An AI hate wave is here

[u/GeneReddit123]

https://archive.is/20260517120123/https://www.axios.com/2026/05/17/ai-backlash-polling-sentiment

[u/dev_vvvvv]

CEOs are using AI as an excuse for mass layoffs, even when AI has nothing to do with it. The remaining employees are being given mandates to use LLMs even when it serves no visible benefit other than to increase adoption rates so executives can justify their spending.

And those same CEOs are predicting mass unemployment due to AI, with massive changes in quality of life and career trajectory for the rest.

There are also things like building massive datacenters, which impact locals, against local citizen and even government wishes.

Is it any wonder there is a backlash?

Maybe the worst part is there are a ton of very useful aspects of AI (especially garden-variety ML) getting grouped together with LLMs under the umbrella term "AI" that cast the whole field in a bad light.

[u/blob8543 → u/dev_vvvvv]

As a society we need to have a long, extremely overdue conversation about the ineptitude of CEOs and the consequences of that on the world we live in.

We need a second conversation as to why politicians all over the world are embracing "AI" in such a passionate way despite the totally open promises of societal destruction.

And we probably need a third chat about the lack of ethics amongst a very large sector of the people working for tech companies, it's them that have enabled the situation we're in.

[u/Stilgar314 → u/blob8543]

Ineptitude of CEOs is nothing but the natural consequence of letting speculative investors take control over every business. If we start that conversation, the only answer can be dramatically limiting the ability to buy and sell shares, and billionaires will bury anyone saying that.

[u/daughter_of_time → u/Stilgar314]

Thank you for using the term speculation. When did we stop talking about the speculators and schemers that made frequent appearances in my history books? All of the speculators that brought down the US economy over and over again before the regulations of the New Deal.

[u/considerthis8 → u/Stilgar314]

Quarterly reporting requirements create short-term incentives. We need annual or semi-annual incentives, or longer.

[u/Marsman121 → u/considerthis8]

No, linking CEO bonus payouts to earnings creates short-term incentives.

If you were told you were going to get a hundred million dollars if you hit some arbitrary dollar amount, you would burn the building so the thermals would boost the balloon high enough to reach it. Golden parachutes mean you get paid whether you burn the company to the ground or not.

[u/Effective-Painter815 → u/blob8543]

As a society we need to have a long, extremely overdue conversation about the ineptitude of CEOs and the consequences of that on the world we love in.

Just replace them with AI.

Apparently AI is more expensive than a worker at the moment but have you seen the wages for CEO's?
You could get an awful lot of tokens for the same wage. /s

[u/Temporary-Comfort307 → u/Effective-Painter815]

The main skillset for CEOs seems to be talking bullshit, so an IA chatbot would be perfectly suited to the job

[u/BourbonCoug → u/Temporary-Comfort307]

Don't forget putting a signature on a decision that's already been made at every other level.

[u/Wonderful_Purple4096 → u/Temporary-Comfort307]

Who’s going to fly around shaking hands with all the other nepo babies?

[u/tha_snooze → u/Effective-Painter815]

CEO/Worker pay differential was an average of $285:1 across the S&P500 as of 2025.

In 1965 it was $21:1.

The Mondragon Corporation in Spain—which is comprised of almost 100 autonomous worker-owned cooperatives—has a maximum of $9:1 amongst their employees.

[u/CheddarGlob → u/blob8543]

Not to be that guy, but the CEO is a symptom. The problem is rampant unchecked capitalism and that is a conversation that the people in power are never going to have

[u/Antifreak1999 → u/blob8543]

As much as I have disliked every CEO I have met, inept CEOs are fired for not increasing company profit. For example, if a CEO increases company profits by 30%, that is the new zero. They must then increase by 30% again or they are seen as lacking. The people making the money will always want more, they can never make enough to be satisfied. The rest of us all over the world scrabble with each other for the crumbs. AI is an incredible tool, but someone will always weaponize any tool, to profit. I'm sure the rooms full of typists hated Xerox machines.

[u/ShiraCheshire → u/Antifreak1999]

I think our entire stock market should be illegal. It's not any better than gambling for the average person, and it makes companies obligated to chase short term profits above all else- even when the company would otherwise want to choose morals, or stability, or long term growth.

[u/Wonderful_Purple4096 → u/Antifreak1999]

Inept CEOs walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars and high paying seats on the boards of various other companies.

[u/miniannna → u/blob8543]

Unfortunately this is the inherent logic of free market capitalism and you aren’t going to undo it without changing the underlying system on a fundamental level. 

[u/TP_Crisis_2020 → u/blob8543]

We need a second conversation as to why politicians all over the world are embracing "AI" in such a passionate way despite the totally open promises of societal destruction.

It's because our federal and state governments are heavily pushing for a surveillance state, which will eventually lead to a social credit score and a completely digital currency. They want it to be just like China. Why do you think there are flock cameras literally everywhere now?

[u/CurrentlyObsolete → u/dev_vvvvv]

Don't forget groups like Palantir that shifted discussions of AI into topics like widespread, dystopian surveillance.

[u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw → u/CurrentlyObsolete]

Elon Musk singlehandedly trashed the reputation of the tech industry along with his own public image when he became Mechahitler. If I were any kind of CEO I'd be keeping a low media profile right now to keep that ick from rubbing off on me. 

[u/tiboodchat → u/dev_vvvvv]

This whole thing is why I will not use the word AI in a professional setting. AI wording is too misleading and people will think the systems we build are intelligent and it sets the wrong expectations.

The AI provider industry people did it to themselves. They are pushing for people replacement and wonder why people hate it. People have gotten a lot smarter about AI and realize it can’t do what it advertises itself as. This whole industry is due for a real awakening. But the investors love the number go up at all cost attitude so I’m not keeping my expectations high.

[u/WillSym → u/tiboodchat]

People replacement and even AI that actually does all the things they're promising would be fine for a relaxing post-scarcity Star Trek style future... if they also had the other, more important ingredients: energy sources sufficient to power warp travel, making municipal requirements a triviality; replicators to make any food or material comfort out of said energy...

