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Most Americans think AI won’t improve their lives, survey says (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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US experts who work in artificial intelligence fields seem to have a much rosier outlook on AI than the rest of us.

In a survey comparing views of a nationally representative sample (5,410) of the general public to a sample of 1,013 AI experts, the Pew Research Center found that "experts are far more positive and enthusiastic about AI than the public" and "far more likely than Americans overall to believe AI will have a very or somewhat positive impact on the United States over the next 20 years" (56 percent vs. 17 percent). And perhaps most glaringly, 76 percent of experts believe these technologies will benefit them personally rather than harm them (15 percent).

The public does not share this confidence. Only about 11 percent of the public says that "they are more excited than concerned about the increased use of AI in daily life." They're much more likely (51 percent) to say they're more concerned than excited, whereas only 15 percent of experts shared that pessimism. Unlike the majority of experts, just 24 percent of the public thinks AI will be good for them, whereas nearly half the public anticipates they will be personally harmed by AI.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 days ago (38 children)

It’s not really a matter of opinion at this point. What is available has little if any benefit to anyone who isn’t trying to justify rock bottom wages or sweeping layoffs. Most Americans, and most people on earth, stand to lose far more than they gain from LLMs.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I dont believe AI will ever be more than essentially a parlar trick that fools you into thinking it's intelligent when it's really just a more advanced tool like excel compared to pen and paper or an abacus.

The real threat will be people who fool themselves into thinking it's more than that and that it's word is law, like a diety. Or worse, the people that do understand that but like various religious and political leaders that used religion to manipulate people, the new AI Pope's will try and do the same manipulation but with AI.

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[–] ininewcrow 48 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This is like asking tobacco farmers what their thoughts are on smoking.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

More like asking the slaves about productivity advances in slavery. "Nothing good will come of this".

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Depends on what we mean by "AI".

Machine learning? It's already had a huge effect, drug discovery alone is transformative.

LLMs and the like? Yeah I'm not sure how positive these are. I don't think they've actually been all that impactful so far.

Once we have true machine intelligence, then we have the potential for great improvements in daily life and society, but that entirely depends on how it will be used.

It could be a bridge to post-scarcity, but under capitalism it's much more likely it will erode the working class further and exacerbate inequality.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I use it at work side-by-side with searches for debugging app issues.

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