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451 points imartin2k | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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mrob ◴[] No.44478895[source]
>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.

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1. danaris ◴[] No.44480399[source]
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.

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2. og_kalu ◴[] No.44480731[source]
>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 ?

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3. relaxing ◴[] No.44481153[source]
US public opinion is negative on AI. It’s also negative on Google and Meta (the rest of the top 5.)

No condescension necessary.

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4. og_kalu ◴[] No.44483168{3}[source]
Saying something over and over again doesn't make it true.

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

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5. danaris ◴[] No.44483804{4}[source]
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.

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6. og_kalu ◴[] No.44484067{5}[source]
>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.