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?
> Isn’t the threat of job destruction a much more likely explanation?
There is a better explanation.
AI summaries have hit media companies pretty hard. People read the summary instead of visiting the site with the article and looking at the ads. So who hates AI the most? The media companies.
Then they write a lot of hit pieces to turn the public against it (as if that's going to put the genie back in the bottle), which the AI is happy to summarize because it adopts its motivated reasoning from the source material.
I'm friends with a lot of creatives and artists. We all genuinely hate the plagiarism machine because 1- it's a plagiarism machine 2- it's killing creative jobs 3- it makes bad "art" and 4- it's killing jobs.
I don't think people need to be convinced that "this job-stealing robot that makes trash and accelerates climate destruction faster than the internet was already doing" by hit pieces, plenty of us are just proud Luddites (now if you want to talk about hit pieces, that's a movement that got decimated by bad PR)
> We all genuinely hate the plagiarism machine because 1- it's a plagiarism machine 2- it's killing creative jobs 3- it makes bad "art" and 4- it's killing jobs.
Three of these are what I said to begin with (people consume the AI output instead of patronizing the source) and the fourth is that the quality of the output sucks, which is the part they're actually improving over time -- but that's going to make the first problem worse.
> I don't think people need to be convinced that "this job-stealing robot that makes trash and accelerates climate destruction faster than the internet was already doing" by hit pieces
Then why are there so many hit pieces?
Obvious example, the primary legitimate criticism of data centers is when they continuously operate a gas turbine, but a) most of them don't actually do that, and b) all the same issues are present whenever anyone operates a gas turbine for any other reason, so why is it an article about data centers instead of an article about gas turbines? Why are there articles about data center water use in regions where there isn't significant water scarcity to begin with and data centers aren't the primary consumers of water anyway?
Likewise, if you actually want to improve the situation then the proposals should be to e.g. get data centers (along with everyone else) to stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity, but instead the proposals are to ban data centers even if they source their electricity from solar/wind/nuclear/hydro.
Those are the differences that make something a hit piece.
>>Three of these are what I said to begin with (people consume the AI output instead of patronizing the source) and the fourth is that the quality of the output sucks, which is the part they're actually improving over time -- but that's going to make the first problem worse.
What? The art is not "improving" it's "different". Also, as slop output increases, the models train on more slop. GIGO doesn't seem like it can fix itself if you just robot-centipede it.
Why so many hit pieces? Because public sentiment and media protectionism align. Your original post seems to be arguing a "wag-the-dog situation", when this is more of a "arm the insurgents" situation imo. Why are there so many people upset about AI data centers when data centers have been around for decades? Idk, go look at the buildout rate and tell me if you notice anything in the trend line changing around the time of AI rollout. And it's not just burning fossil fuels, they also require tons of construction and water usage.
And again, some people just hate AI. Full Stop. There is nothing good about it to those people. Hell, I barely think the internet was a net good, so trying to tell me that AI is anything other than a capitalist fever dream to finally replace knowledge workers is going to be a hard sell. This isn't because I'm technologically illiterate or incapable of critically reading an article. Also, plenty of people are using the data centers as radicalizing topic to get people to...stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity.
Your stated thesis was "the better explanation is that the media is out to kill AI/Data centers" and I think misunderstanding how little people outside the tech world actually want AI (you're not alone obviously, it's why we're in this bubble in the first place).
> The art is not "improving" it's "different".
It's pretty obvious that image generation models are getting better at e.g. producing hands with the expected number of fingers.
> Your original post seems to be arguing a "wag-the-dog situation", when this is more of a "arm the insurgents" situation imo.
Then why are the complaints about nonsense things like water usage in regions with no meaningful water scarcity?
> And it's not just burning fossil fuels, they also require tons of construction
They're paying to train new people in the trades to do construction, which is good because then we'll have them even after the boom is over and might finally be able to do something about the housing shortage.
> And again, some people just hate AI. Full Stop. There is nothing good about it to those people.
Which is fine, but then they should be trying to get companies to stop using AI-generated content rather than trumping up nonsense about data centers being "loud" and so on.
