The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

>Everybody wanted the Internet.

I don't think this is true. A lot of people had no interest until smartphones arrived. Doing anything on a smartphone is a miserable experience compared to using a desktop computer, but it's more convenient. "Worse but more convenient" is the same sales pitch as for AI, so I can only assume that AI will be accepted by the masses too.

As a kid I had Internet access since the early 90s. Whenever there was some actual technology to see (Internet, mobile gadgets etc.) people stood there with big eyes and forgot for a moment this was the most nerdy stuff ever

People didn't even want mobile phones. In The Netherlands, there's a famous video of an interviewer asking people on the street ca. 1997 whether they would want a mobile phone. So not even a smartphone, just a mobile phone. The answer was overwhelmingly negative.

I’m at the point where a significant part of me wishes they hadn’t been invented.

We sat yesterday and watched a table of 4 lads drinking beer each just watch their phones. At the slightest gap in conversation, out they came.

They’re ruining human interaction. (The phone, not the beer-drinking lad.)

Yes, everyone wanted the internet. It was massively hyped and the uptake was widespread and rapid.

Obviously saying “everyone” is hyperbole. There were luddites and skeptics about it just like with electricity and telephones. Nevertheless the dotcom boom is what every new industry hopes to be.

I was there. There was massive skepticism, endless jokes about internet-enabled toasters and the uselessness and undesirability of connecting everything to the internet, people bemoaning the loss of critical skills like using library card catalogs, all the same stuff we see today.

In 20 years AI will be pervasive and nobody will remember being one of the luddites.

>there's a famous video of an interviewer asking people on the street ca. 1997 whether they would want a mobile phone. So not even a smartphone, just a mobile phone. The answer was overwhelmingly negative.

So people didn't want to be walking around with a tether that allowed the whole world to call them where ever they were? Le Shock!

Now if they'd asked people if they'd like a small portable computer they could keep in touch with friends and read books, play games, play music and movies on where ever they went which also made phone calls. I suspect the answer might have been different.

I've seen this bad take over and over again in the last few years, as a response to the public reaction to cryptocurrency, NFTs, and now generative AI.

It's bullshit.

I mean, sure: there were people who hated the Internet. There still are! They were very clearly a minority, and almost exclusively older people who didn't like change. Most of them were also unhappy about personal computers in general.

But the Internet caught on very fast, and was very, very popular. It was completely obvious how positive it was, and people were making businesses based on it left and right that didn't rely on grifting, artificial scarcity, or convincing people that replacing their own critical thinking skills with a glorified autocomplete engine was the solution to all their problems. (Yes, there were also plenty of scams and unsuccessful businesses. They did not in any way outweigh the legitimate successes.)

By contrast, generative AI, while it has a contingent of supporters that range from reasonable to rabid, is broadly disliked by the public. And a huge reason for that is how much it is being pushed on them against their will, replacing human interaction with companies and attempting to replace other things like search.

>But the Internet caught on very fast, and was very, very popular. It was completely obvious how positive it was,

>By contrast, generative AI, while it has a contingent of supporters that range from reasonable to rabid, is broadly disliked by the public.

It is absolutely wild how people can just ignore something staring right at them, plain as day.

ChatGPT.com is the 5 most visited site on the planet and growing. It's the fastest growing software product ever, with over 500M Weekly active users and over a billion messages per day. Just ChatGPT. This is not information that requires corporate espionage. The barest minimum effort would have shown you how blatantly false you are.

What exactly is the difference between this and a LLM hallucination ?

Is the problem really the phone, or everything but the actual phoning capability? Mobile phones were a thing twenty years ago and I didn't recall them being pulled out at the slightest gap in the conversation. I feel like the notifications and internet access caused the change, not the phone (or SMS for that matter).

Think like an engineer to solve the problem. You could start by adjusting the beer-to-lad ratio and see where that gets you.

I was there too. You’re forgetting internet addiction, pornography, stranger danger, hacking and cybercrime, etc.

