To be fair, even if you understand the tech it's kinda hard to see how it would benefit the average worker as opposed to CEOs and shareholders who will use it as a cost reduction method to make more money. Most of them will be laid off because of AI so obviously it's of no benefit to them.

If you look at the poll, the concerns raised are all valid. AI will most likely be used to automate cyberattacks, identity theft, and to spread misinformation. I think the benefits of the technology outweigh the risks, but these issues are very real possibilities.

Informed or not, they aren’t wrong. If there is an iota that something can be misused, it will be. Human nature. AI will be used against everyone. It’s potentially for good is equally as strong as its potential for evil.

But imagine this. You get laid off. At that moment, bots are contacting your bank, LinkedIn, and most of the financial lenders about the incident. Your credit is flagged as your income has dropped significantly. Your bank seizes the opportunity and jacks up your mortgage rates. Lenders are also making use of the opportunity to seize back their merchandise as you’ll likely not be able to make payments and they know it.

Just one likely incident when big brother knows all and can connect the dots using raw compute power.

Having every little secret parcelled over the internet because we live in the digital age is not something humanity needs.

I’m actually stunned that even here, among the tech nerds, you all still don’t realize how much digital espionage is being done on the daily. AI will only serve to help those in power grow bigger.

But our elected officials like McConnell, feinstein, Sanders, Romney, manchin, Blumenthal, Marley have us covered.

They are up to speed on the times and know exactly what our generations challenges are. I trust them to put forward meaningful legislation that captures a nuanced understanding that will protect the interests of the American people while positioning the US as a world leader on these matters.

Or a browser and the internet. It’s a very low bar.

"What do the opinions of people who are not in the slightest educated on the matter affect"

Judging by the elected leaders of the USA: quite a lot, in fact.

You don’t have to understand how an atomic bomb works to know it’s dangerous

Yep. It's either "embrace the future, adapt or die" or "let's put the technological genie back in the bottle". No actual nuance.

The vaccine saved millions of lives, yet people will be cynical despite reality

AI is such a huge term. Google lens is great, when I'm travelling I can take a picture of text and it will automatically get translated. Both of those are aided by machine learning models.

Generative text and image models have proven to have more adverse affects on society.

I think we're at a point where we should start normalizing using more specific terminology. It's like saying I hate machines, when you mean you hate cars, or refrigerators or air conditioners. It's too broad of a term to be used most of the time.

This is basically how I feel about it. Capital is ruining the value this tech could have. But I don't think it's dangerous and I think the open source community will do awesome stuff with it, quietly, over time.

Edit: where AI can be used to scan faces or identify where people are, yeah that's a unique new danger that this tech can bring.

People don't play basketball because Michael Jordan exists?
People don't play hockey because Wayne Gretzky exists?
People don't paint because Picasso exists?
People don't write plays because Shakespeare exists?
People don't climb Everest because Hillary and Norgay exist?

Are you telling me because you're not the best at everything you do, nothing is worth doing? Are you saying that if you're not the first person to do a thing, there's no enjoyment to be had? So what if the singularity means AI will solve everything- that just means there's more time for leisurely pursuits. Working for the sake of working is bullshit.

While I do understand where you're coming from, someone being better at something shouldn't stop a person from doing what they love.

There are millions of people who draw better, sing better, dance better, write better, play video games better, design websites better or just do anything I can do better than I can... and that's fine.

You need to read some Iain M Banks. His Culture novels are essentially in that future where AI runs everything. A lot of his characters are essentially looking for meaning within such a world