Thread

'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us

216 points · 323 comments · YeGoblynQueenne

DarkNova6 · 1790255345 · focus · HN ↗
I am more and more convinced that young people have a much better understanding of technology and especially its impact on society.
1. sunaookami · 1790255802 · focus · HN ↗
  They can't even use a computer, they struggle with basic computer knowledge because they grow up with closed ecosystems and most of them only have smartphones, not a desktop PC. They are called "Digital Naives" (sic) for a reason.
  1. lemmetellya · 1790256023 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  2. junon · 1790256035 · focus · HN ↗
    Opposite of my experience. A few family members and their friends invited me to a discord server recently; I'll join for games some nights. They're very acutely aware of how things work. We talk a lot about how even their schoolmates don't really use social media much (at least, not the big ones) and despise AI.
    Gives me some hope that the kids will be alright.
    letmevoteplease · 1790256250 · focus · HN ↗
    Most of them are using AI for all their schoolwork while performatively hating it because "it wastes water" or some other half-understood meme.
    r_lee · 1790256643 · focus · HN ↗
    no? it's because nobody likes AI slop
    tokai · 1790257065 · focus · HN ↗
    People actually do like AI slop. I run into older people all the time that think its beautiful and/or fun.
    orangedog · 1790257101 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm a fan of generated music and have run across some generated vids I like. I've seen some really creative stuff which took existing fiction and generated vid content around that. Previously, that content simply would not have been created because it would have been way too expensive. I know I'm not the only one out there who enjoys it at times.
    There is undoubtedly some performative element, how big that is who knows?
    roblh · 1790257971 · focus · HN ↗
    Confessing to liking generated music is wild and legitimately embarrassing. Somehow, even compared to ripoff visual art, fake music is even more obviously plagiaristic. The stuff that it's ripping off already exists and isn't even hard to find since ALL of it is billed exactly as the style/genre that it's stealing from. That's the equivalent of framing and hanging a "ghibli style" generated print in your living room.
    orangedog · 1790258332 · focus · HN ↗
    This is what I mean, people don't feel the same way. I find the lyrics creative enough, the style hits, that's all I'm looking for. I don't find most music on the market that interesting, anyway. I found people making music about UFOs and disclosure of all things, there isn't exactly a huge market for that. It's allowing people to express things in music they previously weren't.
    This is the kind of stuff which will just cause people to be contrarian and like it because we're told it's something to be embarrassed over. People put human-created content on way too high of a pedestal.
    I find it interesting that we have tools which can take a general concept and sound and create hours and hours of content out of that and I don't consider it any different than remixing human stuff, it is still human at its core.
    Honestly, for the people who hate this stuff, the best thing you can do is not to mock people in this way because I promise you, that's how you get contrarians. Do you know how rude it is to be told that what you like is legitimately embarrassing? What caused you to say that to another human being? Come on!
    card_zero · 1790260020 · focus · HN ↗
    Well they used to. Make music about UFOs and such, I mean.
    Woke up this morning, I was feeling quite weird, Had flies in my beard, my toothpaste was smeared Over my window, they'd written my name, Said so long, we'll see you again ...
    Did a vehicle, did a vehicle, did a vehicle come from somewhere out there, just to land in the Andes? Was it round and did it have a motor ...
    Music was more interesting once.
    rnd0 · 1790307171 · focus · HN ↗
    >Make music about UFOs and such, I mean.
    Fleetwood Mac, 1975, "hypnotized" comes to mind. As does "Interstellar Overdrive" by Pink Floyd
    So yeah. They did.
    defrost · 1790307702 · focus · HN ↗
    sure, sure, and Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft by the Carpenters in '77.
    But what was the name of the song quoted in the comment you responded to?
    Wasn't that also a song about UFOs and such and didn't that comment explicitly already acknowledge such songs existed?
    wbxp99 · 1790300321 · focus · HN ↗
    Some people eat at Chipotle every day
    mitxela · 1790302206 · focus · HN ↗
    Error: unpopular opinion detected
    DaSHacka · 1790257203 · focus · HN ↗
    That doesn't refute what GP is saying at all.
