Most Americans think AI won’t improve their lives, survey says
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I do as a software engineer. The fad will collapse. Software engineering hiring will increase but the pipeline of new engineers will is dry because no one wants to enter the career with companies hanging ai over everyone's heads. Basic supply and demand says my skillset will become more valuable.
Someone will need to clean up the ai slop. I've already had similar pistons where I was brought into clean up code bases that failed being outsourced.
Ai is simply the next iteration. The problem is always the same business doesn't know what they really want and need and have no ability to assess what has been delivered.
I too am a developer and I am sure you will agree that while the overall intelligence of models continues to rise, without a concerted focus on enhancing logic, the promise of AGI likely will remain elusive. AI cannot really develop without the logic being dramatically improved, yet logic is rather stagnant even in the latest reasoning models when it comes to coding at least.
I would argue that if we had much better logic with all other metrics being the same, we would have AGI now and developer jobs would be at risk. Given the lack of discussion about the logic gaps, I do not foresee AGI arriving anytime soon even with bigger a bigger models coming.
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Bruh what are you even arguing? AI shouldnt be in everything just because, it needs to be reliable and have a legit need.
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I'm about 50/50 between helpful results and "nope, that's not it, either" out of the various AI tools I have used.
I think it very much depends on what you're trying to do with it. As a student, or fresh-grad employee in a typical field, it's probably much more helpful because you are working well trod ground.
As a PhD or other leading edge researcher, possibly in a field without a lot of publications, you're screwed as far as the really inventive stuff goes, but... if you've read "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" there's a bit in there where the Manhattan project researchers (definitely breaking new ground at the time) needed basic stuff, like gears, for what they were doing. The gear catalogs of the day told them a lot about what they needed to know - per the text: if you're making something that needs gears, pick your gears from the catalog but just avoid the largest and smallest of each family/table - they are there because the next size up or down is getting into some kind of problems engineering wise, so just stay away from the edges and you should have much more reliable results. That's an engineer's shortcut for how to use thousands, maybe millions, of man-years of prior gear research, development and engineering and get the desired results just by referencing a catalog.
My issue is that I'm fairly established in my career, so I mostly need to reference things, which LLMs do a poor job at. As in, I usually need links to official documentation, not examples of how to do a thing.
That’s an engineer’s shortcut for how to use thousands, maybe millions, of man-years of prior gear research, development and engineering and get the desired results just by referencing a catalog.
LLMs aren't catalogs though, and they absolutely return different things for the same query. Search engines are tells catalogs, and they're what I reach for most of the time.
LLMs are good if I want an intro to a subject I don't know much about, and they help generate keywords to search for more specific information. I just don't do that all that much anymore.
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New technologies are not the issue. The problem is billionaires will fuck it up because they can't control their insatiable fucking greed.
exactly. we could very well work less hours with the same pay, and probably boost the economy in our extra free time. we wouldnt be depressed and angry like we are right now.
we just have to overthrow, what, like 2000 people in a given country?
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I too am a developer and I am sure you will agree that while the overall intelligence of models continues to rise, without a concerted focus on enhancing logic, the promise of AGI likely will remain elusive. AI cannot really develop without the logic being dramatically improved, yet logic is rather stagnant even in the latest reasoning models when it comes to coding at least.
I would argue that if we had much better logic with all other metrics being the same, we would have AGI now and developer jobs would be at risk. Given the lack of discussion about the logic gaps, I do not foresee AGI arriving anytime soon even with bigger a bigger models coming.
If we had AGI, the number of jobs that would be at risk would be enormous. But these LLMs aren't it.
They are language models and until someone can replace that second L with Logic, no amount of layering is going to get us there.
Those layers are basically all the previous AI techniques laid over the top of an LLM but anyone that has a basic understanding of languages can tell you how illogical they are.
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People being economically displaced from innovation increasing productivity is good provided it happens at a reasonable place and there is a sufficient social saftey net to get those people back on their feet. Unfortunately those saftey nets dont exist everywhere and have been under attack (in the west) for the past 40 years.
Yep that's my point. That they just assumed that it must be the case when that hasn't been the outcome with innovation not coinciding with improved affordable living. Instead it's just been further class divide despite advancements.
