Otherwise people should think ahead.

The vast majority of people are thinking ahead when they get a loan to get an education. The rest of your comment is telling people with problems “fuck you, got mine” and I’m done with it. Enjoy your block. Enjoy your blessings and enjoy being hateful to people who had different luck in life, I’m sure abandoning human decency will really help in everything you do.

You do NOT get a choice about getting an education in a vast, vast majority of life paths in the developed world.

I know a lot of people and exactly two of them are working in the field they got degrees in. You cannot always control the direction of your life, anything from medical issues to family emergencies to economics in your region can profoundly impact your chances of landing a career in your chosen study field, or even just getting a simple job that can pay back tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars as the interest snowballs.

Free education will make the world a better place in the future for everyone.

This is true.

Debt forgiveness is just for people who don’t want to pay their bills because they studied something that doesn’t pay.

This is utter garbage. Judgemental much? Maybe your own experiences and feelings aren’t the same for everyone.

I know people who have fully embraced that they will never be able to pay off their student loans and are just letting them default. It’s often easier to get out of wage garnishment and wrecked credit than it is trying to pay back tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So yeah, the government paying off its own loans is just kicking the can down the road. Accelerating a process that’s already happening.

In my time managing a team of about a dozen WFH employees, I had 10 of the 12 overworking every damn week. They were putting in time off-the-clock just because they were sitting at their desk without anyone coming in to shut off the lights and because they were comfortable at home. In the four years or so that I did that job, I had more problems with people overworking themselves than slacking off.

There were a couple times employees were obviously doing the bare minimum and playing video games. Since I managed in-person teams as well in the past, I know that this is normal, there will always be some percentage of employees that cannot stand working and try to do anything to avoid it. This happens WFH as well as in offices, but when it’s WFH the company managers and owners don’t have visibility on it, and thus feel not in control, and that’s the very worst feeling for most of these folks who run companies.

I’m trying to make things easier for my own FBI agent, we’ve been through a lot together.

Let’s just choose our words carefully for now or the people with the money will get spooked and pay the people with the missiles to start blowing things up.

Crush corporations, swiftly and without fanfare rebuild capitalism with worker co-ops, seize the means of production without all that stagnation and failure that usually follows.

We should leave AI to the realm of producing fringe/impossible porn, like it was meant for and like what everyone actually wants from it. All this “search engine” stuff is just cover like when you buy some non-lube products like groceries along with the tube of astroglide at 1:00 AM.

Yah I’m so happy every major internet and tech company is deciding to deliberately power every system we use with random word salad generators, there’s no chance will cause any problems.

When someone is disappointed in something, the very worst way you can make progress in changing that person’s mind is flatly telling them they’re wrong.

You didn’t change anything with your reaction here, I still live in the world with useless, annoying AI. Like most people. I won’t now look at it and think “Hmn I should reconsider how I feel” As I try to refine my search results so it doesn’t feed me complete garbage.

I’m absolutely sure it’s helping some people in specific instances, but we’re not at the point yet where it’s helping people broadly, so I fucking DARE you to say any of this in a larger community where average people with non-coding jobs have to sift through AI bullshit all day.

I know it’s going to help in the future with a lot of things, but it’s also going to get worse before it gets better, and I’m not some lone voice, so you have to get over yourself here, you’re not anywhere close to the majority of opinion here, even on the tech/singularity/cult forums there are plenty of people fed up with the current state of marketing and AI being shoved into everything. I stand by every last thing I said here. People in your position are deliberately not reading the negative things people feel about this tech in it’s current state, but there are a LOT of people who share this feeling.

And you know what? You should embrace it.

Because if people didn’t voice their discontent, it won’t get better. The whinging pushback against criticism just boggles me, like people are so caught up in the cult that they can’t see it as another product that has to be refined and shaped before people can use it and enjoy it in any capacity.

Several top links from “How do people feel about AI”

https://www.tomorrowsworldtoday.com/artificial-intelligence/85-of-people-dont-like-ai-but-its-coming-anyway/

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/artificial-intelligence-consumer-sentiment/

https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2023/10/consumers-are-voicing-concerns-about-ai

https://hbr.org/2024/05/ais-trust-problem

And of course, THIS VERY ARTICLE: https://futurism.com/the-byte/study-consumers-turned-off-products-ai

I have rolled back, uninstalled, opted-out, or ripped apart every AI that every company is trying to shove down our throats. I wish I could do the same for search engines, but who uses the internet broadly anymore anyway.

