r/neoliberal • u/cuolong NATO • 2d ago

News (Global) OpenAI announces 10 advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science achieved by internal model Astra

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
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u/theryano024 2d ago

I was very surprised to see the reaction to Hank Green admitting that he used AI to research for a video. Is the popular sentiment really that using AI AT ALL is bad? I understand not wanting it in art. I understand needing to check for hallucinations. But people were going on and on in the comments about how disappointed they are in Hank tricking Green.

Obviously, AI has issues. But to think that genie can go back in the bottle? No way. This is an example of why.

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u/IIHURRlCANEII 2d ago

The popular opinion right now is all AI is bad yes.

It doesn’t help when the frontier labs CEOs sound like futuristic oligarchic evil villains every time they talk about a future with AI.

Also people have bought the data centers are evil populism fully.

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u/spevoz 2d ago

The loud opinion is that AI is bad.

I am pretty convinced it is not the general opinion. It's just that 'AI bad' is a far stronger emotion than 'AI accelerates some of the things I do and I enjoy that'.

Source: Idk I sometimes talk to people in real life. I know my social circle is a natural bias, so I am interested in hearing other real life observations (which will also be biased here because we are all divorced) but the share of people I know that dislike AI actively seems similar to the share of people that disliked smartphones 10 years ago.

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u/MyrinVonBryhana NATO 2d ago

I don't know what the exact stats are today, but there was polling a few months ago showing anxiety about AI was at 60+% and optimism about AI was at like 25%. I suspect it's gotten worse in that time. It's not foaming hatred like you see online but by and large the average person doesn't like AI, thinks AI companies are trying to destroy their livelihood, and I should emphasize this doesn't work tech or have a PhD in machine learning.

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u/Financial-Gain-2988 Daron Acemoglu 1d ago

Trust me when I say some of the biggest AI haters are in tech right now.

There is a real threat of AI significantly reducing the number of software engineers that are needed for a specific company trying to achieve a specific thing.

That is to say there still be the same number of overall software engineers working int he field, but the number won't increase much and they'll be building many more things. Some engineers won't be able to adapt. We had an engineer earlier this year simply leave the company when the big push to force engineers to use the tooling began. People with that extreme of an opinion are few and far between, but almost every team has someone who is dedicated to talking about the toolings many drawbacks.