American attitudes about AI today mirror poll answers about the rise of the internet in the ’90s
www.nbcnews.com
In 1998, 48% of respondents in one survey said they never used the internet. Just a few years later, weekly use was growing more normal. Now, it’s everywhere, all the time.
  • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    It’s the same sentiment towards immigrants that’s seen on the right.

    The media have been running the exact same headlines. It feels weirdly like the corporate run media have an agenda to show us all the horrors of AI like they will take our jobs, they are going to collapse our society, they are a threat to our children, they contribute to organized crime. Same headlines every time.

    I anticipate people here will be bothered by this statement just like if you say immigration isn’t really a big problem in r/conservative. The media is insidious. But I really think it’s a good opportunity to see how it shapes public opinion.

      • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I would have no problem getting anyone at r/conservative to pull up similar data points and statistics to show immigrants are taking jobs, contributing to crime statistics or any other claim. It’s very eerily similar to the emerging opinion on the left when compared to opinions on the right towards immigrants.

        Regardless of validity of opinion. What I’m noticing is the role the media has played on shaping opinion and fed it.

  • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Yeah, but internet was for the people for decades.
    (And it didn’t really cost nature as much. Or stolen from the people so much - even by current laws LLM companies do that illegally.)

    “AIs” are getting their enshitification & monopolies pre-baked into their core bossiness models from the start.

    Not to mention that AIs will definitely worsen inequalities all over the world (like assembly robots that replaced people but aren’t owned by people, and people still need to work 8h/day for decades for some reason).

    (This but AI. I’m not saying, there aren’t/won’t be other jobs, just pointing out how this reshapes & concentrates wealth that on the other hands allows for slave wages with no prospects for full time jobs.)

    If AIs will affect the world as much as the internet (and do so with peoples data), then they should be seen as core infrastructure - and government or non-profit owned.

    Monetisation of all the things is killing us.

          • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            I think people would find new ways to struggle that they actually enjoy and would likely end up contributing. Imagine a couple of thousand people with their new modest but stress free budgets decide to join a yearly potato cannon contest, Sure its not going to invent anything new directly but you now have a bunch of people learning about ballistics and stoichiometry and high pressure engineering all egging eachother on to shoot that potato further. The competition gets more and more fierce and with the much lower stakes people start trying some more out there ideas, before you know it you have a modest but highly effective solution to reliably obtaining the correct gas mixture for something like a combined light gas gun.

            And that’s a deliberately silly example, you’d get a ton more art, people deciding to be athletes, coders, all sorts of hobies that can encourage healthy competition and often benefit society in surprising ways.