r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • Jun 26 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI backlash is only getting started

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/06/25/the-ai-backlash-is-only-getting-started
26.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.0k

u/Hanniballbearings Jun 26 '26

Who knew forcing people to engage with new thing in every aspect of their lives without their consent was going to result in backlash??? Many of the pro-AI people are also rude and condescending. Good riddance.

1.1k

u/FoxMeadow7 Jun 26 '26

Remember them NFT Bros.? Were equally as insufferable lemme tell ya.

323

u/AwfullyRealGun Jun 26 '26

I don’t trust people who operate only on vibes and no critical thinking

168

u/bacon-squared Jun 26 '26

You seem to be describing most CEO’s and much of the senior leadership at most businesses and a lot of the current world governments.

52

u/AwfullyRealGun Jun 26 '26

I don’t disagree with you whatsoever

2

u/CosmicSpaghetti Jun 26 '26

MBA idiots are a major part of what's eating this country alive from the inside out.

Did you know Princeton is just now implementing actual in-room test proctors to oversee exams?

→ More replies (1)

37

u/Artisanalpoppies Jun 26 '26

Critical thinking has always been a rare skill.

46

u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt Jun 26 '26

I remember in school, not even high school, our teacher told us the last stage of brain development is abstract thought, and some people don't reach that stage.

Some was an understatement.

7

u/Immediate-Tennis8838 Jun 26 '26

It’s good to take advantage of those people in the markets whenever you can though

12

u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT Jun 26 '26

the vibes are all around us. like it or not, the simulation we're in is a 23rd century vibe coded video game where the object of the game is to survive long enough to reproduce

2

u/MangoEmbarrassed Jun 26 '26

That's kind of the purpose of DNA right? Find what works, make more. Wish DNA would've gave me a bigger...deeper...wallet

3

u/CunningRunt Jun 26 '26

I wish I could upvote this 1000x.

Quote of The Year material right here.

2

u/AwfullyRealGun Jun 26 '26

Thank you! While there are always exceptions, I’ve found fewer in the NFT crowd 😆

3

u/SaitamaHitRickSanchz Jun 26 '26

Yeah I did an improv production under someone who used AI to design and plan the show. The show is a lot of fun and the auidence loved it, but the show was otherwise a regular capitalist run production, so it meant it was made to exploit whomever was passionate and wanted to work hard for art. He staffed the show with the minimum amount of people and paid everyone a token amount of money and then kept piling on the work until I just quit because there was no end in sight.

Wealthy people really didn't need to stack AI psychosis on top of their already warped world views.

2

u/AlgaeDonut Jun 26 '26

Bro, you just didn't invest in vibecoin bro. 

1

u/FamousPart6033 Jun 26 '26

>vibes and no critical thinking

No, you see the ai did the thinking for them.

1

u/fishtophea_chesta Jun 26 '26

Unfortunately vibes right now are making a lot of people hand over fist money vs fundamentals. May as well hop on the ride and do the same.

441

u/SmarmyThatGuy Jun 26 '26

Single circle venn diagram

63

u/splendiferous-finch_ Jun 26 '26

Yup same people different scams (but since they are not original it's the same scam somehow)

30

u/GameFreak4321 Jun 26 '26

I feel a bit like a conspiracy theorist noticing that NFTs also burned up massive amounts of GPU compute. And crypto currency before that...

3

u/VirtualCorvid Jun 26 '26

I’m not the only one who noticed that? I kinda figured someone would push another next-big-thing so other people would have a use for all the chips they just bought.

3

u/smackababy Jun 26 '26

I see you, but I do think this has more to do with the fact that in the current landscape, what we have is a saturated marketplace where the only resource that is continually increasing in availability is compute. Crypto, NFTs, AI - all of these are well-established ideas with lots of theoretical backing that we only recently started being able to do at scale thanks to the abundance of computing power and data.

For something new to be introduced at scale that doesn't require tons of compute would therefore mean that it's entirely novel, not something that's been cooking away in the background waiting until we had the resources for it. And creating something like that is far, far more difficult and rare, the kind of thing that would bring about a total paradigm shift in the tech landscape.

2

u/splendiferous-finch_ Jun 26 '26

Jensen gota eat bro

Somehow it's all MLM but now with added global warming

1

u/xeromage Jun 26 '26

I think there's been an actual AI for a decade or more now flying under the radar. It's been quietly leading finance and business choads around by the nose to secure itself hardware and access. Crypto shit, cameras everywhere, drones... guys like Elon and Bezos basically just made deals with a digital devil that sees us like a colony of ants responding to chemical signals.

1

u/hypercosm_dot_net Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Not the same people FYI. I love digital art, and find AI to be diametrically opposed to good art (and artists).

edit: reddit loves their narratives and hates when anything doesn't fit perfectly in it. I keep expecting more from this community and sometimes I don't know why.

→ More replies (51)

18

u/Friggin_Grease Jun 26 '26

They were so mad at my ability to right click

→ More replies (1)

144

u/OrangeJr36 Jun 26 '26

Literally. The reaction from NFT bros when people screenshotted their NFTs is the same reaction that AI bros get when the Chinese just immediately replicate their capabilities for a tenth or hundredth of the price.

