I'm an AI skeptic. Here's why I just joined an AI startup.
My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup
After a decade in AI, I burnt out and left the field. But now, amid growing backlash, I'm returning to work on AI in education. My friends are right: there's a lot terrible about AI—slop-filled internet, overhyped execs, students outsourcing thinking, and scam products. Yet I believe AI can be used in ways that protect human creativity and autonomy. I'm joining Answer.AI to work on SolveIt, a tool designed to keep humans in control, treating AI as fallible.
I returned to the field because I want to figure out how to use AI in ways that protect human creativity, autonomy, and problem-solving.
- japhyr
Of course everyone hates AI. For most people, it's actively making their lives worse, not better.
AI is a really effective technology when used with restraint, in appropriate places. But it's rarely being used with restraint, and it's being inserted just about everywhere.
If you're trying to work in AI on a product related to education, you've got a really high bar to clear to prove that you're actually helping students learn better, and teachers teach better.
- mawadev
Reasons why I currently dislike AI:
- it is not as accurate and good as advertised
- being forced to use and care about it
- it is bad for the environment at the scale and competition that exists in this economy
- it is a mirror, and augmentation and reveals really inhuman takes and thought processes from people who are on the longer lever in society
- it is already in use for very unethical things (spying and war)
- it makes people cognitively lazy
- it lowers the quality of day to day life for regular people
- HexPhantom
I agree with most of the diagnosis but I am less convinced that better UX around AI solves the underlying problem. Every product starts out saying "human in the loop" and "augment, don't replace" but the economic incentive is almost always to remove more of the human over time…
- jrockway
Relatable. AI is something I only bring up to the most trusted of trusted friends. Politics is more approachable these days.
I think a lot of people have formed opinions without having used it, and honestly, they probably can't afford to use it. I use Claude a lot at work because it's something my employer provides, and I'm always impressed with the results. It saves a lot of time and lets me get more done. But it ain't cheap. So people really don't get to try out AI and form their own opinions. The "AI overview" you see on search results, or that summarizes your iPhone notifications, is ... not as advanced as frontier models, and I think it negatively affects people's view of the technology.
I also think people are mad at the world. Times are tough for many. Hearing about a job-killing machine doesn't exactly inspire joy. So I kind of understand the pushback on datacenters and AI and that sort of thing. I don't find it particularly logical; datacenters have existed forever and most money poured into computer programs are basically designed to mess up your life (deny you credit, deny you healthcare, rebook your flight to a terrible time, the list goes on) and so I don't think AI is anything new in that respect. But, if you're mad at the world, you might as well find something to take out your rage on and raging against AI will make you a lot of friends.
I work in the AI infra industry and ya know, a lot of our customers have really good ideas that are going to sav […]
- crmd
Ordinary people were generally marvelous of the electric motor because it was obvious how it would make life better. Their great grandchildren, with the same common sense, are extremely cynical about LLMs and other knowledge work robots. What changed?
- Jblx2
I feel like I fall into the neutral camp for the current round of AI bots. I've seen less-capable people churn out text/documents that aren't really better or more informative than their human level slop, except for more voluminous. So I guess that goes in the slightly negative column. But not a huge negative, since it just needs to be mostly ignored, like their previous human content. It is mostly a bit insulting to generate this slop. If I wanted to know what the chat bot has to say about something, I'd ask it myself. There is more low-effort slop on YouTube to wade through, but that probably means I should engage in something more productive than YouTube. Does that count as a positive or negative? The current crop of LLMs make meme generation easier. Again, is that a positive or negative? I'm not a professional computer programmer so churning out reams of code doesn't really excite me. Most of the questions I ask the bot are apparently too hard for them to answer correctly. Like I was wondering about the modulus of elasticity of "low-stretch" synthetic fiber ropes vs steel-wire cables. And it seems like it couldn't give me a straight answer. Like I just want the data using the same/consistent units so I can compare. Data center build-out/expansion isn't something I fear. There was some boring AI-generated art on the wall of a beach rental house I went to recently. It is something I wouldn't generally even notice, but one of my children looked closely, and […]
- drivebyhooting
AI is awesome as a consumer. You can just build whatever bespoke thing you want. It can walk you through a myriad of home improvement projects.
- ogou
When I tell friends or family I just got a job in AI, they look at me with sympathy and disgust, as if I had told them I have gonorrhea. Nobody says "congratulations."