Innovation is its own separate thing from human outcomes, and advancement of improved human lives needs its own care and guidance. Its not going to improve just because science and tech is improving. Otherwise humans are no different than any other disposable resource from the view of the powers that be, and will be discarded and abused without care.
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Of course, they learned to code.
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the same could be applied to humans... but then who would buy consumer goods?
In all seriousness though the only solution is for the cost of living to go down and for a UBI to exist so that the average person can choose to not work and strikes are a legitimate threat to business because they can more feasibly last for months.
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US experts who work in artificial intelligence fields seem to have a much rosier outlook on AI than the rest of us.
In a survey comparing views of a nationally representative sample (5,410) of the general public to a sample of 1,013 AI experts, the Pew Research Center found that "experts are far more positive and enthusiastic about AI than the public" and "far more likely than Americans overall to believe AI will have a very or somewhat positive impact on the United States over the next 20 years" (56 percent vs. 17 percent). And perhaps most glaringly, 76 percent of experts believe these technologies will benefit them personally rather than harm them (15 percent).
The public does not share this confidence. Only about 11 percent of the public says that "they are more excited than concerned about the increased use of AI in daily life." They're much more likely (51 percent) to say they're more concerned than excited, whereas only 15 percent of experts shared that pessimism. Unlike the majority of experts, just 24 percent of the public thinks AI will be good for them, whereas nearly half the public anticipates they will be personally harmed by AI.
I mean, it hasn't thus far.
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I do as a software engineer. The fad will collapse. Software engineering hiring will increase but the pipeline of new engineers will is dry because no one wants to enter the career with companies hanging ai over everyone's heads. Basic supply and demand says my skillset will become more valuable.
Someone will need to clean up the ai slop. I've already had similar pistons where I was brought into clean up code bases that failed being outsourced.
Ai is simply the next iteration. The problem is always the same business doesn't know what they really want and need and have no ability to assess what has been delivered.
A complete random story but, I'm on the AI team at my company. However, I do infrastructure/application rather than the AI stuff. First off, I had to convince my company to move our data scientist to this team. They had him doing DevOps work (complete mismanagement of resources). Also, the work I was doing was SO unsatisfying with AI. We weren't tweaking any models. We were just shoving shit to ChatGPT. Now it was be interesting if you're doing RAG stuff maybe or other things. However, I was "crafting" my prompt and I could not give a shit less about writing a perfect prompt. I'm typically used to coding what I want but I had to find out how to write it properly: "please don't format it like X". Like I wasn't using AI to write code, it was a service endpoint.
During lunch with the AI team, they keep saying things like "we only have 10 years left at most". I was like, "but if you have AI spit out this code, if something goes wrong ... don't you need us to look into it?" they were like, "yeah but what if it can tell you exactly what the code is doing". I'm like, "but who's going to understand what it's saying ...?" "no, it can explain the type of problem to anyone".
I said, I feel like I'm talking to a libertarian right now. Every response seems to be some solution that doesn't exist.
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Good enough is the keyword in a lot of things. That's how fast fashion got this big.
Fast fashion (and everything else in the commercial marketplace) needs to start paying for their externalized costs - starting with landfill space, but also the pollution and possibly social supports that are going into the delivery of their products. But, then, people are stupid when it comes to fashion, they'll pay all kinds of premiums if it makes them look like their friends.
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You're using it wrong. My experience is different from yours. It produces transfer knowledge in the queries I ask it. Not even hundret Googl searches can replace transfer knowledge.
You’re using it wrong.
Your use case is different from mine.
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We are ants in an anthill. Gears in a machine. Act like it. Stop thinking in classes "rich vs. poor". When you become obsolete it's nobody's fault. This always comes from people who don't understand how this world works.
Progress always comes, finds its way and you can never stop it. Like water in a river. Like entropy. Adapt early instead of desperately forcing against it.
We are ants in an anthill. Gears in a machine. Act like it.
See Woody Allen in AntZ (1998 movie)
Adapt early instead of desperately forcing against it.
There should be a balance. Already today's world is desperately thrashing to "stay ahead of the curve" and putting outrageous investments into blind alleys that group-think believes is the "next big thing."