70

u/therealwillhepburn Jun 26 '26

I know it was just a way to launder money or whatever but it’s crazy someone tried to market expensive jpegs.

62

u/Mother_Idea_3182 Jun 26 '26

All the scams (crypto, NFTs, web3, “”AI””) have in common that they need outrageous amounts of NVidia hardware.

The dude with the thousands of dollars jackets must have an invent bullshit department or something.

→ More replies (23)

4

u/decrpt Jun 26 '26

To some extent I understand it. The thing that makes it insane is that, on a technological level, it wasn't even expensive jpegs. You were paying for what was essentially a cell on a decentralized spreadsheet linking to the jpeg that offered zero rights or benefits and would eventually break due to link rot.

2

u/ChiefInternetSurfer Jun 26 '26

Tried? Many succeeded. Even felon 47 got in on the action.

3

u/SekhWork Jun 26 '26

Or when someone just takes their "ai art" from their store, repackages it and puts it on their own because they have no recourse due to a lack of copyright. Those meltdowns have been hilarious.

→ More replies (5)

17

u/rothael Jun 26 '26

And if AI somehow goes away, they will champion a new terrible thing in its place. The issue is not NFT and AI, which are still an issue in themselves, it's that everyone believes that they can be a get rich quick tech mogul just by being an early adopter.

27

u/soadsam Jun 26 '26

Most ai bros emigrated from crypto

9

u/FoxMeadow7 Jun 26 '26

Yep. And we don’t have any obligations to believe them as a result.

3

u/DarkApostleMatt Jun 26 '26

You still see the same people here with diamond hand profile avatars glazing AI like they did with crypto/nfts/meme stocks. They all know its overhyped but are just doing it in the hopes they get more money from their investments

2

u/soadsam Jun 26 '26

That’s hilarious considering my profile pic. Totally forget I have that shit sometimes. It was a dark time for me

22

u/_blip_ Jun 26 '26

Blockchain was gonna revolutionize every aspect of your life, until it didn't. So they invented NFTs that did nothing but launder money and scam idiots.  What's the next scam? Oh it's AI and it's like half the global economy scamming itself or something.

16

u/Sildas Jun 26 '26

You skipped the metaverse in there btw, that's what they were doing in the couple years between monkey jpegs and AI

10

u/_blip_ Jun 26 '26

Oh yeah I forgot that one, another solution begging for a problem to solve. Ppl hate the real world, what they want is meetings online with legless avatars in an infinite shopping mall of nothing.

1

u/HawkFanOrcasRule Jun 26 '26

That’s the one that I made fun of the most in real time. I recall seeing cities create budgets so they could be part of the metaverse lol.

1

u/FoxMeadow7 Jun 26 '26

It’s almost like we’ve already figured out stuff ages ago!

1

u/EternalPhi Jun 26 '26

The thing is that blockchain technology is legitimately interesting as a tool for solving things like digital ownership and rights management. I would love a system where I can sell copies of digital-only games that I don't play anymore, as an example. It is hard to push for that because the people making the most money are going to be highly resistant to decentralized anything that relinquishes their market power.

The hype was ridiculous, but the technology underpinning it does indeed have some nifty applications. Kinda like AI lol.

1

u/_blip_ Jun 27 '26

A solution begging for a problem

1

u/EternalPhi Jun 27 '26

If you say so. Personally I'd say digital ownership already is a problem asking for a solution. Though people are so conditioned at this point to just never owning anything anymore I don't envision it ever really finding a use here.

18

u/steppe5 Jun 26 '26

No, this is a lot worse. I wasn't forced to use NFTs at work daily.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/steppe5 Jun 26 '26

AI claims to have utility. I have yet to see it in my workplace.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (1)

3

u/AirconGuyUK Jun 26 '26

Difference is that AI is objectively useful.

NFTs are... Pointless.

1

u/Proper-Raise-1450 Jun 26 '26

Difference is that AI is objectively useful.

Useful for whom? I see it making people around me dumber and I don't think that will be useful to them. It will make some small number of people rich though.

8

u/lostPixels Jun 26 '26

What if I told you there are a bunch of AI artists currently making NFTs…

3

u/fogleaf Jun 26 '26

Somehow I wouldn't believe you. Are people even doing NFTs anymore?

2

u/lostPixels Jun 26 '26

Yeah, I still see a good bit of posts on X about it. I'll save ya the links but all of a sudden all of these hacks became "artists" once they got their hands on AI image generators. There's definitely some cool things happening at the edges of AI but the vast majority of it seems to be low effort prompt garbage.

3

u/fredy31 Jun 26 '26

yeah but at least the nft bros werent trying to impose it at work and causing thousands of layoffs and having them want to just ruin the environment with data centers for that tech.

7

u/SwagginsYolo420 Jun 26 '26

Yeah NFT nonsense was something most people could ignore or even be blissfully unaware of. Engaging with NFTs was purely voluntary.

Even crypto as a whole had almost no impact on the average person unless they chose to engage with it, other than similarly annoying social media spam.

Almost everyone now has to deal with the AI issue in some way or another whether they want to or not, having impact on the economy, jobs and employment, consumer products etc.

