This is just the beginning of the AI enshittification. It will only get worse from here.
Why new grads are booing commencement speakers: There's an 'ambient anxiety that AI is going to make things dramatically worse'
5 months ago by chobeat to c/technology
nosuchanon 28 points 5 months ago
BarneyPiccolo 49 points 5 months ago
These graduation speakers that show up to extol the wonders of AI are like the Groom on his wedding night, going on and on about how fuckable all the Bridesmaids were, and then being surprised that his new Bride is pissed off at him.
Windex007 22 points 5 months ago
I like the analogy but it's even worse. It's like the grooms uncle taking the mic and saying how fuckable the bridesmaids are and about how he's the world's best lover... and then being surprised his wife is pissed.
Like, why are you using someone else's wedding to talk up how important you are? It's pathetic on vibe, regardless of the content. The content just takes it from bad to worse.
brandon 39 points 5 months ago
Gloria Caulfield, an executive for Orlando-based property developer Tavistock, was met with a similar reaction at the University of Central Florida on May 8. The school's arts and humanities graduates booed when she equated the rise of AI to the "next industrial revolution." Moments later, they cheered when she said, "Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives."
Why is a property developer even talking at an arts and humanities graduation? Universities have a long standing tradition of shitty commencement speakers that benefit the school rather than the students. Wouldn’t be surprised if the school was looking for some sweetheart development deal here.
I remember my graduating class giving shit to our school for picky some high ranking general, likely as a result of the large amount of DoD grants the school gets. That guy got boo’d too when he spoke, effectively trying to give a recruitment speech.
atrielienz 36 points 5 months ago
You don't get to convince a bunch of companies to eliminate job paths by getting rid of entry level positions (even before AI), sell the idea that the AI is basically going to make their degrees useless, and then try to sell them on AI after the fact.
pdxfed 17 points 5 months ago
Billionaires have bought enough of the media, governmental and legal apparatus that they have repeatedly convinced:
- the poor to vote for a billionaire business owner who came from wealth
- religiously fervent to vote for an atheist who regulaly, publicly and aggressively breaks any religious canon
- "law and order" voters to support him as a convicted felon
- women to vote for a rapist, misogynist
- those who want to "protect the children" that his long and personal friendship and association with an aggressive child sex trafficker was benign
- descendents of slaves to vote for a candidate whose leading campaign contributor is an apartheid supporting white supremacy
- those with tenuous legal status or those related to those with tenuous legal status to support a platform bent on demonizing immigrants, legal or non, in a country built by immigrants, while his own wife is an immigrant
- veterans to vote for a candidate who said those who serve for their county are foolish
- veterans who may have actually fought in WWII to vote for a guy advocating appeasement against a dictator who militarily invaded and is currently occupying Europe
- rabid Mccarthyists to vote for a candidate who has ongoing ties, financial transactions, security concerns with the Russian dictator
- corporations who say their most important lobbying need, every single year forever in any industry is "certainty" to give generously to a candidate and administration that has never had a plan for economy other than their own grift, and has unilaterally destroyed their international trade markets, supply chains, competitive edge and the value of their currency
...there is so much more. That's just off the top of my head list of getting people to vote against their interests and passions. Getting indebted, youth who you have aggressively cut back government funding for education on to swallow a turd of disempowerment and fascism isn't even difficult compared to some of the above.
atrielienz 10 points 5 months ago
All of that falls apart in more ways than one for a lot of people once they can't maintain a quality of life at all. I'm not saying they aren't susceptible to propaganda. I'm saying that propaganda often falls apart when you have to worry about where your next meal is coming from.
Young people are using AI because they want the shortcuts to the goal society said they need to achieve.
Pretty much all of the stuff you talk about is stuff a smaller subset of the population fall for. You went through and described a bunch of MAGA voting as if the vast majority of higher education graduates fall into this category.
In point of fact it's been proven repeatedly that more often than not the reason Conservatives have been trying desperately to fight against higher education and education in general is because they get pushback from educated people more often, even after feeding them a steady diet of religion, conservative propaganda, and racism.
This is completely ignoring the majority of people to make your point.
It also ignores the last 70 years of politics and economics which explain how we got here. There's more too it than "we convince them to vote against their own best interest".
FlashMobOfOne 6 points 5 months ago
All of that falls apart in more ways than one for a lot of people once they can’t maintain a quality of life at all.
Nailed it.
You can't gaslight people when they can't put food on the table. The people who get elected this November in the US will largely argue against data centers and for affordability. (Though I'm skeptical that any of them, save Graham Platner, would actually vote for any meaningful change.)
pdxfed 3 points 5 months ago
All of that falls apart in more ways than one for a lot of people once they can't maintain a quality of life at all.
Agree with you on this, itsomg been a question of "how bad does it have to get before people stop swallowing bullshit. We still aren't there yet, so it hasn't fallen apart.
This is completely ignoring the majority of people to make your point. It also ignores the last 70 years of politics and economics which explain how we got here. There's more too it than "we convince them to vote against their own best interest".
The majority of people, voters anyway, have supported the bullshit and lies which is exactly how we got here.
atrielienz 3 points 5 months ago
This is an oversimplified version of events.
The majority of voters don't like the current regime and are fighting it in through the avenues they are aware of.
