I don’t buy the argument. The article claims Americans hate AI because they were promised “lots of cheap stuff” and it hasn’t arrived.
I’ve just never heard this “promise” repeated by any normies. The only thing I hear over and over is “AI will help create medicines to solve all diseases” (or something to that effect). Even then, I don’t get the sense that anyone is expecting that in the short term.
Isn’t the threat of job destruction a much more likely explanation?
I agree that there's insufficient evidence to believe the premise that "Americans hate AI because it has failed to deliver on its promises".
Even accepting it for the sake of argument, I don't think it has failed at all. It has completely revolutionized a handful of fields and is increasingly doing so in others.
Further - it's still very early. Agents have really only begun to take off so far in 2026, and we're still probably 6-12 months from the real uptick in the adoption curve I expect. The first sign of that happening was Manus, followed by the various CUA features of the big players, and more recently: Muse.
As much as I hate to say it, Meta knocked it out of the park with Muse, to the point that just this morning I bought a 60 gallon (shop-sized) air compressor on Marketplace from a middle-aged couple in rural Missouri who used Muse to coordinate pickup. If that's not a sign that consumer adoption is starting to take off, I don't know what is.
> It has completely revolutionized a handful of fields and is increasingly doing so in others.
It's also good to remember that "revolutionizing" or "disrupting" a thing does not necessarily mean (or imply, outside of SV) that the results will be better.
Quick question: How many "fields" do you think this is, and what percentage of all "fields" do you think this represents?
Tech people talking about tech trends spilling outside of tech always gets a bit ivory tower to me...
Remember VR? Remember how Oculus was going to revolutionize visual interface and change gaming forever? Remember how their acquisition by Meta was the beginning of the Metaverse? Because middle-aged couple from rural Missouri probably doesn't.
I’d guess maybe a dozen, and acknowledge that “fields” is a fuzzy division to begin with.
Maybe 5-10% of the overall economy at most, at least in terms of individual jobs. I’d say there’s another ~30% where the capabilities already exist but haven’t yet been adopted in a big way.
VR isn’t a great example; it was never a technology with commercial utility at this level - and that’s coming from someone with many thousands of hours in VR.
JSR_FDED · · focus · HN ↗
I’ve just never heard this “promise” repeated by any normies. The only thing I hear over and over is “AI will help create medicines to solve all diseases” (or something to that effect). Even then, I don’t get the sense that anyone is expecting that in the short term.
Isn’t the threat of job destruction a much more likely explanation?
Ancapistani · · focus · HN ↗
Even accepting it for the sake of argument, I don't think it has failed at all. It has completely revolutionized a handful of fields and is increasingly doing so in others.
Further - it's still very early. Agents have really only begun to take off so far in 2026, and we're still probably 6-12 months from the real uptick in the adoption curve I expect. The first sign of that happening was Manus, followed by the various CUA features of the big players, and more recently: Muse.
As much as I hate to say it, Meta knocked it out of the park with Muse, to the point that just this morning I bought a 60 gallon (shop-sized) air compressor on Marketplace from a middle-aged couple in rural Missouri who used Muse to coordinate pickup. If that's not a sign that consumer adoption is starting to take off, I don't know what is.
JohnFen · · focus · HN ↗
It's also good to remember that "revolutionizing" or "disrupting" a thing does not necessarily mean (or imply, outside of SV) that the results will be better.
moate · · focus · HN ↗
Tech people talking about tech trends spilling outside of tech always gets a bit ivory tower to me...
Remember VR? Remember how Oculus was going to revolutionize visual interface and change gaming forever? Remember how their acquisition by Meta was the beginning of the Metaverse? Because middle-aged couple from rural Missouri probably doesn't.
Ancapistani · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe 5-10% of the overall economy at most, at least in terms of individual jobs. I’d say there’s another ~30% where the capabilities already exist but haven’t yet been adopted in a big way.
VR isn’t a great example; it was never a technology with commercial utility at this level - and that’s coming from someone with many thousands of hours in VR.