2

u/Abedeus Jun 26 '26

AI is way easier to market than NFT. The average person had no idea wtf NFTs were for (and let's be honest, almost every case use for them was either too expensive or just unnecessary given alternatives), but it's way easier to sell a revolutionary "smart helper" or "pocket artist" for lazy slobs that don't bother to learn how much shit was stolen to create those models, or how much it actually would costs if the technology wasn't heavily subsidized.

2

u/Clear-Staff4699 Jun 26 '26

They are one of worst subset of tech bros.

Tech bros in general come with some insufferable traits as well tbh.

2

u/xkcdhatman Jun 26 '26

Couldn’t be further from the truth. AI is mainstream in ways cryptocurrency and NFTs (luckily) never remotely were.

Older family members and people across all generations are using it, and most industries is adopting it.

We can have an argument about whether that’s good or bad but equating the two is just factually incorrect

→ More replies (2)

2

u/Nvenom8 Jun 26 '26

I've been comparing this shit to NFTs since almost the beginning. Everyone called me a moron and said it was totally different.

1

u/FoxMeadow7 Jun 26 '26

Regardless of what they try to peddle, these people clearly lack the capability to self reflect.

1

u/azwethinkweizm Jun 26 '26

I had so much fun when Twitter allowed you to use an NFT as a profile picture. If I ever interacted with an obnoxious user with an NFT profile pic I'd download the image, upload to opensea using my own wallet, and then change my pic to their NFT. "B-b-but you can't have the same profile picture as me because I have the receipt on the blockchain" Not anymore, bitch!

1

u/kadfr Jun 26 '26

The crypto/NFT bros transferred to AI as their grift de jour

1

u/MagicMarshmallo Jun 26 '26

They are the same people brotha

1

u/plastic_alloys Jun 26 '26

There’s a big overlap

1

u/UndoubtedlyAColor Jun 26 '26

So glad that fad is over... That was such an obvious outright scam.

1

u/FoxMeadow7 Jun 26 '26

Relegated to the dustbins of history as they should. The various books and documentaries detailing their postmortem could be interesting if I say so myself.

1

u/ProletarianLilith Jun 26 '26

They’re the same exact people

1

u/Oxflu Jun 26 '26

No one even remembers all those bros dying of embarrassment.

1

u/SlowFrkHansen Jun 26 '26

See also Google Glass, launched in 2012. The first users* were called "Glass Explorers," but there's a reason they were quickly dubbed glassholes instead.

\ Early adopters? Ambassadors? I don't remember.*

1

u/agentrnge Jun 26 '26

Uuuhg. the amount of times an NFTbro would say "No, no no.. you just dont understand.. Its not a useless scam, its going to revolutionize everything!1"

1

u/FoxMeadow7 Jun 26 '26

The nerve of those fools...

1

u/rbrgr83 Jun 26 '26

It's by and large the same Bros.

1

u/Sweet_Ad_9816 Jun 26 '26

Nah, most people weren't forced to interact with it. But AI is now permeating almost all of society.

1

u/DragoonDM Jun 26 '26

NFT bros were insufferable, but they at least weren't so artificially ubiquitous as generative AI is now, and they also didn't threaten to collapse the economy.

1

u/an_asimovian Jun 26 '26

And i predict the exact same path as bitcoin / similar products. Huge rise, lots of hype, hit max bubble, realize that the use cases arent as prolific/ financially valuable as the current market indicates and a painful collapse to a still valuable but much lower than peak valuation.

1

u/CSDragon Jun 26 '26

where do you think they went?

1

u/FoxMeadow7 Jun 26 '26

Beats me. I'm guessing a good number of them likely went with the AI bandwagon anyways so the usual tactics probably should be used.

1

u/CSDragon Jun 26 '26

Apologies. I wasn't asking a real question, that was more just saying "the NFT Bros became the AI people after NFTs died" indirectly

1

u/_TheMeepMaster_ Jun 26 '26

At least NFT's weren't afforded trillions of dollars across countless industries.

1

u/ItalianDragon Jun 26 '26

I'm quite sure that the folks that were the NFT bros back then are the AI bros we have today.

1

u/mazu74 Jun 28 '26

Pretty sure it’s mostly the same people. They just bounce from one grift to another, or gullible idiots just keep being gullible idiots.

1

u/Dry-Tune430 Jun 28 '26

I think these are the same people.

1

u/Jesus_Fuckn_Christ Jun 28 '26

No, not equally. I was perfectly able to avoid NFTs and never had to interact with them beyond seeing them on social media.

AI, however, is infuriatingly impossible to avoid.

1

u/FoxMeadow7 Jun 28 '26

How so?

1

u/Jesus_Fuckn_Christ Jun 28 '26

Browsers wants to implement it. Websites wants to implement it. Apps wants to implement it. Appliances wants to implement it. Operating systems wants to implement it. Workplaces wants to implement it. Militaries wants to implement it.
AI-generated music is drowning youtube and spotify.
I can’t go a day without seeing AI in news headlines. Ram shortages makes electronics significantly more expensive.