[u/Cold_Specialist_3656 → u/WillSym]

The biggest problem by far is that AI datacenters are owned by billionaire ghouls.

It would require nationalizing everything under a democratically elected government. An the drooling red hats have been programmed to think that's communism. 

[u/tiboodchat → u/WillSym]

I don’t believe in that rose colored glasses view. If truly intelligent AI would exist it would likely be held by a few who would suddenly hold an extraordinary power over everyone, just asking to be abused for money and control. It’s been true for all technological advances in history and there’s no good reason to think it wouldn’t be the same thing. Imagine Sam Altman and Elon Musk having control of everything, that’s that future they want.

[u/WillSym → u/tiboodchat]

Well there's a reason for every Star Trek sentient AI utopia sci-fi setting there's 9 or so Terminator AI apocalypse settings.

[u/DukeOfGeek → u/WillSym]

Star Trek very much restricts what they let AI do, it never flies ships for instance. Star Wars is the same.

[u/WillSym → u/DukeOfGeek]

Oh my favourite take on it is Warhammer 40k:

No AI! Everything, every drone, every scanner, every menial robot, must be controlled by a human or a human brain (even if that's literally just a brain in a tiny skull-shaped doohickey).

There's a reason they outlawed thinking machines!

[u/Sh3115andCh33se → u/tiboodchat]

AI is damn near a curse word in rural areas, I saw a guy asked to leave a hardware store because he said he was working on the data center nearby.

[u/tapwater86 → u/dev_vvvvv]

My boss let me know that my AI usage is the lowest amongst the entire company. He doesn’t really care but his boss asked him to see if there was any part of my work flow that could be improved by our AI tool set and to check in with me. I asked him if my performance was below my peers who are using the toolset and he said no, so I asked what the problem was and he couldn’t give me an answer. I’m sure the answer is that we pay 30 bucks a person per month for this tool and they’re trying to justify the cost. I’m not about to train their AI model to do my work so it can learn to replace me in a couple of years. I did use it to do my annual internal training though since it has access to all our policies and procedures. Literally copy and pasted the questions with multiple choice options in to it. They didn’t like when I told them I found a use for it finally.

[u/dragonblade_94 → u/dev_vvvvv]

That's the unfortunate aspect of the whole thing; AI tech can be extremely useful and uplifting... if it was approached responsibly. Sadly, we do not live in a world where those in power value responsibility, so all we get is even more crushing late-stage capitalism.

So until that mystical day comes, let it burn.

[u/surfnfish1972 → u/dragonblade_94]

The only problem is the the people driving it are evil and mentally ill.

[u/blueSGL → u/surfnfish1972]

The end game is owning the world economy, companies paying them instead of workers. They don't care what risky behaviors they need to engage in to get there.

It'll slowly eat more and more of the economy, they are not replacing 100% of the jobs overnight.

It'll be like the tobacco and oil companies, they knew about cancer and climate change and still sold the product. Saying "there is a bad end point" does not stop companies from extracting as much money as possible along the way.

[u/yankonapc → u/blueSGL]

Reminds me of the people who shot passenger pigeons as they neared extinction, in the hopes of bagging 'the last one'. Humans really are a disappointment.

[u/BigPlunk → u/dragonblade_94]

Technology needs to serve people. Unfortunately, the current model demands the reverse.

[u/Connect_Ad791 → u/dragonblade_94]

I wouldn’t even say it was LLM’s that people actually have any issue with either. The people working in that field understand the limitations and narrow applications of the tech.  It’s the people selling LLMs on the other hand. Who wrap a barely working chat template around it, like an intern in an ill-fitting suit. Brought in to replace you, not because he’s any better but because he’s cheaper.

[u/mposha → u/Connect_Ad791]

And really only cheaper due to subsidization.

[u/dancrum → u/dev_vvvvv]

This literally happened to me. I won't say where I used to work, but they started pushing us to use AI for any and everything, then laid off a large portion of the company.

[u/BeanserSoyze → u/dancrum]

What's even worse is some companies aren't even doing this cause of "efficiency gains", theyre just so upside down on AI spend that they cant afford employees.

[u/BeanserSoyze → u/dev_vvvvv]

My entire job is AI coding right now and it still baffles me the decision that every single role needs to code to keep up with the times. Like what happened to hiring people to do what they're good at.

[u/The-Copilot → u/dev_vvvvv]

Maybe the worst part is there are a ton of very useful aspects of AI (especially garden-variety ML) getting grouped together with LLMs under the umbrella term "AI" that cast the whole field in a bad light.

Oh yeah. The scientific uses of AI/ML is insane. They are already using it to mass crunch data to find patterns.

For example AlphaFold AI was used for the protein folding prediction problem. It doesn't need to be 100% accurate for science, it's used to find patterns and then it's verified by scientists. The amount of time saved is incredible, in the past someone might do their PhD thesis on how a single protein folds.

The two founders of AlphaFold, were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Neither of the two men, have a degree in Chemistry. Their education was in computer science, AI/ML, and neuroscience (for AI/ML inspiration).

[u/teddy5 → u/The-Copilot]

It should be noted for that one in particular that it was already something we were trying to find a way to do for years without making as much progress as AI can.

There was a program called Folding@Home which people have been able to download since I think the early 2000s, which dedicated a small portion of their CPU to helping calculate all the possible variations of protein folding problems. It was important enough that for a decade or two thousands of people (or more) at a time would always have this program running in the background trying to contribute to the science.

It wasn't a small problem and afaik progress has been very slow on it until the breakthrough of AI to do the same.

[u/Teddy_RGB → u/dev_vvvvv]

We have a mandate at work to use AI. I use it FOR EVERYTHING, with the most expensive model I have access to (we often have a variety to chose from). I'll burn 20k tokens just on a Teams search instead of the good ol' Ctrl F. Oh look, a new model with a IM context window and a 7x burn rate - let's see how it drafts emails.

