You Guys Have No Idea Just How Much People Hate Generative AI
"Tis tech tis trash"
I. You either love or hate technology
I love technology.
I love it because I know it’s one of humanity’s most important activities. It’s directly or indirectly responsible for most accumulated well-being since the dawn of our species. To cite Our World in Data on how technological change improves the world:
Medical innovations contributed to the decline in child mortality and the improvement in life expectancy. Thanks to the advances in agricultural technologies, higher crop yields and less undernourishment became possible. The long-term decline of global poverty was primarily driven by increased productivity from technological change. Access to energy, electricity, sanitation, and clean water has transformed the lives of billions. Transport, telephones, and the Internet have allowed us to collaborate on problems at a global level.
I love technology because it deserves my love. But I also love it because I’m a STEM.
I was trained to think it my ally. I was taught to understand it, its upsides and downsides (it has many as well). I love it because I separate technology—the activity, the invention, the process, the bearer of progress—from the people who steer it and the companies they own (most are probably well-intended but their motivations rarely align with society’s higher goals).
I love it but if I were a different person I’d hate it.
Perhaps not out of love for degrowth and rosy-retrospected old times, but out of disappointment toward the greed of the people moving the needle. Out of frustration with capitalism’s aggressive tactics and society’s conspicuous consumption. Out of annoyance at the carelessness with which they erase customs to implement a novelty we didn’t ask for.
Had I not been taught to love it, the default would be hate. That’s the truth for many people—but they don’t hate technology itself, just the context that gives birth to it.
II. I don't like those guys any more than you do
“How can anyone hate technology,” you ask.
When I look at the data, technology emerges among the most important things we do, together with science, morality, equanimity, and love. But data is meaningless in the face of struggle. There’s a big disconnection between those who create, build, design, manufacture, distribute, and sell technology and the average citizen.
They get rich, we don’t. They become celebrities, we remain nobodies. They enjoy legal, fiscal, and political exceptions. We obey, pay our taxes, and follow the norms.
“But some people hate technology itself!” you insist.
Right, but there’s a reason.
First, it’s easy to forget (or never learn) how bad our ancestors had it and easier to take for granted what we have. Second, the burden of our hardships is relative to our situation (we don’t suffer in absolute terms or the Western world wouldn’t see a single soul in complaint). We fought the elemental foe but we face a new enemy: The Big Tech oligopoly. It’s the modern corporate illness, like oil, tobacco, and alcohol once were (and still are).
Can you blame anyone for hating technology on these grounds?
Had I not been taught to love and understand the value of technology, my primary reaction to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg would be: “I hate you and what you do.”
I’m not sympathetic to this stance as a general view of technology but I understand the sentiment driving this kind of visceral opposition—I don’t like those guys any more than you do.
It gets 100x worse when we zoom in on AI.
III. AI is the cherry on top
It’s unfair to good technology to put all innovations, engineers, enterprises, tools, devices, and programs into the same bucket.
Technology is as varied and diverse in quality and importance as science (the social sciences don’t have the same scientific status as physics or chemistry, just like social media and generative AI aren’t as useful as the railroad or the computer).
But, as it happens, those tech CEO-type guys we know by name are deeply involved in the “worst” technology of our times: AI (it’s only the generative branch that inspires hatred but we’re stuck with this gross synonymization).
Many people just don’t see the value or the need for ChatGPT or generative AI as a whole. Here’s a non-comprehensive list of reasons why:
It writes badly.
Just well enough for scams and spam.
It regurgitates words others have written before.
Including resources—like water and electricity.
Here’s a non-comprehensive list of reasons why they are right:
CapEx is high but revenue remains low.
Adoption by non-tech enterprises is minimal and slow.
So there’s little productivity increase and economic growth.
To quote The Economist: What happened to the artificial intelligence revolution?
It's all empty promises reminiscent of the sound of someone laughing in your face. No one likes to be laughed at to their face.
Tech CEOs aren’t even trying to be convincing anymore. They mainly care about spending billions to remain on top of the race, yet they take no issue with how their systems are being built, designed, trained, and used besides some easily bypassed guardrails and empty “responsible” principles they scratch off at the first opportunity.
