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AI haters are basically a very small minority and almost all of them are online. It isn't a large number. There is plenty of skepticism (with any new technolog

AI haters are basically a very small minority and almost all of them are online. It isn't a large number. There is plenty of skepticism (with any new technology) sure. People often change their attitude to technology when they can see utility in it. > Whether or not you agree about AI, when you’re communicating to a wider audience, you have to read the room. People quite frankly were being arseholes. The AI-haters are as bad as the AI-cultists.

saghm 14d ago
> Al haters are basically a very small minority and almost all of them are online. It isn't a large number. Without even getting into the AI part of this claim, how can you have any confidence about a claim like this when there are always going to be several orders of magnitude more people who are online than people you interact with offline? You could replace "AI haters" with "people who live in <continent I don't live in>" and end up with something that's pretty much entirely true in your subjective experience but quite obviously false objectively. How do you tell what's your bubble and what's actually what most people think?
- IslandRebel 14d ago
  Because the most vocal people are always a minority and I can use my own good judgement. I am also not in any "bubble" group and I am one of those people that are very suspicious of cliques. I spent as much time talking to people that are neutral, positive and negative on AI. Most of the AI haters IME of interacting with them irrational and are full of very poor arguments for their position. Almost all of it is emotional and/or out of ignorance. I've seen the exact same arguments made on US and UK based websites. A lot of AI-skepticism I've encountered IRL/more-normie space comes from fears of what their children will do for work and the large data centre projects being approved by government without enough consultation of local residents. I think these are both valid concerns.
  - saghm 13d ago
    I think you might be misunderstanding what I mean by the word "bubble". It's quite literally impossible to talk to a representative sample of people the size of the internet, so judging purely by people you've interacted with is to me by definition a bubble. The fact that you claim to have sought out conversations with a variety of viewpoints but someone are of the opinion that the people online can't possibly represent a substantial group or are worth taking seriously rather than maybe just people you haven't talked to directly is a bit hard not to be skeptical of.
    - IslandRebel 13d ago
      You seem to be under the impression that I’m only talking to a small group of people. I’m talking about conversing on forums and Discord, reading different news articles, watching different media, and hearing it discussed by people who are both IT/software professionals and people who work in other fields. I am deliberately avoiding taking my information from a clique or a bubble, as I’ve already explained. Moreover, I personally find this sort of discussion point / tactic to be very frustrating. It essentially stops any form of discussion, doesn't provide me or anyone else new information and doesn't really point anything out that is incorrect with my rationale than it isn't statistically sound when I wasn't pretending it was. I've factored that into my thought process and I am open to changing my mind. My rationale is relatively simple: - It is known that the most vocal/extreme people (on any side of any issues) are a minority, there is nothing controversial with this statement. - It is also known that there is a technological adoption curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle) which is basically a bell curve. This model is well known and I don't think there is much that is controversial with the basic premise of it. - When anything that is pushed too much and AI has been hyped massively, there will be a reaction and people will push back. I can then use this knowledge and then apply it to what I am seeing online and IRL and then form my opinion, which I have already stated. Now I understand that some people can get drawn into cliques and "bubbles" where they only see information that confirms their own confirmation bias. That is why I bothered listening to people that hold opposite opinions to my own. I've found many of the arguments to simply be poor including people that many people laud like Ed Zitron (you may have seen there was a blog post by Danluu saying he has been consistently wrong that was on this site a few days ago). I also think that they are essentially in their own bubble. So this idea that I (or anyone else) cannot be cautiously skeptical and attempt a level headed assessment of sentiment based on what I am seeing online and IRL because it isn't rigorously statistically sound is a nonsense and just derails any discussions into where I having to defend what is a relatively normal (albeit informal) decision making process.

saghm 14d ago

> Al haters are basically a very small minority and almost all of them are online. It isn't a large number. Without even getting into the AI part of this claim, how can you have any confidence about a claim like this when there are always going to be several orders of magnitude more people who are online than people you interact with offline? You could replace "AI haters" with "people who live in <continent I don't live in>" and end up with something that's pretty much entirely true in your subjective experience but quite obviously false objectively. How do you tell what's your bubble and what's actually what most people think?

IslandRebel 14d ago
Because the most vocal people are always a minority and I can use my own good judgement. I am also not in any "bubble" group and I am one of those people that are very suspicious of cliques. I spent as much time talking to people that are neutral, positive and negative on AI. Most of the AI haters IME of interacting with them irrational and are full of very poor arguments for their position. Almost all of it is emotional and/or out of ignorance. I've seen the exact same arguments made on US and UK based websites. A lot of AI-skepticism I've encountered IRL/more-normie space comes from fears of what their children will do for work and the large data centre projects being approved by government without enough consultation of local residents. I think these are both valid concerns.
- saghm 13d ago
  I think you might be misunderstanding what I mean by the word "bubble". It's quite literally impossible to talk to a representative sample of people the size of the internet, so judging purely by people you've interacted with is to me by definition a bubble. The fact that you claim to have sought out conversations with a variety of viewpoints but someone are of the opinion that the people online can't possibly represent a substantial group or are worth taking seriously rather than maybe just people you haven't talked to directly is a bit hard not to be skeptical of.
  - IslandRebel 13d ago
    You seem to be under the impression that I’m only talking to a small group of people. I’m talking about conversing on forums and Discord, reading different news articles, watching different media, and hearing it discussed by people who are both IT/software professionals and people who work in other fields. I am deliberately avoiding taking my information from a clique or a bubble, as I’ve already explained. Moreover, I personally find this sort of discussion point / tactic to be very frustrating. It essentially stops any form of discussion, doesn't provide me or anyone else new information and doesn't really point anything out that is incorrect with my rationale than it isn't statistically sound when I wasn't pretending it was. I've factored that into my thought process and I am open to changing my mind. My rationale is relatively simple: - It is known that the most vocal/extreme people (on any side of any issues) are a minority, there is nothing controversial with this statement. - It is also known that there is a technological adoption curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle) which is basically a bell curve. This model is well known and I don't think there is much that is controversial with the basic premise of it. - When anything that is pushed too much and AI has been hyped massively, there will be a reaction and people will push back. I can then use this knowledge and then apply it to what I am seeing online and IRL and then form my opinion, which I have already stated. Now I understand that some people can get drawn into cliques and "bubbles" where they only see information that confirms their own confirmation bias. That is why I bothered listening to people that hold opposite opinions to my own. I've found many of the arguments to simply be poor including people that many people laud like Ed Zitron (you may have seen there was a blog post by Danluu saying he has been consistently wrong that was on this site a few days ago). I also think that they are essentially in their own bubble. So this idea that I (or anyone else) cannot be cautiously skeptical and attempt a level headed assessment of sentiment based on what I am seeing online and IRL because it isn't rigorously statistically sound is a nonsense and just derails any discussions into where I having to defend what is a relatively normal (albeit informal) decision making process.