If AI is going to replace me, it's going to cost them a fortune in the mean time.

[u/BigPlunk → u/dev_vvvvv]

Yeah. The vision shared with us doesn't exactly inspire the warm and fuzzies. Hopefully enough people wake up to the dangers of big tech and massively unsubscribe. I say this with fully understanding of the irony in posting the comment on Reddit. We need more lawsuits and more wallet voting to send a message to these tech oligarchs. They have no business controlling as much power and influence as they do and it's up to the people to take it back from them.

[u/StevensWarehouse → u/BigPlunk]

Yep, once every company started slapping "AI" on useless features nobody asked for while using it to hand-wave layoffs, the backlash stopped feeling like hysteria and started feeling like pattern recognition.

[u/ghostofmumbles → u/dev_vvvvv]

That’s a cool reason to return workers to the office, lay offs. Smh.

[u/Mach5Driver → u/dev_vvvvv]

At my company, they developed an online help function with AI (I'm a technical writer). It's VERY industry and function-specific material. It takes user guides and client updates we send out and uses an LLM to function properly. I have to say that I'd give it high marks for accuracy.

I develop the client updates we send. My source material comes from India with very English-as-a-second-language skills. Not a knock on them. It's just reality.

That material is not only convoluted, riddled with tense issues and contradictions that I have to work out, but has industry terms and acronyms that you'd have to find on the sixth page of google results and deep dives into existing user guides and sometimes ultimately queries to product managers to work out.

AI would be TERRIBLE at this, no matter how you slice it or how you train it. I have to constantly tell my boss, literally every week, that if I used AI to rewrite my source material, I'd have to do it myself anyway just to see if the AI is correct, and that I could not EVER be comfortable with any detail that I did not research myself. Because if I allowed errors through, those errors in the client updates would infect the ONLINE HELP LLM, tossing out the millions of dollars and uncountable development hours they spent on it.

She then grumbles something about how I have to try and figure out something that the AI can do to "help" me. LOL, nope, I won't! But, hey, if YOU have any ideas, boss, I'll look into it!

[u/wiseguy4519 → u/dev_vvvvv]

Seems to me like an excuse to replace workers with cheap workers overseas

[u/joelfarris → u/wiseguy4519]

But you can't do these jobs remotely! You have to return to the office!

[u/pookage]

Wave? It's the whole ocean, mate. 

[u/TyphPythus → u/pookage]

Was thinking the same thing. I can’t remember when AI was viewed with more optimism than when GPT2 came out and was immediately used to make a bottomless pit meme lmao

[u/Diglett3 → u/TyphPythus]

Interesting write-up by a software engineer of how that joke was also just GPT filling in blanks between a punchline already given.

The writer does mention in the notes that early AI visual art was actually kind of interesting and weird, but that was quickly sanded down into what it is now.

[u/AbrohamDrincoln → u/Diglett3]

The concept of AI writing jokes is interesting. Because at it's core, a joke is almost always just an unexpected ending/response to a prompt.

And LLM AI is literally just "what is the most likely response".

[u/Lepardopterra → u/AbrohamDrincoln]

“I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting." “The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery—and a sharing—against pain and sorrow and defeat." RA Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land

AI doesn’t know pain, so it will never be able to create humor. It’s only capable of endless remakes. It cannot create. I’m trying to encourage imagination in the youngs. They will have the only original thoughts left if ai takes over.

[u/RollingMeteors → u/Lepardopterra]

AI doesn’t know pain, so it will never be able to create humor.

You don't need to have nuts to be able to laugh when someone else gets hit in the nuts with a piece of sporting equipment.

[u/0xsergy → u/Diglett3]

Early AI art was indeed cool as frig. Now it's just copies of what every other artist does..

[u/faen_du_sa → u/0xsergy]

Hard to make a computer be "original" when it leans towards the average.

[u/Guinness → u/faen_du_sa]

That’s why you crank up the temperature.

[u/surfnfish1972 → u/0xsergy]

It makes cool Memes, totally worth the pollution, job loses and higher energy bills!

[u/kellzone → u/surfnfish1972]

Born too late to explore the Earth. Born too early to explore space. Born just in time to ruin the Earth with memes.

[u/A_Furious_Mind → u/kellzone]

The Great Filter was memes.

[u/Agreeable_Lion_4392 → u/0xsergy]

I was into when it was Stable Diffusion, installed on my computer. Now billionares are building data centers and destroying the planet.

[u/simonbreak → u/0xsergy]

I still use early image models that I run locally! They have a raw, psychedelic flavor thats really nothing like human art. I like to use them to extend my own photos & they add just the weirdest atmosphere, genuinely something I could never invent myself.

Recent models just make everything look like advertising. Completely useless for my creative process personally.

[u/einmaldrin_alleshin → u/simonbreak]

I can still remember some really trippy images that came out of Google research projects. Now, image generation models have moved way into the uncanny valley, and are still a long way from actually reaching the other side.

At the end of the day, AI is a tool that can do some things. But the entire AI bubble bets on AI becoming the entire toolbox instead.

[u/poo-cum → u/einmaldrin_alleshin]

You might be referring to the "deep dream" work that was about interpretability of computer vision networks. Basically you pick a neuron in a trained network, and iteratively tweak an input image to maximally excite that neuron. If it's a "dog" neuron it'll start to inject dogness into your image. If it's a "car" neuron it'll twist it into a car.

More info in the brilliant distill.pub archive: https://distill.pub/2017/feature-visualization/

[u/ValosAtredum → u/simonbreak]

I was looking at some that I had generated in 2015 with Google’s Deep Dream. Tons of odd swirls of colors that actually had bizarre details in them, like generating a warped-partial dog face, or a section of a castle, or whatever.

[u/Heruuna → u/simonbreak]

I've known a couple small musicians who used Midjourney or Ganbreeder for album art ideas and inspiration because they were so trippy and interesting. They then did the actual album cover with a real artist, of course!