    If it makes you feel better, it can be rephrased as:
    > Most of them are using AI for all their schoolwork while performatively hating it because "nobody likes AI slop" or some other half-understood meme
    r_lee · 1790265511 · focus · HN ↗
    that's not "performative" though?
    and how is it "half-understood"? it's simply not the same thing
    someonebaggy · 1790259050 · focus · HN ↗
    Everyone likes slop. That's why Instagram, Tiktok and Linkedin were so popular pre-AI.
    They don't like slop when they're looking for non-slop and they recognise the slop, because it's not solving their problem. If they don't recognise the slop they'll just treat it as non-slop and use it, and in this case they arguably still liked it.
    satvikpendem · 1790341871 · focus · HN ↗
    As as AI gets better it'll be harder to detect slop thus people won't think it's slop.
    satvikpendem · 1790319354 · focus · HN ↗
    If nobody likes it then why do they all make and use it? Revealed preferences.
    Qwertronix · 1790337301 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you like carbon monoxide? No? Then why do you make and "use" it?
    Maybe breathe and let your brain have some oxygen to think about the answer to your own question.
    Wearing your second job uniform while working doesn't reveal a preference for blue jackets, it just means you'd like to not be fired.
    satvikpendem · 1790341734 · focus · HN ↗
    Not sure why you felt the need to throw in a random insult there but I'm sure you already know the answer to the difference between making something voluntarily and involuntarily.
    Qwertronix · 1790419948 · focus · HN ↗
    Apologies, I intended the oxygen bit as a flippant joke but I can see how that could come across as an insult instead.
    As to the difference between voluntary and involuntary, the grey line between those is exactly my point. The employee 'voluntarily' wears blue jackets and could certainly not wear one, and risk getting fired, and certainly could quit that job. A student certainly could spend far more time than their peers on study and end up with a lesser grade on their work, with presumably less returns in most cases. I see a lot of parallels between a teenage student navigating complex new social relationships and learning their way through middle and high school and an employee trying to just earn enough money for rent, in terms of both of them having to make 'choices' that do not feel from the inside like decisions they make freely and that have consequences that appear life-ruining to not take (in which case it reveals a preference for not having your life ruined, rather than for whatever it is that you decided to wear or use or do to merely keep up with the perceived requirements).
    r_lee · 1790339714 · focus · HN ↗
    there's no way you actually didn't understand what I meant right?
    using LLMs to learn for example is not the same as enjoying AI slop posters/art etc
    satvikpendem · 1790341677 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm talking about the latter. Lots of people make slop art and use AI slop for their school essays as mentioned above. Just a few days ago we had this: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49764791">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49764791
    r_lee · 1790342864 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not one bit surprised that you'd use the path of least resistance to do some essay that you could care less about.
    hating AI slop overall like seeing it in shirts or something like that is not performative.
    satvikpendem · 1790349970 · focus · HN ↗
    That's the part that's performative, they use it, and maybe even like using it, but then outwardly say how much they hate it. I feel like you're not getting that point about what others here are saying.
    r_lee · 1790361669 · focus · HN ↗
    because nobody says "I hate x y and z uses of AI", especially the youth.
    like with that logic, everybody loves AI and all the uses of it because they're not being specific enough in their speech
    satvikpendem · 1790362689 · focus · HN ↗
    They like some uses of it, but say they hate all of it, that is the performative part.
    r_lee · 1790376862 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think anyone hates all of AI except a minority
    and even if you would hate AI, you don't really have a choice anymore since employers will expect you to be more productive due to it
    but I definitely see a bunch of hate towards the dystopian aspects of it and as mentioned before, the whole slop thing and how you see AI slop everywhere now. it definitely evokes a very negative feeling in me when I see something like that
    satvikpendem · 1790389705 · focus · HN ↗
    That's our point. No one hates all of it yet some people such as some of the Gen Alpha kids as shown in the article performatively act as if they do. Sounds like you're agreeing with us here in this thread.
