cleaning up the mess, lessons will be learned. The question is whether that phase will lead to real lasting damage and to what. For myself I no longer read cold emails, I believe they are all AI generated, and that communication method may legitimately die culturally. What else will be destroyed?

> The people who rely on it are not cool.

That's the only statement that's true. Admiting to AI use is unfashionable in the western world at this time.

But how much would you like to bet that 90% of those students who were booing also used AI to do their homework for them quite often? So your take away would be "the AI stole their education". No, they were dishonest and the AI helped them cheat themselves out of learning.

Technology doesn't make anything banal or a hellscape, or fire people. Technology is a lever.

If humans use AI to produce worse output because they are too lazy to bother reviewing and iterating on it, that is a human problem. If humans are going to use AI to help them exploit other humans more efficiently, that is also caused by the human rather than the technology.

Also, the ChatGPT moment for humanoid robots is coming this year or next. It will become very obvious that AI use in these robots is not just superficially plausible text.

as is tradition. an AI boom is always followed by an AI winter haha

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I don't really think we should talk about it with "use cases" anymore when it can virtually replace/enhance literally almost any form of white collar work and soon physical labor as well (people will act surprised the moment it comes of course, the same as with LLMs despite all the researchs made prior, if theory supports it = it will be), of course humanoids will be in every homes and they'll cost the same as a phone, soon enough, and we will also not be able to live without.

We don't talk about human intelligence with "use cases", I think we need to be realistic about what AI will be in our lives, most people already can't do without, and this will without doubt expand further.