Sure they can. The fundamental similarity here is anti-intellectualism, a distrust in the notion that science and technology are positive things that can enhance our lives. America is rife with it these days and the result is all sorts of beliefs sweeping through society that stand in opposition to what the “experts” say. Vaccines cause autism. Pasteurization is bad. “Chemicals” or “GMOs” are bad. Transgenderism isn’t real. Data centers are responsible for vast quantities of water consumption. LLMs are incapable of creating anything original. And so on. Once these beliefs get rooted then any effort to dislodge them only becomes part of the narrative of untrustworthy oligarchs and technocrats trying to manipulate people, which is especially tricky because many of them are trying to manipulate people. Makes it hard to know which authorities to trust without learning enough to become one yourself, and learning is hard when you don’t know which information sources to start with.
Unfortunately I have no idea how to counter such a large-scale movement in society. As the old saying goes, you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. A lot of the anti-science sentiment comes from irrational sources - fear of the uncertain future, fear of losing prestige and power, fear of loss of personal autonomy. Some of those fears are rooted in real concerns but the reactions they can provoke are not necessarily productive.
Many people are just sick of being forced into a society that only values productivity, gives nothing back to you for your efforts, and expects more time out of your week than you get with your family.
AI hasn’t solved any of that, it’s made all of it worse.
There’s some truth to the fact that anti-intellectualism plays some part in the backlash to both vaccines and AI.
But there’s a difference: vaccines were pushed by medical science and governments around the world as a solution to a real problem (disease), with pretty much no side effects at societal scale.
Generative AI is being pushed by greedy companies (and governments that don’t want to lose this artificial “arms race”) as a solution to nobody’s problem, and with a lot of side effects (global warming, raising power bills, raising the cost of electronic devices, filling the internet with crap, making the internet less secure, lowering open source incentives, making it easier for bad actors to influence democracy, etc. I could go on).
I don’t dislike GenAI, and I think it can be a good technology when well implemented: narrow AI, or general AI with open training datasets and open weights that anyone (or at least a small company) can run locally. Instead we’re getting super general AI controlled by an oligopoly of companies that see you as the product, partnering with governments that want to surveil and control you.
Ah, yes, data centers and vaccines, totally similar fucking things that can be easily compared
Sure they can. The fundamental similarity here is anti-intellectualism, a distrust in the notion that science and technology are positive things that can enhance our lives. America is rife with it these days and the result is all sorts of beliefs sweeping through society that stand in opposition to what the “experts” say. Vaccines cause autism. Pasteurization is bad. “Chemicals” or “GMOs” are bad. Transgenderism isn’t real. Data centers are responsible for vast quantities of water consumption. LLMs are incapable of creating anything original. And so on. Once these beliefs get rooted then any effort to dislodge them only becomes part of the narrative of untrustworthy oligarchs and technocrats trying to manipulate people, which is especially tricky because many of them are trying to manipulate people. Makes it hard to know which authorities to trust without learning enough to become one yourself, and learning is hard when you don’t know which information sources to start with.
Unfortunately I have no idea how to counter such a large-scale movement in society. As the old saying goes, you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. A lot of the anti-science sentiment comes from irrational sources - fear of the uncertain future, fear of losing prestige and power, fear of loss of personal autonomy. Some of those fears are rooted in real concerns but the reactions they can provoke are not necessarily productive.
It’s more than anti intellectualism though.
Many people are just sick of being forced into a society that only values productivity, gives nothing back to you for your efforts, and expects more time out of your week than you get with your family.
AI hasn’t solved any of that, it’s made all of it worse.
LLMs have accelerated people’s worst aspects.
There’s some truth to the fact that anti-intellectualism plays some part in the backlash to both vaccines and AI.
But there’s a difference: vaccines were pushed by medical science and governments around the world as a solution to a real problem (disease), with pretty much no side effects at societal scale.
Generative AI is being pushed by greedy companies (and governments that don’t want to lose this artificial “arms race”) as a solution to nobody’s problem, and with a lot of side effects (global warming, raising power bills, raising the cost of electronic devices, filling the internet with crap, making the internet less secure, lowering open source incentives, making it easier for bad actors to influence democracy, etc. I could go on).
I don’t dislike GenAI, and I think it can be a good technology when well implemented: narrow AI, or general AI with open training datasets and open weights that anyone (or at least a small company) can run locally. Instead we’re getting super general AI controlled by an oligopoly of companies that see you as the product, partnering with governments that want to surveil and control you.