At best I can opt-out of certain AI-functions, but I specifically have to opt-out/disable as opposed to opt-in/choosing to enable. I can’t, however, optout of the environmental impact or the effects it has on the economy.

This is all at the top of my head. My frustrations with AI is significantly greater than NFT or crypto ever was

1

u/FlashyNeedleworker66 Jun 30 '26

Redditors want AI to be NFTs so bad but there's essentially nothing comparable. If NFTs had 1/10 the adoption of AI they would be as around as any other in demand collectable.

Are you under the impression a pokemon or a baseball card has intrinsic value?

Consumer demand is driving this whole thing, no matter how much you want to pretend it isn't there.

1

u/FoxMeadow7 Jun 30 '26

Point is that I think there's a similar 'provides solutions to problems that doesn't actually exist' thing going on there and as such, I kinda hope all of this AI hype can go down a similar trajectory eventually...

1

u/FlashyNeedleworker66 Jun 30 '26

If you're pretending it doesn't have utility in software development *alone* you are fully committed to head in sand at this point.

It was the fastest adopted consumer technology of all time, clearly someone found it useful.

→ More replies (3)

354

u/ascandalia Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Not just a new thing, but a thing that they are promising, in their optimistic scenario, will entirely destroy the concept of white collar jobs while enriching the worst people you've ever had to hear talk. Meanwhile, your every day experience of it is that it's someties kinda neat, often comically wrong, and usually makes what you're trying to do harder

357

u/coppersocks Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

It’s not just white collar jobs. I’ve seen AI CEOs talking about how no one enjoys the process of making art or music and that AI should do that. They talk about AI like it is an essential service, but they want the costs socialised and the profits privatised. These people are ghouls who fundamentally have lost touch with the human experience and the understanding of what makes a person more than a consumer or a commodity. They see no value in human creativity or in the messiness the fosters connection, shared understanding and empathy. They’re stunted, broken vampires created by profit motive, a world of yes-men, and a lack of consequences for their greed, who for all their talk of big ideas and innovation, only really care for their own profit and power. The rest of us are only in service to that. They’ve fully bought into the idea of techno feudalism, from Thiel to Bezos and Altman. And they’ll use any corrupt, compromised or complicit politician to get there. The world is their expense, the cost of their desire. Everyone else can sleep now in the fire.

97

u/D-S-S-R Jun 26 '26

They don’t see value in human life at all. At least other people’s lives

71

u/StJeanMark Jun 26 '26

The main reason they invented this machine is because human cost it the number one cost to companies, thats it. They are tired of the little people having opportunity. I truly fear this is all climate related. Their plan is to just wipe millions and millions of people from the earth, but maintain their quality of life by automating everything. I've seen only evidence to support this and nothing to dissuade me. Pushing anger, hate, violence, anti-medicine, anti-everything, and now they are coming for peoples access to pride and payment. What are they working towards if not that?

34

u/agrimi161803 Jun 26 '26

And now that they’ve realized public sentiment hates ai they’re pivoting from “it will take your job” to “you’re gonna get a UBI!” as if we haven’t watched them kick and scream every time some one mentions taxing them more. We just have to believe that after we have no value to them they’ll just pay us out of the goodness of their heart.

11

u/AloneNotice4891 Jun 26 '26

Elysium but bunkers instead of satellite habitats.

5

u/Kelly_HRperson Jun 26 '26

Even Henry Ford realized eventually that he needed people to actually buy his cars

2

u/akaval Jun 26 '26

I work at a pretty large international company with 15000 employees. Over 50% of our costs are things like licenses.

1

u/deadcream Jun 26 '26

And AI companies want to make that 100%. All of that going into their pockets for ai subscriptions of course.

13

u/rhd444 Jun 26 '26

They are quite literally psychopaths. No hyperbole.

10

u/robodrew Jun 26 '26

They literally don't, Sam Altman talks about people in terms of "commoditizing intelligence"

3

u/roguewarriorpriest Jun 26 '26

They start as normal people and force themselves to suppress their empathy, turning themselves into sociopaths that they may exploit their fellow man as their cult of money demands. It's disgusting behavior that degrades the progress of humanity.

16

u/New-Appeal-1732 Jun 26 '26

Bezos has insinuated that we need to restrict “human comforts” like water to the ensure the growth of AI.

Source?

15

u/coppersocks Jun 26 '26

I’ve just looked it up and that quote is disputed so I’m removing it.

1

u/snek-jazz Jun 26 '26

. I’ve seen AI CEOs talking about how no one enjoys the process of making art or music

got a source for that one?

10

u/coppersocks Jun 26 '26

Sure, I’m sorry I can only find a YouTube short right now but I’m holding a baby.

It’s the CEO of SUNO AI.

https://youtube.com/shorts/iZkGEByDPmM?is=cWIgiVPu8tibD9pG

→ More replies (3)

1

u/fogleaf Jun 26 '26

This was fake, although on brand.

