#“has a use” vs “meaningfully improves your QoL” is not a distinction tech-types are good at making

[specioussussurations]

also consider:

people are just tired of the kind of tech bro who peddles it. they're disproportionately likely to be predators of various kinds anyways, i think it's just part of the deepening "silicon valley is a scammer's paradise" reputation

im also seeing more negative sentiment around tech industry in general, even the cs majors i know (biased bc they're generally other tgirls) aren't feeling great about their job prospects

plus, this wave of AI is a pretty blatant attempt to manufacture hype. it's output is strange and unwieldy and it's showing up seemingly unannounced on their streaming services and at their jobs

if all the most annoying people you know (e.g. uncles & brothers-in-law & overenthusiastic bosses) ALL keep trying to convince you visibly dysfunctional disruptions are actually "heralding the future! invest early!!" ur gonna start asking obvious questions that do NOT have obvious answers, if they have answers at all.

imagine being a generic white, middle-class homeowning boomer man asking the question "how much does this glitchy nonsense cost?" and watching the kid down the street's face light up as he tells you a figure larger than the GDP of your state like it's a good thing

OK so obviously it makes sense that artists would be anti AI. For like, mercenary class interest reasons. But it's bizarre to me that anti AI sentiment is so popular among the gen pop. I think the obvious angle is "a lot of AI art is shitty" but like. A lot of early cgi was shitty, and I don't think many people were against cgi in the 90s. Maybe they were? Idk the AI art thing is particularly stark because there was this period early on when it was not very good and then there was no ill will towards it. And then it got good and popular and is now hated by an appreciable segment of the (online) population. Very odd.