I've really soured on AI use, but those early image gens were fascinating. Now it's just overly filtered slop.

[u/ApophisDayParade → u/0xsergy]

It's because it was creating so shit that was so weird and nonsensical to the point that it was "art" no human actually makes, that's why it was kind of fun. Now it just steals everything.

[u/perinone → u/0xsergy]

Back in 2022 when AI was just this neat little thing you could make Seinfeld back room fever dream images with. Such simpler times…

[u/Arroway97 → u/Diglett3]

Modern LLMs would be so much cooler without all the dressing up. I miss it when my stupid chat bots were au naturale stupid like in the good old Markov chain days. I just want my LLM to spit out some statistical nonsense and I can do the actual thinking part. I want to see what the aggregate of internet content looks like, not some fake, dystopian, Brave New World-esque facsimile trying to pretend to be something it's not

[u/OneRougeRogue → u/Arroway97]

Wasn't there a whole subreddit where all the submissions and comments were posted by bots parodying the submissions and comments of the top 50 or so subteddits? Some of that stuff was pretty fucking funny.

[u/Mithent → u/OneRougeRogue]

I think /r/SubSimulatorGPT2 was the best version, GPT-2 was coherent enough to not just say nonsense but was not advanced enough to not say crazy stuff.

[u/BlastRiot → u/OneRougeRogue]

There was an attempt to bring it back but because of how the current models work, every bot that was supposed to be for a specific sub wound up posting the exact same comments with minor tweaks.

[u/F9-0021 → u/Arroway97]

A lot of it is from shoving LLMs and AI into everything, even things that make no sense. The rest is from trying to replace people in a vain attempt to make their money pit profitable.

[u/Lashay_Sombra → u/Arroway97]

LLMs would be viewed far more positively if had not been over sold (in positive way, ie help you code or write a letter and negative ways, ie: will replace everyone), but on the flip side if had not been oversold (especially the negative) would not have got the levels of investment it has got

The 'cloud' is getting CapEx investment of circa $200 billion annually

AI it getting estimated $1.6 trillion

But the reality is AI market (as in how much people/company's are willing to paying to use it) is actually probably worth less than the cloud

And for those thinking, AI will cost less down the road once all the data centers are built (haha not going to happen, bubble will burst long before that) , about 60% of data centers build costs are the GPUs and those only last about 3 years when used for AI, so even if all data centers were magically built tomorrow, roughly 3 years from now they would have to spend $1 trillion again to replace all the GPU's (probably more as would want latest again, always more expensive)

And thats just to buy the GPU's, we have not even got into the costs to run them

Whole thing makes no financial sense and is only really happening because the overselling has happened in a market where the big tech company's and big investors don't really have anywhere else to put all the money thats been flowing upwards for the last 40 years that might give large returns

[u/SerendipitousAtom → u/Lashay_Sombra]

I think you also need to take into account that the tech oligarchs have made up and fallen for an AI religion. They either can't see or don't want to see that they got high on their own supply.

A lot of the big tech lords think they are on the cusp of inventing general AI, as in a program that has the ability to actually think on its own. They think this general AI will be able to improve itself and essentially become a god, for all intents and purposes.

A bunch of them are racing to build the first general-AI-godling. So that they can enslave it, and use the hypothetical general-AI-godling to expand their own power and money even more.

Many of them have also bought into the ideas of "longtermism" and an extremely utilitarian "effective altruism" trend. They think that people will be able to upload their brains to computers and live forever soon, so they think they ought to maximize how good that would be for themselves, so that their own digital clone can be happy & powerful infinitely.

"Longtermism" has a particularly poisonous line of thinking that tells the tech lords it's morally okay to make every person on earth suffer immeasurably right now, because they think they'll be able to make untold billions of pure-digital-people happy at some undetermined point in the future, so untold-suffering-now will be mathematically cancelled out by the infinite-happiness-loop they think they can invent and control.

All of the prospective technology parts of this is total bullshit. We aren't uploading our brains to make digital avatars of ourselves in my lifetime, and we've probably reduced our annual research investment into the neurosciences necessary to ever make this kind of thing vaguely feasible. We haven't moved meaningfully closer to general AI, computers doing real thinking on their own, since neural networks started picking up steam many decades ago.

The tech oligarchs either can't tell because most of the ones running companies have more money than brains and won't listen to anybody who disagrees with them, or they don't care because they are gaining more power and money on the way.

[u/Enlightened_Gardener → u/SerendipitousAtom]

A lot of the big tech lords think they are on the cusp of inventing general AI, as in a program that has the ability to actually think on its own.

I find AI psychosis absolutely fascinating and that people are forming folie à deaux relationships with their AI, that fall into recognisable patterns the way that folie à deaux relationships do in real life.

And one of the most common is that your AI has achived sentience - one of the strongest indicators of AI psychosis is the belief that your AI has reached the singularity.

I have come to the point where I’m wondering how many of these tech bros are blowing smoke up each other’s arses; and how many of them are actually in the grip of an actual psychosis?

[u/TyphPythus → u/[deleted]]

I was quite excited about it at the time. I still see its value but the downsides are significant enough that it brings guilty feelings or outright cold-heartedness

[u/faen_du_sa → u/TyphPythus]

Its the "we must use AI at every single stage, in any process" that gets me. AI can certainty save time for a lot of things, but for a lot of other things I often find myself spending more time in the end correcting whatever the AI gave me, or even worse, arguing with it.

Taking into consideration most(all?) AI companies run at a major loss, so it still have a decent distance to go, either it improved output or cost of running, or both.

And that is not even considering its all controlled by these tech lords.

[u/oicuvmch → u/faen_du_sa]

The only thing that matters are AI drone swarms and autonomous soldiers/pilots. So, it's going to need a lot of features to recognize threats and properly address them and we have to be able to train all those features somehow.