They’re uncaring of us and it shows: they hype, they steal, they underpay, they lobby, they pollute, they extract, and they panic, and panic, and panic a bit more.
IV. Tis tech tis trash
That’s why so many people, in what it may look like a betrayal of their own privilege as citizens of modernity, think: Tis tech tis trash.
No wonder people hate generative AI.
I don’t blame them.
Most people were never taught to love technology and modern technologists aren’t doing a good job of changing that sentiment. They’re doing the exact opposite. They think they have the power to impose innovation onto society but in doing so—without our acceptance—they disregard public opinion.
They aren’t reading the room. They aren’t listening. The grind is over.
Let me shout it in the air: PEOPLE HATE AI.
It is a terrible pity.
It’s a pity because AI goes well beyond generative AI yet the unbreakable association between the two in most people’s minds will prevent alternatives from flourishing.
This hate will spread far and wide as it did for other prima facie worthwhile ideas like blockchain, cryptocurrency, or virtual reality that turned out to be fads mostly intended to either make a few people rich through scams or make us addicts. Today, their sole mention earns you an insult at best. Yet they could have been valuable in practice if those pushing them hadn’t put their selfish self-interest so blatantly above anything else. My takeaway is simple:
Technology has a temporary public image problem.
AI—as the innovation of our times—is going through a deep public image crisis.
It’s a mystery to me why people wouldn’t want to embrace very helpful AI tools. It’s like adding and incorporating a second brain which has enhanced capacities. While it’s true that these second brains in whatever products you’re trying to embrace can seem on occasion a little like an idiot Savant, the capacity to Harness these tools and to incorporate them into your skill sets and refined thinking methods truly amplifies the individuals power and capabilities. Why people wouldn’t want that is quite simply beyond me.
It’s a bit like dissing eyeglasses. They’ll never catch on. They’re a fad.
For example, just this morning, I got an offer from my credit card company to take advantage of some “fantastic offer”. It was a classic case of, “The BIG print giveth, and the small print takeeth away”. The front page was all ballyhoo about the offer, while the back page was just filled to the brim with teeny tiny small print about the offer. Lacking motivation or competence to weigh through such fine print, all I had to do was take a picture of the front and backside of the offer and feed it to GPT-4o along with the question: What are the pros and cons of this offer and please analyze the small print in detail and tell me about any overlooked consequences that might be detrimental. I didn’t even have to type that as I just spoke it like I am now. So I get my answer in about 2 1/2 seconds and it looks like a pretty raw deal. So into the trash it goes.
In this respect, this one small inquiry saved me a tiny financial paper cut. It took about three minutes to do the whole thing and it was even kind of fun (correction- it was entirely fun). It empowered me, and just as importantly it disempowered the credit card company. So again, who wouldn’t want to use tools like this to stop the bleeding from all these little paper cuts. I probably use AI 10 times a day for any number of tasks and it just makes life hands-down better! People have to start to understand that. They need to do more basic and grounded thinking, and less irrational emoting over “technology”.
Otherwise it’s like hating the airplane because of some crashes and using them as a weapon. However, if we abolished the airplane tomorrow because of a fixation on negative emotions there would justifiably be more than a tremendous outcry. Turns out a lot of good comes from the airplane after all. So Yeah, time to shift focus on AI now. Turns out the glass is actually pretty full after all.
AI is going to have to start to become as accepted as eyeglasses for very pragmatic reasons. Perhaps eyeglasses were once regarded as supernatural tools of the devil. I’d call that a transitory phase. There’s nothing quite like getting people to understand eyeglasses like trying them on.
There are a large number of statements you make in defense of tech that would need much better support to be asserted as axiomatic, as you have done.
That said, the fundamental error is equating technology with progress. Technology is value neutral - it can enable healers and tyrants, and does not essentially improve.
I am also a tech person, though I studied CS and English Literature at University. I used to be 100% pro-technology until I realized that technology was value neutral, and the more advanced the tech, the more advanced the civilization needed to be to handle it.
Yes, we feed more people, but we also irredeemably deplete soil and food stocks at a faster rate. Our political system cannot accommodate the thinking required for sound judgment, so the technology will likely end poorly.
Perhaps you will grow this way over time. Or perhaps I am wrong.