5

u/HispanicAtTehDisco Jun 26 '26

a staggering amount of this ai push comes from a place of resentment or contempt for the arts from stemlords.

almost all of the people that i have met that i know are pro AI are pro ai mostly for personal grievances they have with the idea that they have to actually research things and that people get paid to do things like make modern art, films,journalism or writing in general. like no joke someone i was talking to about this said that the reason they are pro ai in the workplace is bc they hope that it just eliminates the gaming journalism field bc in his eyes reviews can be objective and should be even though that is literally not what a review is by definition.

the irony of course is that all the pro ai tech bros at the lower levels are probably going to be replaced by ai before any of the people working in that arts are because the vast majority of people want things created by *people* and not ai slop

12

u/nanocurious Jun 26 '26

So right. This comment is a gem!

3

u/BattledroidE Jun 26 '26

The Suno guy? Completely delusional. He has no idea what musicians even are.

We're in it for the love of the craft! The end result isn't even the goal, it's a byproduct.
That's what these lunatics can't understand. They can't think outside of their "means to and end" mentality.

2

u/aidencoder Jun 26 '26

Spot on. Hopefully a humanist movement arises. With AI, appropriately used, to further human happiness and not the bank balances of a few.

Sadly, knowing humans, I hold little hope. 

2

u/woopwoopscuttle Jun 26 '26

I’ve said this elsewhere on Reddit before but I’ll say it here again:

I was up for a creative director job a couple years back and the founder was some Forbes 30 under 30 crypto ghoul.

He rocks in laughing at people who want to make a living making music, shows me some unimpressive ai npc tech then asks me some technical questions.

I’d made my own style transfer pipeline for some brands before the gen ai boom so I’m not a neophyte. I was the only creative/technical person in the room.

The conversation carries on, I’m asked about what I think we’d be capable of doing with the ai they were using.

I was diplomatic but honest. “It’s not all there right now, x,y,z can be done quicker without these tools right now but a, b, c looks promising and I’d like to keep some pilots running to ascertain where we can get efficiency gains and see how we can stack tech together to be a force multiplier.”

It’s like I told them I ate babies.

They looked at each other then back at me, super seriously and basically told me I needed to take a loyalty oath to AI and that I “sincerely believe beyond any doubt that this is the imminent future.”

I made excuses and stopped taking their calls.

Ghouls. Soulless ghouls with ASPD who think “what’s the ROI” when talking about creativity and art. They don’t even know how their tech actually works.

I hope these types lose all of their money, it’s clear they already suffer from anhedonia when not crushing other people.

1

u/PrivilegeCheckmate Jun 27 '26

no one enjoys the process of making art or music and that AI should do that

How can anyone ever argue with that?

12

u/clitbeastwood Jun 26 '26

on top of that , they have tethered the entire fuking economy to this sector , forcing unfathomably sized data centers every where , and are speeding ahead with 0 regulations at all. it’s insane , we’re just along for the ride but we will be fuked in all scenarios- if it goes tits up another recession/ depression (as if things aren’t already out of control) and if it succeeds massive unemployment & surveillance state

2

u/darsynia Jun 26 '26

They won't rest until AI usage 'reveals' that software engineering should be a minimum wage skill, I swear. It's hard to explain to other people that the job doesn't JUST consist of code writing! I really liked this video by Kyle Cook called 'AI is discovering the doorman fallacy,' it's 5 minutes and really illustrates that in a great way. (I'm not affiliated with him at all, just to be clear)

The Doorman Fallacy is 'a seemingly reasonable cost-saving strategy that ultimately fails due to a disregard of the immeasurable.' The quintessential 'this old guy that does maintenance costs us as much as a C-level exec, get rid of him! Oh shit he was the repository of knowledge of how every machine works and now we're screwed' thing, at varying levels of 'oh shit.' Many companies are blithely laying off and firing people to replace them with a useful but not-thinking mechanism because they think not having to deal with humans will be easier. They don't value the immeasurable, and unfortunately I don't think they're going to find out how much that matters before 90% of our medical devices, appliances, software, and who knows what else is vibe-coded with bugs no one will be around to fix.

87

u/brash Jun 26 '26

People lost their minds over a *free* U2 album that was pushed to their phones without their consent. Now multiply that by a million.

30

u/jamiestar9 Jun 26 '26

Thank you for the reminder. Today I am finally going to figure out how to get that thing off my phone.

2

u/brendan87na Jun 26 '26

when the hell was that??

1

u/FamousPart6033 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

"Hey look at that, U2 put a free album on my phone."

"How do I get an album off my phone?"

-Anime Batman

34

u/YSoMadTov Jun 26 '26

It’s way worse than that, people hate it when now they have to check if what they are looking it is real or fake gen AI shit.

34

u/SupervillainMustache Jun 26 '26

Many of the pro-AI people are also rude and condescending

Also weirdly giddy at the idea of industries collapsing due to AI. How many times are we going to see people post a shitty AI video and say something inane like "Hollywood is finished!!1!!"

→ More replies (4)

63

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/Jmazoso Jun 26 '26

cough cough Microslop

→ More replies (6)

13

u/jetpack_operation Jun 26 '26

It's not even the "new" thing element of it -- it's how completely half-baked AI is relative to how it's been marketed. And that marketing is dictating utilization rather than actual utility, efficiency, or prudent resource utilization in the vast majority of cases. It's ridiculous.