But here's the main problem.
The propaganda isn't how we got here. The fact is, the conservative party in this country has been desperately chipping away at public power for decades. They enacted policy and legislation over a period of years (over 100 years if we're gonna be honest about this), in order to defang the public. The main problem with that is that propaganda only works when you can control the discourse and that's the reason the big push is happening now. This is their last ditch attempt to get things they want done and cash out. They do not plan to be here for the aftermath.
The average MAGA voter is indoctrinated with the propaganda but that's not really why Trump won. He made promises that appealed to their basest/hateful natures and those are the majority of the promises he kept. He won because of complacency on the part of people who opposed him (including voters and voter eligible people who opposed him), and the hatred of the people who supported him. Some of that hatred comes from the propaganda. But some of it just comes from the fact that the problem is a systemic part of our country as an institution and that's the major thing you leave out. Along with the complacency and the hatred, he also won because desperate people trying to cash in and cash out backed him. There's a greed component you also left out.
The crazy thing is that greed component also exists in the voters.
Pretending that it's simply a matter of using propaganda to get people to vote against their own self interest is only part of the picture.
They were voting for things they view as part of their self interest.
ParlimentOfDoom 22 points 5 months ago
Skyrocketing electricity costs, skyrocketing PC component costs (as if you can even buy some of them anymore), since everything has cold in it these days, everything is now more expensive, draining local water to unusability, an excuse for massive layoffs across the industry, all for the biggest tech bubble circlejerk in history continuing to inflate in the hopes this tech will someday do what they claim it does
Sounds like it already did.
jballs 20 points 5 months ago
Music executive Scott Borchetta told graduates of Middle Tennessee State University on May 9 that “AI is rewriting production as we sit here.”
When the jeers ensued, he doubled down, saying, “Deal with it.”
“Then do something about it,” he added as the boos continued...
Based music executive. Hyping up people to go burn down data centers.
GreenKnight23 13 points 5 months ago
AI is fascism.
makeshift0546 -4 points 5 months ago
👌👍
lastlybutfirstly -5 points 5 months ago
AI is fascism? This Butlerian Jihad is going to result in the A* algorithm and single-player games being outlawed.
Ilovethebomb 8 points 5 months ago
It's a great time to be in the trades.
Zron 30 points 5 months ago
Am HVAC tech.
No one has money. I knew things were truly fucked before Christmas when I was talking to a guy, standing in his living room that is larger than my entire fucking house, and he was hemming and hawing about replacing his furnace blower motor that was actively leaking oil. I felt scummy having to point out that it is an actual fire hazard. He pushed the repair off to the new year so he could get some money together. Another guy had to call his sister to pay me for his dispatch fee, and then said he’d buy an inducer motor at Home Depot because my quote for the warranty repair was too high. I wish him the best of luck.
It has not gotten better. I fear for my job on a weekly basis. I had to switch to a new company due to moving states for my wife’s job, and I am having a hell of a time proving I can bring value when people are barely able to afford capacitors at discounted rates. I had one guy whose unit won’t even start just say they’ll just not have AC.
He’s cooked, I’m cooked, we’re all cooked.
terabyterex -18 points 5 months ago
The anti-ai wave is mostly a north american issue. people in china just see a new tool they have to learn. like most issues with americans, it has become binary. either ai will bring utopia or it will destroy us all.
everything goes back to republicans destroying education and americans defining their lives by social media
atrielienz 6 points 5 months ago
The problem with your argument is that the companies that people rely on are going to have to deal with a market where AI is taking up a lot of resources they rely on, which will cause problems for their customers outside of the US.
European and African and Asian companies don't need chips? They don't need Harddrives? They don't need computer components? How are car manufacturers going to build and sell new cars or fix older cars without chips? How do engineers trained to use CAD and modeling software do that without computers? (Please note that I'm not talking about some 60 year old engineer who will do it with a draft board and a pencil and a slide rule, I'm talking about new engineers who learned these electronic tools expecting to have them always available and who now are facing an uncertain future for the tech their business relies on).
The point is, there are far reaching consequences for AI in tech that effect the entire world.
terabyterex -5 points 5 months ago
This is a different topic though. Sure its related but the students aren't booing because of chip shortage. The hype will die down. Ai wont go anywhere but the crazy ramp up and "everyone need sot be in AI' will die down.
atrielienz 5 points 5 months ago
First question. Why do you think these students are booing?
Second question. You mention China. How much unemployment is there in China and, what is the main cause for the rate of unemployment?
terabyterex 1 point 5 months ago
They arr complaining about a future where there wont be jobs. but to be clear all these big layoffs have been cyclicaland they used ai to get investors excited.
but just like all advances, any job that goes away is replaced by something new.
the biggest problem we have is the head of open ai is the biggest ai doomer.
he tells everyone that ai will destroy us all but its coming so better embrace it.
i am not a doomer and i am not an ai worshipper. i tjink there will be disruption but it wont be the end.
unlike the industrial revolution, there hasnt been bombings yet.
makeshift0546 -23 points 5 months ago
It will. And hiding in a hole isn't going to stop the world from moving on.
China will be fine, they know how to train people and create jobs with new tech. US and Western powers won't.
🤷♂️
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It already is making things dramatically worse
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