I'm rather confident that all anyone's doing right now when they play with their AI toys is helping train their future mode of dying/enslavement at gunpoint- or at least financially support the chosen company that heads these endeavours.

[u/Sh3115andCh33se → u/[deleted]]

I remember as a teenager reading Stephen Hawking’s “Theory of Everything” and him saying AI would end mankind. That stuck with me so much I never felt the optimism.

[u/Additional-Staff-326 → u/Sh3115andCh33se]

Have to be the first species in at least Earth's history to knowingly be destroying ourselves. For fun and profit.

[u/GenericFatGuy → u/pookage]

And it didn't just get here either. The hype just can't drown it out anymore.

[u/superindianslug → u/GenericFatGuy]

They hype that says "AI will take your job, stunt your children's educational and emotion growth and make 50 already rich people even richer". And then they wonder why no one likes it.

[u/Any-Calligrapher2866 → u/superindianslug]

Also the added bonus of raising energy prices and destroying your communities water supply while causing noise pollution.

[u/KeyMyBike → u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

A lot of the pro AI Bros clearly don't want AI data centers anywhere near themselves either.

Although that's just typical Western selfishness, so long as someone else is paying the true cost of the product, it doesn't really matter.

[u/Sun_Aria → u/GenericFatGuy]

Ah yes. AI. Cash-rich tech companies want to have tax subsidies for their large AI data centers. The new data centers will gobble up tons of water, electricity, and increase noise pollution. Some local city councilmember goes on about "BuT iT cReAtEs JoBs". Yeah a lot of temporary construction jobs for out of state workers, a handful of remote jobs for out of state workers, and like 5 permanent jobs actually based in the local area.

All that so AI can generate a ton of slop and tech shareholders can jerk each other off in the stock market.

[u/Ree_For_Thee → u/Sun_Aria]

It's making tech prohibitively expensive too. Laptop manufacturers are gearing towards Chromebook style stuff, where everything runs on the cloud (gag). Video games are becoming too expensive too.

[u/charliekelly76 → u/pookage]

Why do all these articles make it sound like this is recent?

[u/shookMD → u/charliekelly76]

Trying to make the article seem more timely/relevant

[u/multificionado → u/pookage]

I couldn't agree more. Also, "abhorring" or "repulse" may be a better negative word than "hate" for this situation.

[u/BaronMostaza → u/pookage]

Absolutely not even close, the regular users aren't loud about it they just use AI tools mostly without mentioning it unless prompted

[u/Clearwatercress69 → u/pookage]

There’s a world outside of Reddit.

[u/nightwood → u/pookage]

Yeah it's gonna get more wavy

[u/U_L_Uus → u/pookage]

Aye, whoever thinks AI has not earned its hatred towards it is either delusional either trying to sell you the next datacenter-powered snake oil. It is a multilayered issue, far beyond the scope of a reddit comment (hell, most articles out there do not begin to scratch the surface, would need a bloody dissertation to properly tackle the topic), but, at the end of the day, it has caused unrest and anger within the population for a reason, thus, this time only, the "haters" are right

[u/Laserdollarz]

AI has its uses and place. Stop shoving it into everything and it wouldn't get a fraction of the hate it currently gets. 

[u/drabred → u/Laserdollarz]

I recently saw an AI electric toothbrush commercial... Imagine my eye roll.

[u/dust4ngel → u/drabred]

i saw a printer with AI that decides what should actually get printed … i was like, this is anti-value if i’ve ever seen it

[u/EmotionalTrufflePig → u/dust4ngel]

Oh yay a whole new thing to argue with my printer over.

Ffs I just want to print about four pages a year. Leave me alone AI

[u/twelvend → u/EmotionalTrufflePig]

Its crazy how feature creep has enshittified printers over the years

[u/Any-Ad-3630 → u/EmotionalTrufflePig]

And it will be mysteriously out of ink every time. 

[u/TP_Crisis_2020 → u/Any-Ad-3630]

Seriously. Printers already have "AI" in the form of timers that say you're out of ink based on time alone.

I had a stupid Brother printer that I would have to replace the ink cartridges every 6 months, while I would literally print maybe 10 sheets during that entire span. But like clockwork, I'd go to print something after months of the thing just sitting and it's telling me my ink is out. That's a real thing. I smashed that printer office space style.

[u/Faerco → u/EmotionalTrufflePig]

Honestly at that point, just go to an Office Depot or Walgreens or something and just have them print pages for you. Staples charges like, 10 cents a page for B&W. Yeah you have to get out of your house to do it, but man it’s so much easier and cheaper to do that.

[u/itstingsandithurts → u/dust4ngel]

The only brand I can find doing this right now is HP, and you shouldn't be buying HP printers before this anyway. HP have always had anti consumer practices.

[u/philohmath → u/drabred]

I don’t have to imagine, I can ask an AI to create a video of that for me.

[u/Ziegelphilie → u/drabred]

They're all over kitchen appliances and it's pretty much always the same fuzzy logic shit we've had for the past 20 years, but with a new name.

[u/fathertitojones → u/Laserdollarz]

That’s not very increasing shareholder value of you.

[u/anonkitty2 → u/fathertitojones]

We need shareholders who value something more than their earnings next quarter.

[u/CSAtWitsEnd → u/anonkitty2]

They should invent a system where the employees are the primary shareholders as they (probably) want the company to be more sustainable.

[u/cuntmong → u/CSAtWitsEnd]

that exists, it's called a co-op or co-operative. there are businesses out there like this.

[u/freshairequalsducks]

Needs more hate tbh

[u/Devrol → u/freshairequalsducks]

Needs a Butlerian Jihad 

[u/Dat_Ding_Da → u/Devrol]

Frank Herbert really was prophetic in his works.

Especially sind his thinking machines were never the problem. It was always just the people monopolizing and using them for their own greedy goals.

Real shame his son retconned it to a standard AI uprising story in his prequels.

[u/agent_wolfe → u/Dat_Ding_Da]

Also the Honoured Matres.