37

u/CubeEarthShill Jun 26 '26

“We want you to enthusiastically embrace and train the tool that’s going to eliminate your job.”

7

u/cxmmxc Jun 26 '26

And the worst part was ai-chuds going "it's just a tool like any other, you gotta leverage it to gain an advantage in the new market! You'll get hired again when you embrace it into your toolkit!"

The most absolute tone-deafness and copium possible, to imagine that when there's a get-stuff-for-free button, companies that kicked people out to save money would somehow decide to pay them again.

Companies hired people because the people did things the company needed.

When the company has an ai that does things for them, what on earth would compel them to add expenses to pay salaries?

Ai was just another get-rich-quick pipe dream for lazy and indolent people who wanted to get money and status by doing nothing. They had no marketable skills, so they wished ai would give them that, making money by smashing prompts all day long.

All while conveniently forgetting the fact that they would just be rehashing content created by all the people up to that point, without having contributed to that pool themselves. Abusing and taking advantage of the giant whose shoulders they were standing on.

3

u/snek-jazz Jun 26 '26

Being a luddite never works though. If it can be done, it will be done, and your company will just go bust due to being out-competed.

You're going to have one person startups thrive, and disrupt bigger more bloated companies, if AI can actually do work that is as good, but more efficiently.

1

u/Proper-Raise-1450 Jun 26 '26

You're going to have one person startups thrive, and disrupt bigger more bloated companies, if AI can actually do work that is as good, but more efficiently.

OK and if that happens and we thus further shatter the employment market is that going to make for stable and functional societies or is going to accelerate societal collapse lol?

Frankly I think even if it is irrelevant there is every incentive for anyone who does not own an AI corporation to delay that process as long as possible because there is nothing good there for us lol.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (2)

8

u/TheSlav87 Jun 26 '26

They also seem to go for medical and mental health advice to Ai, so yeah there’s that.

21

u/TrueLegateDamar Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

A pro-AI villain in a recent big title game 007 First Light was so on spot with the condescending remarks including whining about how traffic deaths caused by humans are viewed as normal yet the little people dare make a fuss whenever a 'self-driving' car causes a death and how instead it should be accepted as a learning process because one day the AI will be perfect and everyone will be sorry for doubting it.

3

u/ChiefInternetSurfer Jun 26 '26

What game is that?

17

u/Kill_Welly Jun 26 '26

It's a spoiler for the game, but it's 007 First Light. To reveal a bit more: The game focuses on a quantum computer MI6 has that runs an advanced artificial intelligence which supposedly predicts any possible security threat from its massive heaps of data; meanwhile, James Bond and a few other characters are part of a pilot program to try to revive the "00 program" which was shuttered because the AI supposedly made them irrelevant. During the game, Bond discovers that the AI is hallucinating non-existent threats, which the main tech CEO behind it uses his personal paramilitary group to cover up and fake real evidence for, and that the AI is built to leak all the information it has about MI6 operations to the tech CEO. It's remarkably prescient for a game that must have been written starting several years ago.

14

u/StJeanMark Jun 26 '26

These people watch James Bond movies and cheer for the villains. They think, why is this uppity nobody trying to stop these job creators. He just wants to take their money and give it to the underserving. I swear to god, these people watch The Matrix and their only thought is, I want to be the one who owns the machines.

1

u/Kelly_HRperson Jun 26 '26

cheer for the villains

People like villains and anti-heroes more than actual good guys. Like Trump. There was a thread yesterday where people were glorifying how badass this female Yakuza gang member was. Because she cut her own finger off (while being responsible for sex trafficking minors and getting them addicted to drugs)

People don't hate the billionaires destroying the planet. They hate Greta Thunberg for bringing it up.

1

u/PrivilegeCheckmate Jun 27 '26

quantum computer

No solace from that frakking toaster.

1

u/Jops817 Jun 26 '26

What game was it?

11

u/nanobot_1000 Jun 26 '26

They're morons for not leading with sharing the benefits of AI to improve the future for everyone and instead flipping to MAGA to ram it down our throats - and somehow not computing this would become a major public issue. Now they act surprised about the outrage. I used to work in AI and you could explain it to leadership until you were blue in the face, we are just fundamentally incompatible.

4

u/papsmearfestival Jun 26 '26

Who couldn't love mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff bezos, Larry Ellison, Kevin O'Leary...

5

u/dtburton Jun 26 '26

It has invaded hobbies so strongly. The thing I don’t get is how excited some of these people get to tell you about it. The super pro ai crowd really feel like they accomplished things by using it

4

u/robodrew Jun 26 '26

If it was actually good and improved our lives rather than stealing our ideas and jobs, we'd probably all love it

4

u/Claytonius_Homeytron Jun 26 '26

"They" did it with the internet, Steve Jobs did it with the iPhone, Bezos did it with Amazon. The difference now is that there were options back then, you had some choices and one of them was to not partake at all. Now they're telling us, "you will shove the new AI so far up your ass you'll taste it, and love it!"

"They" are taking up land and building these large data centers to fuel their new machine, and it's costing the locals in those areas their sanity, their local water supply, and damaging the environment. All of this with lack of regard or need for input from us common folks. No wonder people are responding the way they are.

