logoalt Hacker News

tovejtoday at 9:41 AM3 repliesview on HN

Are you serious when you connect anti-AI sentiment to anti-science sentiment?

To me, they are opposite sentiments, and my experience discussing AI with others supports this. The most pro-AI people I meet are very far removed from science, and my research colleagues are definitely more critical of AI than not.


Replies

pjc50today at 10:37 AM

AI's tendency to emit unsourced, untrue statements with authority is about the most unscientific thing you can get.

AI is scientism: presenting science-flavoured things as a cultural marker.

dsigntoday at 12:14 PM

> Are you serious when you connect anti-AI sentiment to anti-science sentiment?

I don’t believe that the current state of things represents peak-AI problems. AI is for now weak both in its capability and its impact, and also just new. Speculatively, if things go really bad, in a couple of decades there will be a huge swath of population without jobs nor high-flying education. They, perhaps rightly, will blame AI for the situation, but they’ll also, perhaps rightly, blame capital and the “snobbish elite” that is today and in the near future propping AI. That “snobbish elite” is well-paid engineers and researchers. That’s because people tend to like to have somebody to blame for their problems. But even without making it about bad guys, the heart of the thing that is pouring billions into AI is a relentless ethos of profit deriving from progress and disruption. You can’t stop AI without stabbing that heart.

FrustratedMonkytoday at 12:28 PM

I think he is making the point that scientist built the AI.

The whole "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should,"