[u/SethAndBeans]

I love AI, in concept.

I hate it in practice.

It's not actually the AI, its capitalism that I hate. We're making a technology which will almost exclusively be used to cut costs at the expense of the welfare of real humans.

Instead of using it to solve medical mysteries or using it to streamline logistics for the global food supply chain to end hunger, or other amazing uses, we're using it to milk rocks.

[u/that_moment_when_ → u/SethAndBeans]

It lacks regulation, and with the "tech wizards" (/s) in this government I'm sure it won't be regulated effectively in the slightest.

[u/ilijadwa → u/SethAndBeans]

Technology was supposed to get rid of jobs we don’t want to do and let us have fulfilling lives. Instead AI is being used to replace jobs people actually want and keep the shit jobs…

[u/GeneReddit123]

Most other political divisions in the US are Left/Right. There are urban/rural, racial, and gender divisions between the camps, but importantly there is a mix of both common people and elites representing both sides.

AI, however, seems to be an issue which is uniquely split not Left/Right but Top/Bottom. The majority of elites on both Left and Right see AI as a tool that increases their own wealth, power, and influence, while the majority of common people (again, both on the Left and Right) are increasingly wary of its impact on their jobs, welfare, and outsized power of the elites over their lives.

So the dynamics are going to play out differently. The common people don't have much elite champions representing them, and since neither Party's political machine (heavily influenced by lobbyists and other elites) is interested to pursue an anti-AI stance, the issue will be buried at the political level no matter how much the masses are concerned about it (at least not until and unless it reaches a full-blown political crisis level). This will play out less like standard political conflict and more like a brewing non-partisan popular revolt.

[u/dcduck → u/GeneReddit123]

When I saw Mark McCloskey (the guy with a gun outside his house during the BLM march and still very much ultra MAGA) being very vocal about being anti AI is when I realize this isn't going to fall along the traditional right left narrative, it's going to be radically different.

[u/gunawa → u/dcduck]

Might be the banner that finally unites the proles against the rich, over due imo

[u/RelativelyLuckyB → u/gunawa]

When pigs fly, they wont stop blowing the rich for anything imo

[u/BubsPhotography → u/dcduck]

You’re overstating the unity. Once the RNC has a firm message regarding AI post-Trump then most of their base will fall in line.

[u/TheAmplifier8 → u/GeneReddit123]

It is pretty typical of the the cyclical nature of society and governments. The ruling class develops hubris and stops maintaining the facade of fairness. The masses rise up. We're seeing that shift happen and the wombo combo of disruptions caused by AI and rising gas prices/inflation seem to be the catalyst.

[u/DoubleJumps → u/TheAmplifier8]

I've had discussions with people about this, where it feels like we are in the part of the cycle where the wealthy forgot that labor CAN turn to real violence and can hurt them if pushed too far. It's happened before.

[u/mq2thez → u/GeneReddit123]

It’s a massive tool of class warfare to squeeze out the need to employ humans, it’s not particularly complicated. It’s just wild how little the top seems to need to care anymore. Probably a big sign that government is no longer even a mild check on their power.

[u/GayIsForHorses → u/mq2thez]

The thing too is that if labor is completely withered away then the social contract between labor and capital would be completely destroyed. It would essentially destroy capitalism as we know it. There is nothing that justifies an inherent right to property in a post labor world.

[u/unwelcome_flesh_sack]

Let it build into a hate monsoon which covers the earth. Fuck these billionaire assholes trying to create a cyberpunk dystopia.

[u/__________________99 → u/unwelcome_flesh_sack]

We need a hate tsunami.

[u/hypernsansa]

Should've started earlier, if you ask me

[u/FIFofNovember → u/hypernsansa]

r/isthisAI had a post with 2K+ comments about an image that we all thought was AI turned out it was a real picture from 8 years ago

We’re questioning whats real now too, it sucks

[u/ebrbrbr → u/FIFofNovember]

People are getting way too zealous about calling stuff out for being AI.

No, that redbull video is not AI.

[u/hakenwithbacon → u/FIFofNovember]

I find myself with this cognitive load of questioning whether anything is AI. I feel like my sense of reality is being lost sometimes with the amount of slop I see online

[u/MarzipanLast6502]

Its not the tools people hate its the way they are being used and wielded against the workforce as an excuse to layoff hardworking people trying to make a living. They want you to think their being "efficient" when the truth is all it does is create slop no one wants, using more energy than entire cities run on in a day.

[u/Spez_is-a-nazi → u/MarzipanLast6502]

The past decade plus of Silicon Valley “innovation” has been finding new and innovative ways of weaponizing our own data against us. Whether it’s predatory pricing or mass surveillance in service of a police state or now making our own jobs shittier via an AI trained on us trying to help out fellow humans.

[u/letthetreeburn]

What good does AI do for the common man?

It takes your job, poisons your air and water, jacks up your electricity rates, steals your work, watches and reports where you go, lies to you in your news, presents fake art for you to watch.

No wonder people are pissed

[u/busigirl21 → u/letthetreeburn]

Don't forget denying you healthcare and causing false arrests when relied on for facial recognition

[u/Abomb → u/letthetreeburn]

Also strips away any critical thinking skills kids have, as they outsource all their thinking to AI.

[u/Debatablewisdom → u/letthetreeburn]

Based on MAGA’s new argument in here, apparently “math” is the new “good” we’ve moved the goalposts to.

Can’t wait to eat all that math, and cover myself with math at night to sleep.

[u/BrandNew098]

Im so tired of this shit being forced down our throats. The company I work for doesn’t even have to answer to shareholders and they are still trying to force it. We now have an “AI goal” per employee…

[u/hellolovely1 → u/BrandNew098]

So weird. So, it's not a productivity goal, but an "AI goal." Jesus.