Notice that the latter doesn't actually do any good because you can't get rid of the AI slop by having them build the data center in a different place, and it doesn't help you to offer them motivated reasoning full of bad arguments that are easier to knock down.
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?
AnthonyMouse · · focus · HN ↗
There is a better explanation.
AI summaries have hit media companies pretty hard. People read the summary instead of visiting the site with the article and looking at the ads. So who hates AI the most? The media companies.
Then they write a lot of hit pieces to turn the public against it (as if that's going to put the genie back in the bottle), which the AI is happy to summarize because it adopts its motivated reasoning from the source material.
moate · · focus · HN ↗
I don't think people need to be convinced that "this job-stealing robot that makes trash and accelerates climate destruction faster than the internet was already doing" by hit pieces, plenty of us are just proud Luddites (now if you want to talk about hit pieces, that's a movement that got decimated by bad PR)
AnthonyMouse · · focus · HN ↗
Three of these are what I said to begin with (people consume the AI output instead of patronizing the source) and the fourth is that the quality of the output sucks, which is the part they're actually improving over time -- but that's going to make the first problem worse.
> I don't think people need to be convinced that "this job-stealing robot that makes trash and accelerates climate destruction faster than the internet was already doing" by hit pieces
Then why are there so many hit pieces?
Obvious example, the primary legitimate criticism of data centers is when they continuously operate a gas turbine, but a) most of them don't actually do that, and b) all the same issues are present whenever anyone operates a gas turbine for any other reason, so why is it an article about data centers instead of an article about gas turbines? Why are there articles about data center water use in regions where there isn't significant water scarcity to begin with and data centers aren't the primary consumers of water anyway?
Likewise, if you actually want to improve the situation then the proposals should be to e.g. get data centers (along with everyone else) to stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity, but instead the proposals are to ban data centers even if they source their electricity from solar/wind/nuclear/hydro.
Those are the differences that make something a hit piece.
moate · · focus · HN ↗
What? The art is not "improving" it's "different". Also, as slop output increases, the models train on more slop. GIGO doesn't seem like it can fix itself if you just robot-centipede it.
Why so many hit pieces? Because public sentiment and media protectionism align. Your original post seems to be arguing a "wag-the-dog situation", when this is more of a "arm the insurgents" situation imo. Why are there so many people upset about AI data centers when data centers have been around for decades? Idk, go look at the buildout rate and tell me if you notice anything in the trend line changing around the time of AI rollout. And it's not just burning fossil fuels, they also require tons of construction and water usage.
And again, some people just hate AI. Full Stop. There is nothing good about it to those people. Hell, I barely think the internet was a net good, so trying to tell me that AI is anything other than a capitalist fever dream to finally replace knowledge workers is going to be a hard sell. This isn't because I'm technologically illiterate or incapable of critically reading an article. Also, plenty of people are using the data centers as radicalizing topic to get people to...stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity.
Your stated thesis was "the better explanation is that the media is out to kill AI/Data centers" and I think misunderstanding how little people outside the tech world actually want AI (you're not alone obviously, it's why we're in this bubble in the first place).
AnthonyMouse · · focus · HN ↗
It's pretty obvious that image generation models are getting better at e.g. producing hands with the expected number of fingers.
> Your original post seems to be arguing a "wag-the-dog situation", when this is more of a "arm the insurgents" situation imo.
Then why are the complaints about nonsense things like water usage in regions with no meaningful water scarcity?
> And it's not just burning fossil fuels, they also require tons of construction
They're paying to train new people in the trades to do construction, which is good because then we'll have them even after the boom is over and might finally be able to do something about the housing shortage.
> And again, some people just hate AI. Full Stop. There is nothing good about it to those people.
Which is fine, but then they should be trying to get companies to stop using AI-generated content rather than trumping up nonsense about data centers being "loud" and so on.
Notice that the latter doesn't actually do any good because you can't get rid of the AI slop by having them build the data center in a different place, and it doesn't help you to offer them motivated reasoning full of bad arguments that are easier to knock down.