Whether the opposition was massive or not, in proportion to the enthusiasm and optimism about the globally connected information superhighway, isn’t something I can quantify, so I’ll bow out of the conversation.

Interesting you should say that. I found a Substack post earlier today along those lines [0].

I almost never take my phone with me, especially when with my wife and son, as they always have theirs with them, although with elderly parents not in the best of health I really should take it more.

But it's something I see a lot these days, in fact, the latest Vodafone ad in the uk has a bunch of lads sitting outside a pub and one is laughing at something on his phone. There's also a betting ad where the guy is making bets on his phone (presumably) while in a restaurant with others!

I find this normalized behaviour somewhat concerning for the future.

[0] - https://abysspostcard.substack.com/p/party-like-it-is-1975

In US colleges there is a game known as “Edward Fortyhands” which would solve the problem quite well.

Toasters in fact dot need internet and jokes about them are entirely valid. Quite a lot of devices that dont need internet have useless internet slapped on them.

Internet of things was largely BS.

US public opinion is negative on AI. It’s also negative on Google and Meta (the rest of the top 5.)

No condescension necessary.

That’s my point. People are making the same mistake today: hey, there’s this idiotic use case, therefore the entire technology is useless and will be a fad.

Yes it's the content delivered by the phone. My first mobile phones could only make calls. Not even text messaging was supported. So pretty obviously you're not going to pull out your phone and call someone during a lag in conversation unless you are just supremely rude or maybe it's a call to invite someone to come over and join the group. You might answer a call if you get one I suppose, but it would be fairly awkward. I do remember the people who always seemed to be on a mobile call, often with a headset of some sort, and thinking they were complete douchebags, but they stood out by being few in number.

As text, email, other messages, websites, Facebook, etc. became available the draw became stronger and so did the addiction and the normalization of looking at your phone every 30 seconds while you were with someone.

Did SNL or anyone ever do a skit of a couple having sex and then "ding" a phone chimes and one of them picks it up and starts reading the message? And then the other one grabs their phone and starts scrolling?

Actually iirc cell phone service was still expensive back in 1997. It was nice but not worth paying that much for the average person on the street.

I’m not even sure it’s the right question. No one knew what the long term effects of the internet and mobile devices would be, so I’m not surprised people thought it was great. Cocoa leaves seemed pretty amazing at the beginning as well. But mobile devices especially have changes society and while I don’t think we can ever put the genie back in the bottle, I wish that we could. I suspect I’m not alone.

Saying something over and over again doesn't make it true.

US Public Opinion is negative ? Really ? How do you figure that ?

Yea, the problem is the combination of the form factor and the content.

If only the phone was available, and there was no stream of online content, this wouldn't be a problem. Also, if the online content was available, but no phones to look at it on-the-go, it would also not be a problem. Both of these things existed in the past, too, but only when they were hooked up together did it become the problem we see today.

It's the entire premise of the article. Supported by data within the article.

If you have evidence to the contrary, it seems to me the burden of proof lies on you to show it. "People frequently visit this one site that's currently talked about a lot" is not evidence that people are in favor of AI.

>It's the entire premise of the article.

Yeah, and it's wrong.

>Supported by data within the article.

Really Nothing in that article supports a statement as strong as "US public opinion on AI is negative".

>"People frequently visit this one site that's currently talked about a lot" is not evidence that people are in favor of AI.

ChatGPT wasn't released last week. It's nearly 2 years old and it's growth has been steady. People aren't visiting the site that much because of some 15 minutes of fame, they're visiting it because they find use of it that frequently. You don't get that many weekly active users otherwise.

And yeah, if that many people use it that frequently then you're going to need real evidence to say that they have a poor opinion on it, not tangentially related random surveys.

Oh the survey said most people wouldn't pay money for features they currently get for free ? Come on.

I agree that features you don't want shouldn't be shoved down your throat. I genuinely do. But that's about the only thing in the article I agree with.