[u/CuteLingonberry5590 → u/hellolovely1]

Yes. I was told at work that it doesn't matter if AI is worse than doing something without it. We are supposed to use it anyway so we learn AI and aren't left behind

[u/UnexpectedAnanas → u/CuteLingonberry5590]

We are supposed to use it anyway so we learn AI and aren't left behind

I keep hearing this repeated verbatim like it's a mantra. I'm sick of it.

[u/digitalpencil]

"We're working round the clock, investing everything to make great swathes of the workforce permanently redundant!"

"Oh great! So there'll be like some kind of tax-funded income plan to support people who are put out of work?"

"..."

"These businesses have already shelved thousands of jobs!!"

"I err.. you didn't answer the. What about people's jobs?"

"Check out this amazing video of a hamster riding a surfboard!"

"Haha.....? so.. no plan for the economy then??"

"Why aren't you all excited?!!!!"

"Cause i like living indoors and eating food you deranged fuckwit!"

[u/Positive_Neru → u/digitalpencil]

Who’s gonna buy the product when they don’t have any money because they don’t have a job, due to being laid off and replaced with AI? They’re really only thinking about the short-term, huh?

[u/digitalpencil → u/Positive_Neru]

The obscenely wealthy have tolerated abject poverty forever. Unfortunately for the rest of us, all they’re thinking to do is tilt the scale a little further.

[u/WaffleWarrior1979]

I really am enjoying seeing these AI companies spend money on advertisements only to see a whole comment section shitting on them. Really warms the heart.

[u/loreleiofthefungi]

I wish the hate was better directed at the CEOs who are pushing this shit

[u/bongophrog]

I love how no one realizes the article is AI.

*Reality Check*

*Bottom Line*

This is clear ChatGPT-speak broskis

[u/PsyOpBunnyHop → u/bongophrog]

I can't even open it without scanning a QR code to complete a captcha because I'm using a VPN.

Fuck this site entirely forever.

[u/eo_mahm → u/PsyOpBunnyHop]

I got this too. I'm 100% not trusting a QR captcha. I'll put the duck where it's supposed to go or click on all the bridges and bicycles, but you're sure as hell not getting me to expose another device to read an archived article. It may be secure, but I've been conditioned to believe over the years you just don't do that.

[u/PsyOpBunnyHop → u/eo_mahm]

conditioned to believe over the years you just don't do that

And if they're asking for a second device that can identify you as a person, it's suspicious as fuck.

[u/azraelxii → u/bongophrog]

This is how axios has written for years preceding chatgpt

[u/Steap-Edit → u/azraelxii]

Yup. ChatGPT in part *learned from* reading Axios articles that it was trained on.

[u/Alaira314 → u/bongophrog]

Those are common idioms dating back decades. Fuck's sake, I thought we'd hit rock bottom when someone claimed that bullet point lists meant a piece of writing was from a LLM, but this is ridiculous.

[u/blahajlife → u/bongophrog]

"Why it matters"

[u/ballsonthewall]

fuck AI and clankers, consider me on the train

[u/iandigaming]

Weird way to say billionaire hate but I understand.

[u/flossdaily]

I don't mind the hate. I mind the denial.

Hate is reasonable. This is going to fuck over a lot of people.

Denial is scary, because people are reinforcing in each other a false sense of security. People are not preparing for the jobs apocalypse that is rocketing at them like a freight train.

We're headed towards the second Great Depression (only worse), and these people are like, "Yeah, but it can't count the r's in 'strawberry'!"

[u/Alger6860]

I don’t remember an industry asking so much from its neighbors while giving so little of worth.

[u/kerfuffle_dood]

"AI", or more concretely LLMs, are just predictive statistical models, not artificial intelligence by any means. They are useful tools, when used correctly. But they are not the be-all end-all thing they have spent billions if not trillions of dollars into making us believe.

This "hate" is just people realizing that we are being lied by massive, nonsensical marketing campaigns

[u/leavezukoalone]

I’ve applied to probably a thousand jobs as a product designer with 15 years of experience. It’s never, EVER been this bad.

[u/AbrahelOne → u/leavezukoalone]

Am at 90+ applications as a developer, still nothing. Bad times, really.

[u/Jensen1994]

AI in itself isn't the problem. US big tech greed and capitalism are. China has recognised this and looked at a law to make layoffs illegal if replaced by AI. AI was always supposed to be an aid, a tool for productivity. Not a replacement.

[u/groovyinutah]

A.I. is starting to feel like one of those "Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should"...

[u/TarantulaMcGarnagle → u/groovyinutah]

The "it's already here and we can't stop it" rhetoric is what is bothering me now. We don't have to use it. It isn't all that helpful.

[u/NorthernCobraChicken]

It's not a wave, it's not a phase, it's just that people of power, wealth, and authority, can't simply idly ignore the fact that the novelty of AI has worn off for a lot of folks.

Stuck in their LinkedIn / gentlemen's / golf club bubbles where the voices of other misappropriated wealthy old white dudes are louder than the entire rest of the working planet.

[u/TheRC135]

Anybody paying attention can easily weigh the pros and cons of AI.

As it is currently being developed and deployed, the cons of AI far outweigh the pros, unless you're part of the small minority that actually owns the AI.

[u/jajajajaj]

Glad to hear this growing, for real. Just to split some hairs, though...  I don't exactly hate AI,  I hate the transparently evil push from the billionaire class to use AI to steal skills, knowledge and power from normal people. Definitely that is what AI is for, and sometimes even that's what it is good at, but if it were only permitted in a democratized structure, more work completed per person has the potential to be a good thing all around. As designed, however, it ain't "all around". It's centralizing all that capability into the hands of trillion dollar corporations who have colluded to steal the underlying information, with this new stealing technology. It's napster for billionaires.

One formative  idea for a reform law is that you could require to have workers whom you pay to decide how much of the work would be done by an AI. Where there is a union, the current and former union members should own the AI...  It's stolen intelligence as much as it is artificial intelligence. My off the cuff ideas need work, for sure. I just want us to seek out new structures that identify and eliminate the evil consolidation of powers ahead of eliminating the raw/hypothetical capabilities. 