    sunaookami · 1790256715 · focus · HN ↗
    >invited me to a discord server
    At least kids back then knew how to host their own TeamSpeak server ;) Clicking yourself a Discrd "server" is the easiest thing you can do.
    someonebaggy · 1790258978 · focus · HN ↗
    NAT and the slow adoption of IPv6 are partly to blame for this; so are phones. To host your own anything, you need a machine that can be left turned on (so a desktop fixed in one place) and an IP address.
    sunaookami · 1790669354 · focus · HN ↗
    We rented VPS as kids
    junon · 1790269975 · focus · HN ↗
    They could 100% figure it out if TS was still a popular thing. What's with the assumption all the kids these days are utter zombies who can't think for themselves?
    tokai · 1790257013 · focus · HN ↗
    Discord is definitely one of the big ones for their generation.
  3. palmotea · 1790256284 · focus · HN ↗
    >> I am more and more convinced that young people have a much better understanding of technology and especially its impact on society.
    > They can't even use a computer, they struggle with basic computer knowledge because they grow up with closed ecosystems and most of them only have smartphones, not a desktop PC. They are called "Digital Naives" (sic) for a reason.
    You and the GP are talking about totally different things.
    Also the OP is talking about elementary schoolers. Even as a future software engineer interested in computers in the pre-smartphone era, my computer knowledge in elementary school was still pretty basic.
  4. Zigurd · 1790257170 · focus · HN ↗
    The use of personal computers way overshot what they were designed for. Don't mistake people putting up with the relative complexity of personal computing with them wanting it. That's why so many people no longer bother with PCs or keep an old one around just for things that need to be done and through the web. Phones, primarily, and tablets for media consumption, are much easier to use.
    Try explaining a clutch and stick shift to kids. They will look at you and wonder why and how you think having a pedal that decouples the engine from the rest of the drivetrain so you can manually operate a gear lever was appropriate for a mass market product.
  5. da_chicken · 1790258308 · focus · HN ↗
    Every generation is full of people that have a strong aversion to tech. The mistake was thinking it would magically only be the Boomers with that problem, but I've always known people in my age group who needed that remedial tech class in college.
    It did appear to improve for a little while when everyone needed a laptop or desktop to access the Internet. But smartphones have eliminated that. So have tablets. And lightweight laptops like Chromebooks have further eliminated the need for tech knowledge. I work at a K-12 school, and a surprisingly large number of young parents have access to the Internet only through their smartphones. And, truthfully, they don't need a PC to access the Internet anymore. It's an extra cost you can just bypass, and nobody under 30 with kids has spare money at this point.
    But, in as much as new teachers coming into our district today are often just as tech-illiterate as those we saw 20 years ago, we haven't seen the number of tech-savvy people really decreasing, either. Tech remains a hobby for some people, and that doesn't seem to be decreasing.
    Yes, we're not going to raise another generation where the techies have a common background of making MS-DOS boot disks; reading modem initialization strings; upgrading RAM requiring a chip puller or piggybacking; managing IRQs, memory addresses, or bus addressing for ISA/IDE hardware with jumpers or DIP switches; or knowing what `LOAD"*",8,1` means. But that doesn't mean people aren't learning tech, having fun with it, or making careers out of it.
  6. someonebaggy · 1790258851 · focus · HN ↗
    They can't use a Windows-95-style filesystem for the same reason I can't use IBM-style JCL and COBOL. That is not the entire field of computing, in fact it's barely any of the field of computing which is the reason they can't use it. Just because that paradigm was once dominant, doesn't mean it still is.
    pona-a · 1790259857 · focus · HN ↗
    And what replaced it? Can you do the same tasks within that unstated "new paradigm"? Not knowing how to use a desktop computer limits you from all creative software from IDEs to video editors. That's like saying illiteracy is just a new oral paradigm.
    someonebaggy · 1790261652 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't know the details because I haven't used one, but yes there are video editors for phones and tablets.
    pona-a · 1790266239 · focus · HN ↗
    And there's a good reason we aren't seeing many videos edited on phones, just as programs written on iPads (RDP notwithstanding).
    someonebaggy · 1790298633 · focus · HN ↗
    Aren't we? Pixar isn't making their movies on phones, but how about your average influencer?
    lurking_swe · 1790326252 · focus · HN ↗
    You're correct, if we're being pedantic.
