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451 points imartin2k | 34 comments | | HN request time: 1.114s | source | bottom
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cs702 ◴[] No.44480036[source]
Your may agree or disagree with the OP, but this passage is spot-on:

"I don’t want AI customer service—but I don’t get a choice.

I don’t want AI responses to my Google searches—but I don’t get a choice.

I don’t want AI integrated into my software—but I don’t get a choice.

I don’t want AI sending me emails—but I don’t get a choice.

I don’t want AI music on Spotify—but I don’t get a choice.

I don’t want AI books on Amazon—but I don’t get a choice."

replies(3): >>44480166 #>>44480171 #>>44481335 #
1. brookst ◴[] No.44480166[source]
It’s not spot on. Buying and using all of these products is a choice.

The last is especially egregious. I don’t want poorly-written (by my standards) books cluttering up bookstores, but all my life I’ve walked into bookstores and found my favorite genres have lots of books I’m not interested in. Do I have some kind of right to have stores only stock products that I want?

The whole thing is just so damn entitled. If you don’t like something, don’t buy it. If you find the presence of some products offensive in a marketplace, don’t shop there. Spotify is not a human right.

replies(12): >>44480276 #>>44480282 #>>44480355 #>>44480469 #>>44480473 #>>44480524 #>>44480687 #>>44480745 #>>44480756 #>>44480880 #>>44481298 #>>44482644 #
2. fnordpiglet ◴[] No.44480276[source]
I actually use the AI books that litter kindle unlimited to teach my daughter how to differentiate and be more sophisticated. I think a feature of all this is it inculcates a lot of people to AI spew. If it were isolated to the elite and the unscrupulous alone people would be a lot more vulnerable. By saturating the world with it, people get a true choice by being able to recognize it when they see it and avoid the output. It’s not like all our surfaces are not covered in enshittification as it is, another dose of it won’t make it meaningfully worse. And I know a lot of non English speakers that really appreciate the AI writing assistants built into email, the ai summaries built into search. Assuming no one finds them beneficial because it litters an already littered experience is a bit close minded. Many people otherwise challenged in some way. Summaries help dyslexics get through otherwise intractable walls of text, multi modal glasses help the vision impaired, witting assistants help bilingual workers level the playing field. Just because these don’t apply to you doesn’t mean it’s bothersome. (Now should you be able to disable it? Maybe, but as the author points out that’s a product choice made for financial reasons and there’s a market of products that make a different choice - don’t like google? Don’t feel so entitled that every service be free and pay for kagi)

Probably no one enjoys AI books though. I did my best at devils advocate on that above.

replies(1): >>44481186 #
3. ikr678 ◴[] No.44480282[source]
For consumer pproducts, sure, don't buy them. For people in office based careers, they may not get a choice when their company rolls out copilot, or management decide to buy an ai helpdesk agent, or a vendor pushes ai slop into the next enterprise software version.
replies(1): >>44480315 #
4. brookst ◴[] No.44480315[source]
How is that different from not liking other technology choices one’s employer makes? I could write a book about how much I hate our expense tool. But it’s never occurred to me that I am entitled to have a different one.
replies(2): >>44480590 #>>44480968 #
5. mafuy ◴[] No.44480355[source]
AI shit is usually not advertising as such. It's made to look like it was made a human. So I would have to consider this product carefully beforehand, or to return it after buying. That's a hassle. I don't want to spend productive time on this nonsense. For all I care, say it hurts the GDP.
6. roxolotl ◴[] No.44480469[source]
The Onion has a great response to this from 2009: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY

Of course you can opt out. People live in the backwoods of Alaska. But if you want to live a semi normal life there is no option. And absolutely people should feel entitled to a normal life.

replies(3): >>44480541 #>>44480553 #>>44481128 #
7. prng2021 ◴[] No.44480473[source]
How is this hard to understand? You’re completely missing the point. You’re basically saying if you get a spam text, don’t read it. If you get spam email, don’t read it. If you see an ad modal popup on a website, close it. It’s all still super annoying just like these AI features screaming “use me! click me! type to me!” all over the place in the UI.
replies(1): >>44481834 #
8. cs702 ◴[] No.44480524[source]
> If you don’t like something, don’t buy it.

The OP's point is that increasingly, we don't have that choice, for example, because AI slop masquerades as if it were authored by human beings (that's, in fact, its purpose!), or because the software applications you rely on suddenly start pushing "AI companions" on you, whether you want them or not, or because you have no viable alternatives to the software applications you use, so you must put up with those "AI companions," whether you want them in your life or not.