The reality of automation could be an abundance of what we need, easily available to all, with surplus resources available for all to share and contribute to as they wish - within limits, of course.
It's going to take some desperate forcing to get the resources distributed more widely than they currently are.
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Are you a poor kid or something? Like what kind of question even is this? Why does it even need to be personal at all? This thread is not about me...
And no. I'm not. I stand to inherit nothing. I'm still a student. I'm not wealthy or anything like that.
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US experts who work in artificial intelligence fields seem to have a much rosier outlook on AI than the rest of us.
In a survey comparing views of a nationally representative sample (5,410) of the general public to a sample of 1,013 AI experts, the Pew Research Center found that "experts are far more positive and enthusiastic about AI than the public" and "far more likely than Americans overall to believe AI will have a very or somewhat positive impact on the United States over the next 20 years" (56 percent vs. 17 percent). And perhaps most glaringly, 76 percent of experts believe these technologies will benefit them personally rather than harm them (15 percent).
The public does not share this confidence. Only about 11 percent of the public says that "they are more excited than concerned about the increased use of AI in daily life." They're much more likely (51 percent) to say they're more concerned than excited, whereas only 15 percent of experts shared that pessimism. Unlike the majority of experts, just 24 percent of the public thinks AI will be good for them, whereas nearly half the public anticipates they will be personally harmed by AI.
Butlerian Jihad
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This is collateral damage of societal progress. This is a phenomenon as old as humanity. You can't fight it. And it has brought us to where we are now. From cavemen to space explorers.
Whoever the mod was that decided to delete my comment is a fool. This guy above is a Nazi apologist.
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Great for people getting fired or finding that now the jobs they used to have that were middle class are now lower class pay or obsolete. They will be so delighted at the progress despite their salaries and employment benefits and opportunities falling.
This shouldn't come as a surprise. Everyone who's suprised by that is either not educated how economy works or how societal progress works. There are always winners and losers but society makes net-positive progress as a whole.
I have no empathy for people losing their jobs. Even if I lose my job, I accept it. It's just life. Humanity is a really big machine of many gears. Some gears replace others to make the machine run more efficient.
And it's so nice that AI is most concentrated in the hands of billionaires who are oh so generous with improving living standards of the commoners. Wonderful.
This is just a sad excuse I'm hearing all the time. The moment society gets intense and chang is about to happen, a purpetrator needs to be found. But most people don't realize that the people at the top change all the time when the economy changes. They die aswell. It's a dynamic system. And there is no one purpetrator in a dynamic system. The only purpetrator is progress. And progress is like entropy. It always find its way and you cannot stop it. Those who attempt to stop it instead of adapting to it will be crushed.
I have no empathy
for people losing their jobsFTFY
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Because you write like you think this can't reach you, like you're always going to have food and shelter no matter what happens.
If it reaches me, so be it. That's life. Survival of the fittest. It's my own responsibility to do the best in the environment I live in.
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AI has it's place, but they need to stop trying to shoehorn it into anything and everything. It's the new "internet of things" cramming of internet connectivity into shit that doesn't need it.
Now your smart fridge can propose unpalatable recipes. Woo fucking hoo.
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I do as a software engineer. The fad will collapse. Software engineering hiring will increase but the pipeline of new engineers will is dry because no one wants to enter the career with companies hanging ai over everyone's heads. Basic supply and demand says my skillset will become more valuable.
Someone will need to clean up the ai slop. I've already had similar pistons where I was brought into clean up code bases that failed being outsourced.
Ai is simply the next iteration. The problem is always the same business doesn't know what they really want and need and have no ability to assess what has been delivered.
If it walks and quacks like a speculative bubble...
I'm working in an organization that has been exploring LLMs for quite a while now, and at least on the surface, it looks like we might have some use cases where AI could prove useful. But so far, in terms of concrete results, we've gotten bupkis.
And most firms I've encountered don't even have potential uses, they're just doing buzzword engineering. I'd say it's more like the "put blockchain into everything" fad than like outsourcing, which was a bad idea for entirely different reasons.
I'm not saying AI will never have uses. But as it's currently implemented, I've seen no use of it that makes a compelling business case.
