Skip to main content


I think a lesson of the AI bubble is that people don't like trading privacy for convenience. I don't think they ever had. The goal is the tech company is the hide the privacy invasion and maximize the convenience to hit critical mass.
@silverwizard I'm not sure about that. I feel like the general problem with AI is more that the promised convenience is disappointing rather than the privacy trade-off. Connected objects offer a tangible convenience (controlling apppliances from your phone) with a similar privacy trade-off and they don't get nearly as much hate as AI-powered anything.
@Hypolite Petovan So - I agree that AI sucks - but I think a lot of the actual rejection comes down to the invasiveness. People don't want Recall or other tools. They don't want a company to train on all their data.

@silverwizard Oh I know I and the people I surrounded myself with don't want this privacy invasion. Beyond that, it becomes unclear to me that it would be the main factor of rejection. My main guess is there is a general disconnect between the data harvesting for AI purposes and the AI tools themselves. Meaning that people may be receptive to the AI tools and at the same time reject high-profile cases of data harvesting like the Reddit debacle, Twitter's change of terms of service, Recall, etc...

This would also mean that the general contempt for the latest AI-everywhere products wouldn't be based on the underlying data harvesting, but rather because they are disappointing products by themselves, regardless of their externalities you and I strongly care about.

@Hypolite Petovan so I have been reading external-to-me AI criticism, and one of the interesting features is that a lot of people feel blown away by AI and its capabilities. I think that people outside of ourselves feel like it's actually pretty valuable. One of my biggest problem with non-tech AI commentary is people saying "this is useful, but the data is bad" or "this is good but not for me". But that's also my read of people outside my bubble.

@silverwizard I must admit that I haven't read much AI criticism that I don't also share myself. The working theory I outlined earlier is based on a single poll that showed 40% of the responders were considering AI features at least somewhat negatively in new products.

When I learned about the poll, it went against my preconceived notion that the general public was more receptive to AI features, which would have partially explained the rush to implement it into anything and everything.

@Hypolite Petovan a fascinating thing is that AI loses money, and announcing an AI product drops profits but raises value, and so, it's very strange
@silverwizard It wouldn't be the first buzzword disconnected from user wants, but I have been feeling pretty isolated railing against both the low inherent quality of LLM chatbots output and their massive externalities.
@silverwizard I'm so sorry about that. We've never talked about it within my family, but I'm pretty sure my parents would either steer clear or only use it for some niche innocuous task.
@Hypolite Petovan My father is a tech VC, so the exact target market of that stuff
@silverwizard Right, I keep forgetting because of the cognitive dissonance between the both of you.

@Hypolite Petovan My father: Lives for tech hype
Me: a tech raccoon

My father: staunch conservative
me: anarchist with a chip on his shoulder

otherwise we're exactly the same

@silverwizard This "otherwise" is load bearing.
@Hypolite Petovan Welcome to my entire childhood and adulthood. The load bearing otherwise
⇧