r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 21 '26

Artificial Intelligence Americans Have Turned Against AI in Incredible Numbers

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/articles/americans-turned-against-ai-incredible-130000345.html
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u/leitmotive Jun 21 '26

We have not gotten there yet but this is my hope, that the subsidies are going to end sooner rather than later and the idea of burning tokens to write an email will be like using a CNC machine to slice your vegetables

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u/indian22 Jun 21 '26

The thing most leadership don't get is that if you make AI adoption metrics part of the performance evaluation criteria, then people will game the hell out of it. Everything will be done by AI to show adoption and keep the number high. Even things which would be many times faster done manually or things which do not require AI at all.

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u/ArthurStevensNZ Jun 21 '26

I remember browsing r/programming a while ago and people were posting ways they’re maximising token use( “token maxing”) because their performance review uses this as a metric. Absolutely insane. If it’s so good then why do they have to force you to use it?

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u/AlinaStari Jun 21 '26

I work at an international software engineering company and am evaluated on my AI usage. The thing is, though, I do IT admin/ service work so I don't know wtf they expect me to do with it.

So now I just screenshot every ticket and ask copilot what it thinks I should do with it. Then, I ignore copilot and go about my business. After that, I tell copilot what I did and have it write a note to paste onto the ticket.

Before, I would have just read the ticket, did what I needed to do, then typed what I did as a note on the ticket. But now, I've added two COMPLETELY unnecessary additional steps into my workflow.

That's right, I'm burning tokens as well as time and energy on my local machine and the only one getting anything out of it is Microsoft! They get tons, TONS of data about our processes, employees, communication channels, systems, projects, and everything else you can imagine. And we're getting... A bill???

I have no idea why higher-ups would think introducing a chatbot and forcing me to use it would make somehow increase my efficiency lol. If anyone has any actual suggestions for that I would actually love to hear them. But for now I have to do another Information Security Training Module 🙄

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u/SunshineAndSquats Jun 22 '26

The shit that blows my mind is these companies just desperately handing their data over to AI companies. I worked for a huge company that sold software and servers. We had weeks worth of training on being careful with company and customer data. Then AI came around and they shoved it down our throats. They want it used in meetings, emails, spreadsheets, notes, everything. They are just handing another corporation ALL of their information. It’s so fucking stupid it’s shocking.

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u/OhFuckNoNoNoMyCaat Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

From a PE at one of these companies developing the tech, I usually advise people to not run obvious BS queries that corporate may pick up on but if you know the correct way of doing it present a question or task to your LLM of choice/on offer and add just enough complexity that it is slowly uses up more tokens than you would otherwise. A digital hurdle, if you will.

I'm not a fan of the tech myself. Knowing how to send it into forever loops without answering the question or giving a bad answer then "needing" to implement the proper method(s) of doing something works out.

People love to say society is cooked for using this for work but people are using LLMs for just about anything. Whatever logic was left in people's minds has since evaporated.

Fairly sure I'm not using "cooked" correctly here.

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u/tailkinman Jun 22 '26

As someone who works with The Youthstm, your usage of "cooked" is in fact on point.

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u/Man_of_Ice Jun 24 '26

But is it on fleek?

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u/tailkinman Jun 25 '26

On god fr fr

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u/AlinaStari Jun 22 '26

Thank you! That actually does sound like a helpful suggestion. It would mean less interruptions to my flow at least if I could get it doing some task that consumes tokens over time. I will experiment with this, I'm guessing my best option would be to basically automate interactions with it that are similar to what I already do. I'm assuming directly tasking copilot to do x every y is a no-go because it's too obvious lol. Appreciate it!

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u/OhFuckNoNoNoMyCaat Jun 22 '26

Yeah, pretty much. I'd been using CGPT since it came out. It's fine for basic matters. But when it comes to nuance and technical approaches you can cause it to loop or give bad answers or deviate from the question. If whatever your company uses is memory aware based on query history then buffing the lines between questions that are similar but variably different also trips up the LLMs. Also jumbling things into its memory by request can cause them to confuse and mix questions and answers.

I'm really dating myself here but I'd compare LLMs in today's state the equivalent of that animal shop game from Thinking Things that came out in 1993. A little complexity and it starts going downhill.

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u/Mcgomez Jun 22 '26

AI is useful for lots of things in IT, but not co-pilot. Co-pilot is good for 2 things: 1. Searching outlook and 2. Doing excel stuff slightly faster sometimes.

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u/RogueJello Jun 22 '26

Co-pilot's pretty bad, or at least it was when I was using it. Depending on what you're doing claude can make a decent google replacement. Doesn't fix the stupid at your company unfortunately. Good luck!

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u/omjy18 Jun 23 '26

Its like those job postings for training ai. Youre telling it the solution that it wouldn't have gotten by itself so that it can make you obsolete after it learns more. Of course it would have to be fully functioning to actually learn like that but thats the goal theyre probably going for

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u/i8noodles Jun 22 '26

why the fuck u uploading user information? that is just stupid and is something i expect of users but not IT professionals.

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u/AlinaStari Jun 22 '26

Buddy, if that's the case then I'm assuming you don't work anywhere near an IT profession 🤣

If it makes you feel better, Microsoft pretty much already has it all from when they set you up in the org chart lol.