versionc@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I used to enjoy AI a lot, and I still think the technology is really cool, but lately I’m beginning to despise it. It spreads and nestles itself into every corner of our life, and it rots whatever it touches, be it the humans that rely on it or the projects in which it’s used. I see so many open source projects that are tainted with it, it’s almost impossible to avoid it. It’s sad. The generations that will grow up with AI will be fucked.
iglou@programming.dev 20 hours ago
Eh. That’s something every single generation before us in at least the past 150 years has been saying about other new society-changing stuff. They’ll be fine, society just changes.
Generations that will grow up with social media will be fucked. Generations that will grow up with internet will be fucked. Generations that will grow up with video games will be fucked. Generations that will grow up with computers will be fucked. Generations that will grow up with morning-after pills will be fucked. … …
Gestrid@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
And at least the first two were right.
Social media without limit has caused a whole slew of issues that are still being studied. And, while the early days of the internet were great, ever since at least the late 2010s, it’s been largely downhill.
wolfeh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 hour ago
I mean…
MyRobotShitsBolts@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Looks around at how fucked the world is Maybe they were right?
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Probably more like, generations growing up with unchecked capitalism will be slowly fucked over time to the point where you won’t recognise life in several generations.
partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
What about Cambridge Analytica, the mental health impacts, the addiction, … we’re still learning the social impact of social media — especially capitalistic social media. To pretend we aren’t is just plain ignorant, no? You can’t say people are fine when you don’t even know how they’ve been affected.
iglou@programming.dev 13 hours ago
I’m not saying everything is lovely and we are at the peak of civilization. I’m saying that every form of progress comes with challenges and downsides, and this saying of “Next generation will be fucked” is a cognitive bias every generation has had for a pretty long time.
They also have positive sides.
I don’t know if I expressed myself that poorly (I was pretty tired after all), but I did not mean at all that there are no downsides to any of these. I meant that despite these sayings, every generation so far has ended up as fine as the previous ones.
partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 18 hours ago
Yeah, sorry but I have to disagree with you pretty hard there. Generations that grew up with social media, internet, video games, … they are fucked. We’ve been watching the fuckening for a long time now. Saying that they haven’t been fucked is reminiscent of my grandparents saying ADHD and Anxiety aren’t real.
iglou@programming.dev 13 hours ago
Are they really more fucked than generations who didn’t have access to social media, internet, and video games? It seems to me that you are biased by the negative effects these had, and ignoring the positive ones.
How is that in any way comparable? I’m not saying the downsides of social media, internet, video games are not real, I’m saying “People growing up with X will be fucked” is a saying that every generation has been saying, ignoring the positive impacts. This is a cognitive bias in the likes of the rosy retrospection.
partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
I don’t think so. First off, all the examples mentioned were computers, social media, video games, … these are all still pretty darn novel in the grand scheme of things. We still don’t know what happens to a society that doesn’t need to contend with boredom because they have algorithmically optimized content feeds jacking up their prefrontal cortex at all times of day and night. We still don’t understand the full extent to which walled garden social media ecosystems can influence politics and cultural bias, detriment democratic processes, or empower individuals. We still aren’t taking privacy seriously as a society, having relied for hundreds of years on the fact that complete and total surveillance systems is infeasible for a government. It’s far too early to say whether anyone is or isn’t fucked by any of this, which is why I draw comparisons to grandmama saying “back in my day, the boy was just excited. He didn’t have ‘ADHD.’ He was fine.” It’s about ignorance when new information comes to light.
We have a lot of reason to believe there is some serious consequences to technology that unfortunately isn’t obvious from the get go. More unfortunately, we have a culture of not caring. Innovation first, policy second, right? Except that only works while policy can still catch up. We’ve been slow walking into a situation where, yeah, one of these generations is definitely getting fucked. Probably, though, it’s each generation getting a little more fucked as we continue having them.
I’m not ignoring the benefits. The benefits are part of how we justify not impeding the innovation process — it’s literally part of the problem. The root of the issue is that we ignore the consequences, pretend that’s just the way things are, and think in weird metaphors like “the market will self correct” and “the market is never wrong.”
If the future generations aren’t fucked, it’ll be because they solved the problems that were created here. It won’t be “they weren’t fucked because they were never fucked.” No, they were fucked. Hopefully they figure it out.
Reygle@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Funny you say that. In ways not everyone (obviously) doesn’t see, each generation was right about that.
iglou@programming.dev 13 hours ago
No. Each generation was fucked in their own way, regardless of the two edges of the progress that they grew up with.