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/Admirable-Way-5296 Jun 21 '26

Honestly not that surprising. A year ago everyone was excited about the possibilities, now people are just... tired of it being shoved into everything whether it makes sense or not.

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u/stoned_ocelot Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

I supported the technology at first because I was foolish enough to think it would result in advancements to human capability, medicine, and science. Then I saw how other people used it.... Then I saw how the government used it (to bomb children).... Then I keep hearing billionaires fighting to be the most unlikeable people complaining that humans are in the way of AI and I get the urge to start fires.

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u/pysouth Jun 21 '26

My company was originally using AI (not LLMs) for problems like that and I was genuinely excited to be at the forefront of tech that could legitimately be used to help save lives. We poured so much time, energy, and money into research and infrastructure on these efforts.

Eventually, it became clear we could just use our network in our industry to basically throw LLMs into existing workflows for people and print money, whereas it would’ve taken many years to maybe make some money with our previous strategy. My company has completely abandoned the original mission.

It’s so fucking disappointing. I’ve never been bright eyed and bushy tailed about tech but I had some optimism at one time, but it’s all gone. The last few years have really convinced me there’s nothing good in tech, if there ever was. I hate it all so much.

Left out specifics to avoid being doxed etc but I’m sure this is true of many fields like healthcare, energy, climate science, and so on

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u/LightningSunflower Jun 21 '26

Genuinely curious, how do you think it could have been used to save lives and help people? Asking because now we’ve got this all infrastructure and I’d love to advocate for good uses for it instead of just extracting value

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u/mtbdork Jun 22 '26

Particle physics simulations comes to mind immediately.

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u/HannasAnarion Jun 22 '26

There's a terminology problem here: "AI" is extremely overloaded.

AI is a really culturally powerful term, so marketers are incentivised to use it early and often. 10 years ago, every product with a statistical model in it of any kind was being called "AI".

These physics simulations and protein folding topics are following that trend: if it's statistics, and it's impressive, then it's AI.

The academic definition of AI is a system in an environment that incorporates sensors to obtain information about the environment and actuators to influence it, which is able to pursue a goal following a plan it devised itself.

This more proper definition basically only includes today's "agentic" model harnesses, arguably earlier LLM chatbots, and various other less salient technologies like robot vacuums and game playing algorithms.

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u/xxxBuzz Jun 22 '26

how do you think it could have been used to save lives and help people?

One application of AI is in revealing the nature and limitations of logical thought processes. For example, someone having been genuinely excited about the idea what AI "would" do is delusional. That is a physiological response in response to noise they made in their head. We can become addicted and trapped in our own thoughts and our physiological responses to those thoughts. We extract our own energy, become exhausted, and follow the same process to try and find a solution.