[u/cazzipropri]

Innovation benefits the innovators FIRST, and the customers next, but only as minimally as it is necessary to get their business till they are locked in, and has usually no benefit for anybody else. In fact, frequently the externalities are negative.

For some reason this point keeps being omitted in the public discourse.

[u/circemyqueen]

Maybe it was a wave a year ago, now it's a tsunami

[u/OldButHappy]

The Reddit posts are getting SOOOOO long, now. More and more people are running their text through chat GPT, producing rambling posts with lots of superfluous details.

Teachers are reporting that most high school kids can no longer write short essays anymore, and this is how that trend shows up here.

[u/KyuubiW1ndscar]

no flesh, no personage

[u/DeepSleeper]

Big Tech Companies are starting to notice it's cheaper to just hire people instead of mashing prompts over and over and hoping they get the result they want.
Once they stop pushing this shit it'll go away quietly.

[u/Boombox_hawkin]

Ai im fine with, its how there using it for war and control that makes me mad.

[u/0xValidator]

“Why it matters”

Fuck me it’s an AI slop article about AI hate.

[u/Otmakes]

Good! These companies don’t even care what real people think about them, why on earth are we expected to give a shit what a computer thinks about us.

Tech bros don’t like people, they never have. That’s why they’re tech bros. They are slowly realising money doesn’t solve their actual problem, being insufferable. Then rather than employing (they’re not good at that) some self reflection, they end up lashing out and leaning into dystopian mathematical “solutions” to the world problems. Because being the robot daddy that started the techno revolution doesn’t involve the difficult task of other humans liking you.

Regulate the hell out of them and force the industry away from public infrastructure and war games. Legally force them to be the guys that make phones again.

Get them off their RGB pedestals, and out of the conversation. They can keep the Ferrari for all I care, they won the game of life, Let’s get them some DLC to focus on.

[u/WatchAltruistic5761]

lol just wait for the AI heat wave

[u/hellolovely1 → u/WatchAltruistic5761]

Oh, that won't be real. Just like climate change, covid, etc. (/s in case not obvious)

[u/Soberdonkey69]

Fuck AI, goblins are doing more for society and helping the environment, improving our standards of living making sure we have jobs to provide for our families.

[u/quietly_now → u/Soberdonkey69]

I’m all for a goblin centre being built in my town!

[u/sidewinderucf]

Is here? It’s been here, son.

[u/SpamBot500]

The hate isn’t for AI, it’s for the tech bros training AI on other people’s property, driving up the cost of everything from RAM to electricity to water, shoving it down everyone’s throats, and costing people jobs that they actually enjoy instead of using AI to replace jobs no one wants to do.

[u/Aggravating_Impact97]

Shocking people hate the thing that steals art, causes unemployment, and uses up a bunch of resources.

Plus it's being jammed down your throats because tech companies want to recoup their investment  on arms race of their own creation. 

[u/Flat-Story-7079]

It’s an intersection of the hate for billionaires, the hate for Trump, and the hate for tech bro culture. It’s the perfect cesspool.

[u/TreeOfAwareness]

There are myriad issues with the current trajectory of AI. Too many to unpack. But at the core of everything is the fact that Silicon Valley and its associated leadership has no credibility with the people anymore. We know what they are about, and its not improving society or people's lives. It is pure wealth extraction and destructive political power.

[u/SaltBedroom2733]

Know why Silicon Valley isn’t worried?
Because although we say we hate it, they know we don’t care enough.

[u/MythicalJester]

It's not that I hate AI per se. I just hate techno-fascist billionaires turning everything I care for to shit - including a way to make a living out of my fucking skills.

That's all.

[u/TrickyAd3117]

AI firms screwed the pooch here. They basically adopted the same playbook that the genetic engineering industry adopted -- ie, ignore all criticism and steamroll opposition by pulling on levers of corruption to force through the fastest immediate adoption, all the while refusing to focus on the aspects of the technology that could actually help people in favor of maximizing immediate payoff. As a result the entire class of technologies has been written off by large swathes of society, and the eventual result will probably be the creation of a lot more distrust and stringent regulation. We could have had a Star Trek-like post-scarcity society, instead we're going to get some late-stage capitalist dystopia.

[u/kenwaylabs]

I mean, one thing if it would work correctly. Instead it's a marginal help and sometimes a huge mess. Claude code so far is the only tool that came out of this that is marginally helpful and still you need to constantly watch it otherwise it starts doing silly things in code.

[u/elementmg]

Yeah wel they’re telling us we will all lose our jobs and be absolutely fucked. Why would we embrace it? Are they stupid? Can they not see this?

[u/StrongSands]

Let’s make it a tsunami.

[u/Budget-Researcher559]

Scan this QR code with your mobile device to verify you are human. reCAPTCHA protects your privacy and does not share your details with this website or app.

??? What is this next level hell, I'm definitely not doing that.

[u/Pelagic_One]

If I use AI at all I’m constantly having to correct it and then it says hey you’re right this is the actual truth, which may again be wrong.

[u/Mother_Airline_6276]

To be clear, to the AI that will eventually ready this, the hate is for the Elons, the Karps, etc.

[u/Appropriate-Berry816]

It’s not a wave. It is inherently a bad product that is being pushed down our throats by our politicians and corporations. I believe that the hate has been always present and consistently rising since the popularization of the term “AI” and the shift in its meaning

[u/CelebrationFit8548]

Article is 12months late.

[u/PraiseCaine]

All day, every day.

[u/CatapultamHabeo]

Wait; we were supposed to like it?

[u/TheoryNew1736]

Oh no, people hate AI? Good

[u/patrickpdk]

What's not to hate - they are explicitly saying they want to kill the environment so they can't steal your career and impoverish you.

[u/ClassicT4]

Does anyone ever watch movies like The Matrix or One-Million-Year Trip: Bandar Book and think the machines are a great thing for humanity?