    But will you be hired to do video editing on a tablet? REAL work like for a media company or movie studio? No. ipad skills are mostly irrelevant if your goal is to be employable. The advanced animations and workflows are not being done on tablets. Most people like being employable.
    At least kids in the 90s learned how to use a desktop, which directly translated in some way to an office job.
    [deleted] · 1790327390 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    rurp · 1790263792 · focus · HN ↗
    But they are all still using traditional file systems constantly, but usually through an abstraction that gives them less understanding and control. Dragging stuff around on a smart phone is often changing some files and folders under the hood. The knowledge of how things work one step down the abstraction layer is still valuable for anyone who wants more than the lowest level control and understanding of what they're doing.
    someonebaggy · 1790265170 · focus · HN ↗
    Not really any more than I have to understand journalling to use sqlite.
  7. a022311 · 1790259739 · focus · HN ↗
    Do they have the motivation to learn though? You could say the same about gen Z with books; it's just that many have never cared enough to make it a habit.
    That having been said, the new generation mostly does computing with a smartphone/tablet and these kids are very adept at handling them. If a child wants something, it'll find a way to make it happen and they're good at that. Creating spreadsheets and organizing files is simply not on their list. If it were, they'd be better at it than most people who grew up before computers.
  8. latentsea · 1790312262 · focus · HN ↗
    My son (11) constantly refers to kids like this as 'ipad kids'. He has a PC and has taught himself to program, so I think he looks down on kids like this, which seems to be the majority of them.
    esarbe · 1790337296 · focus · HN ↗
    We're wasting the potential of at least two generations. It's horrible.
    latentsea · 1790345860 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, if the frontier AI labs get their way the development of the brains of the next generation is wholly unnecessary. I expect they feel as much deep in their bones as they sit through the drudgery of school without a future to put any of it to use.
    esarbe · 1790424842 · focus · HN ↗
    The damage done by doomscrolling and social media goes far beyond the "development of the brain for reasons of economic participation". Also, you seem to think the development of the brain doesn't have any purpose beyond that - a view I don't share.
    If - and that if is doing some heavy lifting; given the underlying, fundamental problems of LLMs it doesn't make any sense to assume that we'll get there anytime soon - LLM AIs will be able to dominate economy in such a way that humans cannot compete anymore, that simply means that humans will have tons of free time at their hands. ( There's a reason for the grain dole that the Roman elites handed out to the poor of the city. I assume if you have a whole population that doesn't have anything valuable to contribute to the economy, the economy will still have to find a way to sustain them. Otherwise riots.)
    A well developed brain seems to be exactly what I would want in such a case.
    latentsea · 1790431095 · focus · HN ↗
    Tonnes of free time, an undying need for validation from other humans, and an inability to tolerate boredom. The way to compete and gain status will be through violence. If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
    esarbe · 1790457963 · focus · HN ↗
    You're describing the human condition.
    That hasn't changed for the last 300k years.
    latentsea · 1790559563 · focus · HN ↗
    The condition hasn't. The conditions have (in most places). So, I'm expected a regression to the mean. I don't see that as a positive, desirable development.
  9. thesz · 1790343452 · focus · HN ↗
    Haha.
    My son got caught trying to fix Windows installation on my wife work computer with bootable Linux Mint USB stick.
    "Digital Naive," yes, of course.
    sunaookami · 1790669302 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://preview.redd.it/most-of-these-circles-are-red-v0-7s7wpuyk9xyg1.jpeg?width=540&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6da311af7474d6ad16e45cac96049b63e3e240e9" rel="nofollow">https://preview.redd.it/most-of-these-circles-are-red-v0-7s7...

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