alt Hacker NewsOrdinary 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?
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Not all new technology is made equal and can't be compared as such. The electric motor was a new technology we now know did indeed pan out, but there are a string of others which never did and are forgotten about when talking about this. More recently, you could point to NFT's and crypto, both of which people also compared to things like the electric motor.
Whether or not LLM's become an electric motor or an NFT, or something in between, only time will tell
The electric motor was accepted only because horses and mules couldn’t protest. Every technological advancement throughout history that displaces humans has had massive pushback. AI is no different.
I don't think your premise is true. Remember John Henry, worried that the steam engine would put him out of a job drilling holes in rocks?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)
Ludditism has a long history, and they made the exact same arguments about job loss in the 1800s as today.
Well, for a start, electric motors worked properly and didn’t generate infinite amounts of unreadable crap.
Electric motors empower you, and are available to almost anyone. Trillion-dollar AI firms sitting like a dragon's hoard of state-of-the art models and hardware disempower you.
That's the difference.
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People who were disempowered by motors weren't exactly thrilled about them, either, but they were a minority underclass.
>What changed?
Motors, electric or otherwise, made it so you can jump in a car, or a bus and drive you and your friends to the movies or on a holiday and go out and see the world. LLMs make it so people end up like delusional zombies talking to a screen.
Nothing has changed about people, they had common sense then and they have common sense now and they recognize when you try to sell them something useful that makes the physical world and their social situation better and when you want to sell them something out of dystopian sci-fi novels.
I disagree that ordinary people marveled at electric motors and saw their potential. Electric motors were seen as a toy for decades following their invention in 1834, and required industry to completely re-design its approach before they were used in more than 5% of factories. Even then the big shift to electric from steam in industry - almost a century later - was more due to economic necessity than better technology: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40673694
I think the same cycle is playing out with LLMs - the general public is somewhere between indifferent and actively hostile to them, as they have been with every new technology. Reconfiguring businesses and society to use them to their full potential - and benefits to society - will take years, if not decades.