9. cs702 ◴[] No.44480541[source]
ROFL. Thank you for sharing that link!
10. AstroBen ◴[] No.44480553[source]
If these things are genuinely so universally hated won't they just be.. capitalism'd out of existence? People will stop engaging with them and better products will win

What book store will stock AI slop that no-one wants to buy?

replies(3): >>44480716 #>>44480798 #>>44480804 #
11. NilMostChill ◴[] No.44480590{3}[source]
Entitled, probably not, able to communicate frustrations and suggest alternative options, absolutely.
12. rincebrain ◴[] No.44480716{3}[source]
Part of the problem is that some of these services have enormous upfront costs to work at all.

It's fun to say "let's go write a complete replacement for Microsoft Office" or the Adobe suite or what have you, but that has a truly astonishing upfront cost to get to a point where it's even servicing 50% of the use cases, let alone 95 or 99%.

Or there's other examples where it's not obvious there's sufficient interest to finance an alternative - how many people are going to pay for something that replicates solely the old functionality of Microsoft Paint or Notepad, for example.

replies(1): >>44481216 #
13. babymetal ◴[] No.44480745[source]
I'm a bookseller who often uses Ingram to buy books wholesale when I'm not buying direct from publishers. I've used them for their distribution service since opening 5 years ago because they are the only folks in town who can help bootstrap a very small business with coverage of all the major publishers (in the U.S.). They're great at that, for a small cut in revenue.

Six-plus months ago they put a chatbot in the bottom right corner of their website that literally covers up buttons I use all the time for ordering, so that I have to scroll now in order to access those controls (Chrome, MacOS). After testing it with various queries it only seems to provide answers to questions in their pre-existing support documentation.

This is not about choice (see above, they are the only game in town), and it is not about entitlement (we're a tiny shop trying to serve our customers' often obscure book requests). They seemed to literally place the chatbot buttons onto their website with no polling of their users. This is an anecdotal report about Ingram specifically.

replies(1): >>44481819 #
14. xdennis ◴[] No.44480756[source]
> I don’t want poorly-written (by my standards) books cluttering up bookstores

It's ridiculous to compare bad human books with bad AI books because there many human books which are life-changing, but there isn't a single AI book which isn't trash.

15. jeauxlb ◴[] No.44480798{3}[source]
You might be conflating capitalism (owning things like factories) with consumerism (buying things like widgets).

If all of the factory owners discover a type of widget to sell that can incidentally drive down wages the more units they move, it's unlikely for consumers to be provided much choice in their future widgets.

replies(1): >>44481150 #
16. jzb ◴[] No.44480804{3}[source]
No, because “better products” won’t exist. That’s the complaint: every company is rushing to throw AI into their stuff, and/or use it to replace humans.

They’re not trying to satisfy customers: they’re answering shareholders. Our system is no longer about offering the best products, it’s about having the market share to force people to do business with you or maybe two other equally bad companies that constantly look for ways to extract more money from people to make shareholders happy. See: Two choices of smartphone OS, ISP regional monopolies or duopolies, two consumer OSes, a handful of mobile carriers, almost all available TVs models being “smart TVs” laden with spyware…

(I’m speaking from the US perspective, this may not be as pronounced elsewhere.)

replies(2): >>44481114 #>>44481692 #
17. arexxbifs ◴[] No.44480880[source]
Opting out is easy, we can just stop using products from Microsoft, Apple, Meta and Google. Of course, for many that also means opting out of their job, which is a great way to opt out of a home, a family, healthcare, dental care and luxuries like food.

I don't think it's entitlement to make a well-mannered complaint about how little choice we actually have when it comes to the whims of the tech giants.

18. queenkjuul ◴[] No.44480968{3}[source]
You should consider that yes, maybe you are entitled to a better one
19. AstroBen ◴[] No.44481114{4}[source]
> it’s about having the market share to force people to do business with you

The answer to this is regulation. See: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/apple-updates-app-...

Outside of a monopoly the best way to extract more money from people is to offer a better product. If AI is being forced and people do hate it, they'll move towards products that don't do that

What happened to Windows Recall being enabled by default? Surely it was in Microsoft's best interest to force it on people. But no, they reversed it after a huge backlash. You see this again and again

Of your examples, ISPs are the only one I can see that's hated without other options. Most people are quite happy with Windows/Mac/Android/iOS/Mint Mobile/Smart-TV-With-No-Internet-Access

20. t0bia_s ◴[] No.44481128[source]
Normal life means collectivism and conformity behaviour?
replies(1): >>44481881 #
21. AstroBen ◴[] No.44481150{4}[source]
The lowest cost (either purchase price, or to produce) products don't create a monopoly

$30 blenders that break in 3 months haven't bankrupted Vitamix

replies(1): >>44481432 #
22. t0bia_s ◴[] No.44481186[source]
- Summaries help dyslexics get through otherwise intractable walls of text.