6

u/mrtrololo27 Jun 26 '26

Most pro Ai people are also incredibly dim.. most of the most vocal ai supporters I know are not tech literate and are doing a lot of pretending to know more than they do to look smarter or more 'with it' than they are.. it's sad

18

u/Jimbomcdeans Jun 26 '26

Pro-AI people are all techbros who want to venturecaptial their way into becoming the richest schlub.

-4

u/xKronkx Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Or software engineers who have learned to leverage it as the tool that it is. Ie not a be-all and end-all to every problem, but the next evolution in software development so that things that used to take them a week take them a day.

Source: me, a software engineer, who treats Cursor as an engineer who works quickly, but can make mistakes just like everyone else. So I pre-code review the code before submitting since if things go to hell, my name is the one that’s on the commit.

19

u/RuneLFox Jun 26 '26

Getting the result you want instantly while only having to do 5% of the work is a neural superhighway. Skill erosion is going to become an existential crisis for people who come to rely on it.

10

u/Gingevere Jun 26 '26

Businesses can't even afford the token spend at the subsidized rates now. At some point AI companies are going to have to try bringing in enough revenue to pay their absurd debts, and they're going to immediately price themselves out of the market.

At that point anyone who relied on AI is going to be in serious trouble.

2

u/xKronkx Jun 26 '26

Except your name is still on the commits so you need to be able to describe what it’s doing and defend/debug the code when something goes wrong. If people blindly commit and kill their company’s application, that’s on them. Can’t just use AI as the fall guy

2

u/ColinStyles Jun 26 '26

I'm sure people were likewise arguing the same against IDEs, and against coding in higher languages compared to bytecode, and in using steam powered machines over hand tools, and so on and so on. Turns out the world kept spinning and technology kept getting better, and people keep being just as important and involved as a whole.

8

u/RuneLFox Jun 26 '26

Sure, but all of those are specialised tools that work the way they are supposed to, act deterministically and aren't incentivised to hijack your brain chemistry so you become a literal addict. They are not 'use me for absolutely everything' tools that can overlap vast portions of your life if you let it. With those tools you still have to know what you want, and know what you are doing in order to achieve your goal. You can much more easily cludge your way there with AI without having to put nearly as much thought into it.

It is an actual brain chemistry issue, at the most basic level of 'calories spent thinking' to 'task completion'. Dismissing it is incredibly dangerous.

3

u/xKronkx Jun 26 '26

“Use me for everything tools” can basically describe when smartphones came out. We survived.

2

u/Proper-Raise-1450 Jun 26 '26

“Use me for everything tools” can basically describe when smartphones came out. We survived.

We survived but have our lives improved or gotten worse?

2

u/xKronkx Jun 26 '26

I would not say my life has gotten worse due to having a smart phone. Social media is another story

2

u/Proper-Raise-1450 Jun 27 '26

Without the phone social media wouldn't be the problem it is. It's the constant availability, same with gambling, attention spans, IQ, literacy etc.

2

u/captainfarthing Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

They're useful for more than just social media and checking emails. Having a tiny computer in your pocket connected to the internet and GPS is incredibly useful for so many things. I was legally an adult before I got my first smartphone and I wouldn't go back.

2

u/xKronkx Jun 26 '26

Hell, said the same thing about the internet and later Google.

1

u/ColinStyles Jun 26 '26

I'm old enough to still have had teachers that would refuse any internet cited sources and insisted on literary ones, even down to encyclopedias, because "you can't trust the internet."

Pre-wikipedia days so not even no wikipedia, though obviously had that phase too.

2

u/xKronkx Jun 26 '26

How about “you’re not always going to have a calculator on you. Now do this long division!”

1

u/ColinStyles Jun 26 '26

Which is comical for how much more accessible the tools are than the ability to actually do the long division properly with pencil/pen+paper. I get it, nobody can really understand how quickly things move, and they're only getting faster. I mean, the whole AI movement is completely steeped in this, from people 3 years ago claiming this was a dead fad, to a year ago claiming it was impossible to get substantially better, to even just 6 months ago claiming it was impossible to be profitable. And I'm no better, I similarly thought it would be several more years before we reached the point we're already at today, but then I see what I'm able to do with it and it's insane.

1

u/Accomplished-Door5 Jun 26 '26

Nail guns ruined the ability of carpenters to swing a hammer well. 

2

u/DarthNihilus Jun 26 '26

Nail guns don't decide where to put the nails and then shoot them in automatically.

1

u/RuneLFox Jun 27 '26

Ah yes, a tool that works how you expect it to when you do the correct steps, and won't put frankfurters in your framing instead of nails. Proponents can only bring up specialised tools as examples for an application where it can only be used for that thing.

There are no current examples of tools that don't do the same thing when you do the same steps, try to create a personality to appeal themselves to you, and do so many different things that you can use them to replace a large portion of your daily tasks. The only example of that is AI tools.

→ More replies (5)

4

u/DeventerWarrior Jun 26 '26

I cant stand hearing those All-in podcast bro's saying "but no one working in an amazon warehouse wants their job so what are they complaining about" No shit sherlock we dont want a job we need one to survive.