Politicians often use AI to summarise proposals and amendments to the laws. And later vote based on those summaries. It's incredible how artifical bureaucracy is driven by artifical intelligence. And how citizens don't care to follow artificial laws that ruins humanity.

23. AstroBen ◴[] No.44481216{4}[source]
What would happen if Microsoft Office started to charge $250/mo tomorrow?

My guess is you'd very quickly get a bunch of teams scrambling to produce something to compete and capture a huge market by charging a tenth the price. Funding is taken care of when winning there is worth so much

Maybe it won't happen overnight because they're huge software suites.. but it will happen. We need regulations to take care of anti-competitive practices - but after that the market seems to work pretty well for keeping companies in check

24. conartist6 ◴[] No.44481298[source]
Did you even read the post?

The whole point is that "just don't buy it" as a strategy doesn't work anymore for consumers to guide the market when the companies have employed the rock-for-dessert gambit to avoid having to try to sell their products on their merits.

25. jeauxlb ◴[] No.44481432{5}[source]
Search, music streaming, books: heavily consolidated markets where the value-based offering has supremacy (Google vs any paid search; Spotify/Apple Music vs Tidal; Amazon vs anything). It's the market supremacy that generally allows this.

If quality were a sufficiently motivating aspect, Google's deteriorating search wouldn't be a constant theme on this site, and people on the street would know where to download and play a FLAC file.

replies(2): >>44481703 #>>44481813 #
26. brookst ◴[] No.44481692{4}[source]
That’s a very self-centered view that assumes one’s own definition of “better products” is universal.

The reality is that most people like many of the things you or I might find useless or annoying.

There are better products, but they are niche. You pay more for a non-smart TV because 1) there’s less demand, and 2) the business model is different and requires full payment up front rather than long term monetization.

But who are you or I to look at the market and declare that both sellers and buyers are wrong about what they want? I’m very suspicious of any position as paternalistic as that.

27. brookst ◴[] No.44481703{6}[source]
Tidal is a great example. They seem do be doing fine with a niche. If more people wanted what they offer instead of Spotify, Tidal would eat market share.
28. AstroBen ◴[] No.44481813{6}[source]
The market supremacy came afterwards, not before. Most people don't want the expensive premium version - they want good enough at a low investment. And that's fine

There's also a segment of the market that wants the FLAC, premium handcrafted experiences at top price. They're not in direct competition and both can co-exist

My initial point was that companies can't just exploit consumers relentlessly because the market won't let them. The good value option can't just box people in and show them only ads. I bet YouTube would love to show you unskippable ads for 75% of the video length. Good luck staying market leader with that

I don't think Google is a good example here. They've been actively trying to fight and failing against SEO and affiliate spam for a decade. No-one else has solved that problem either which is why Google remains at the top. I personally had a hand-crafted content site thrown out of their search results because of them going after spam

29. brookst ◴[] No.44481819[source]
Is it specific to AI or have they made other bad UI choices over the years?
replies(1): >>44482723 #
30. brookst ◴[] No.44481834[source]
There is a huge difference between unwanted messages and a commercial service changing their offering in ways you don’t like. It is literally the definition of entitlement to conflate the two.
31. marcosdumay ◴[] No.44481881{3}[source]
Do you have a definition of "normal" that doesn't refer to a collective?
replies(1): >>44481923 #
32. t0bia_s ◴[] No.44481923{4}[source]
Then I prefer non-normal with freedom of choose.
33. jmull ◴[] No.44482644[source]
You really think we should all either happily accept AI-generated emails or opt out of having an email address at all?
34. babymetal ◴[] No.44482723{3}[source]
Very recently their "advanced search" page was redone with a totally different and slightly more modern styling (prior to addition of the chat expert overlaid in the corner). The rest of Ingram's ordering site is still the same as five years ago and is clearly older than that.

That's objective; subjectively, it feels like there are individuals who were given the ability to "try new stuff" and "break things" who chose to follow the hype around features that look like this. The chat button seems to me to be an exercise in following-the-herd which actually sucks for me as a user with it blocking my old buttons.