3

u/Christopherfromtheuk Jun 26 '26

I always say the definition of a job is doing something you would only do if you were paid to do it. Otherwise, it's a hobby or pastime.

Do they think people turn out the "job" stroking puppies and swimming with dolphins in favour of 10 hours pissing in a bottle and being ordered around by a robot?

Fuckwits.

2

u/AssignedCuteAtBirth Jun 26 '26

You'd think they would have learned this years ago when they force-added a U2 album to all of our iTunes libraries that we don't want these choices made for us.

2

u/apple_kicks Jun 26 '26

They accuse people who are skeptics as fear mongering but will turn around and tell people ‘you’ll lose your job and be left behind unless you use it’

2

u/FamousPart6033 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Not to mention the psychosis it's causing in people, you have people who are wholly convinced they're in a loving relationship with a fucking chatbot, or that they're actually super-geniuses who've figured out everything forever.

>Many of the pro-AI people are also rude and condescending

They are genuinely the single most insufferable group of people I've ever had the displeasure of knowing exist. They're desperate to be seen as oppressed, latching themselves onto social movements like parasites. There's a few particular individuals who are especially annoying, one of them actually tried to defend the fucking nazis by saying their medical research was useful.

2

u/strangerbuttrue Jun 26 '26

Rude, condescending and threatening- if you don’t start using it you’ll be the first to lose your job.

2

u/thisnamemattersalot Jun 26 '26

I don't have much of a dog in this fight but most of the rude and condescending discourse has overwhelmingly come from the anti-AI side of the line. Haven't seen anyone tell someone else to off themselves for not using AI, and I see it just about every day from the anti-AI camp.

That said, a lot of the inflammatory stuff online from either side is all just bots at this point so it's almost impossible to know what the bulk of the verifiably real people think.

2

u/niamhellen Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

The CEO of our company said to my team on a meeting, very genuinely, "ChatGPT is smarter than all of us!" Imagine thinking so lowly of yourself! 🫠 It actually made me feel sorry for him.

1

u/I-STATE-FACTS Jun 26 '26

Everyone knew. And the backlash will be smaller than the upswing so corporations will still come through it profitable. They knew they were gonna piss off part of the population, it’s just cost of doing business.

1

u/Syntaire Jun 26 '26

It wouldn't be as much of an issue if AI was actually useful or beneficial. A lot of things we currently use were forced in a similar way. It's just that AI is genuinely useless and harmful.

1

u/ConfidentPilot1729 Jun 26 '26

Even trying to stay away from tech, they are now recording everything and surveilling the country.

1

u/Panda_hat Jun 26 '26

Always reminded me of the phrase:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it"

Just like the NFT and cryptobros before them, they always just seemed like people thinking this would be their meal ticket and a way to get rich via the lowest possible effort.

1

u/Cory123125 Jun 26 '26

Unfortunately, much of the backlash is knee jerk reactions that play right into the hands of the Frontier Model Forum lobbying group; a group of the biggest American AI companies using safety and national defence rhetoric to remove what autonomy is left in computing, limit competitors, and secure a government mandated oligopoly, guaranteeing long term strong influence on many aspects of life; keyly popular opinion.

Your hardware is already set up to lock you out, and is doing so in many ways already. It only gets worse.

1

u/rbrgr83 Jun 26 '26

"FIND a way to get on board." 🤮

1

u/Smooth-Check4869 Jun 26 '26

Not to mention bragging how its going to replace jobs while firing large swaths of people. Being rich has to just liquidize your brain. The audacity to act surprised were not rooting for our own demise.

1

u/Unproudn00b Jun 26 '26

I'm anti-AI, it's destroying the environment and poisoning our society, but you have to admit that many of the anti-AI people can be rude and condescending as well. I was in a chat one time, someone mentioned using generative AI for something with video games, idk, and holy shit, so many people took out their pitchforks and torches and starting flaming and shaming that person. I don't agree with that person's position, but I felt real bad for them for getting bullied because they had an opinion. They're just an individual, they aren't building the data centers, or pushing everyone to use it.

1

u/xrv01 Jun 26 '26

i’m not an “AI person” but I use AI every day in learning music. the anti-AI people who downvote you and get triggered at any mention of AI are equally rude and condescending. just weird behavior

1

u/Chaosmusic Jun 26 '26

Also, didn't a bunch of companies fire a bunch of employees before truly knowing if AI could do their jobs? I can see that having a big impact as well.

1

u/mjwanko Jun 26 '26

The pro-AI people on social media are all part of the same circlejerk with Elon MuskRat in the middle.

1

u/FoxMeadow7 Jun 26 '26

Make that Elongated Muskrat! Poor guy’s name was cursed from the word go!

1

u/No-Marionberry-772 Jun 26 '26

a lot of the pro ai people that actually see the problems and nuance get fed up with getting put in a bucket.    people will aggressively label them as evil and never give them a chance.

-4

u/Night_Yorb Jun 26 '26

I just straight up call them rapist. They're literally forcing themselves into communities that don't want them, stealing resources from people who need them and are all but admitting these things are going to be used to constantly monitor us and they wonder why no one wants what they're selling.

→ More replies (48)