I am impressed by the tech, I think it’s amazing, but it’s still utterly useless.

I have never, ever needed to interrupt my day’s schedule to generate a convincing picture of Luke Skywalker fighting Batman while riding dinosaurs, I have never needed to have a text conversation with someone who seems “almost human,” I mean, christ that already describes half the people I know and wish were more normal. I have never needed an article summarized badly, I enjoy reading things, I enjoy writing emails, so I can’t figure out why they would make tools to take away the small pleasures we have. What exactly are they thinking?

Yesterday I gave it one more chance, asked one of the apps, I forget which, what tomorrow’s weather will be like, the thing forecasted a hurricane coming right for me, a news event from last year. I’m so over AI, please someone notify me when it’s really useful and can take over the menial, tedious tasks like managing my online accounts and offering financial advice or can actually help me find a job opening in my field.

All these things have been promised, and seem more out of reach than ever.

The MOST impressive thing I’ve seen AI do is make really, really convincing furry porn babes. The things are good at mixing features in images. Sometimes.

Would you play this? I would not.

Not only will people play it, they will play it in droves because at the end of the day, people are fluid, and fluid flows in predictable patterns.

You and I may be offended at the very idea of playing a game surrounded by fake people acting real, but for the average kid growing up in a world where reality is already a tenuous concept online, it will just be another strange experience in a growing list, and it might be really fun because of the things a game can do with complete control over the population of the “MMO.”

Would you upload your personal data and voice to Open AI for it to make a a birthday wishes call to your mom?

Not in a million years. The next generation will though, they won’t see any issue with it.

Unless something radically falls apart and makes people spurn electronic media entirely, some great Butlerian Jihad of the 21st century, we are going to see things get a LOT worse before they get better.

Good, for once people are deciding to limit outrage and not continue to distribute and share things that are false. If we did this with every piece of bullshit outrage bait or weird rumor or conspiracy theory we would reduce some of the worst movements and viral trends we all hate.

Do you think people become more conservative with age or is it society becoming more progressive and leaving them behind?

I am getting up there in years and seeing this play out over and over.

I think every generation wants to be more progressive than the last, but we tend to carry baggage of fear and insecurity through the generations. Or more specifically, older people tend to gain the political and monetary capital needed to affect policy and shape our societal outlook and attitude. They will always be more conservative than the younger generation who will want more freedoms and personal rights, inherently, and as the ruling class will clash with newer sensibilities, over and over.

What we’re asking here, is the conservatism reflected in our elders and leadership now broadly more harmful or helpful? Are we out of the touch or is it the kids who are wrong?

I think it’s a mix but mostly it’s not our real problem. Our real problem is that no matter what our age, we have greatly misunderstood how our own existence works. Most people have been taught that they have brains designed to exercise logic and reason and that brains are the best thing ever if you use them and make them smart.

No, our brains are not logical tools. We are not a rational species. There was no “age of enlightenment.” It’s all a hoax. Our brains are tools designed to write a story to explain how you feel. And that’s it. It doesn’t even have to make sense. When we all learn how our brains actually work we will collectively make better decisions, have more compassion for each other, and likely sink into even deeper despair as we all start to realize we have no free will.

We should all be learning that we’re all children. Some of us, over time, gain a lot more baggage and issues, but that shit just layers right on top of the “child” parts so we’re all just basically children with complex problems.

The brain doesn’t “prune” itself. The brain you had when you were 12, you have that same damn brain. It doesn’t change. Stuff just gets added to it.

Almost anyone with an irrational political stance betrays their youth.

Political ideology has always captivated the passions of youth, but isn’t successfully implemented or even internalized except by people with age and experience and emotional regulation.

Bears can be trained to drive cars and communicate through various means, it’s thought they may be as smart as great apes like gorillas. This is why they were a choice circus animal for a long time.

Yes, this should be terrifying information.

I mean, everyone has been crying and whinging for years, decades even, that the USA needs to ramp up semiconductor fabrication in case shit goes south in Taiwan. We are finally getting some domestic production power and we’re getting outraged by the traffic delays? America will sink itself because of our people’s own addiction to comfort and complaining about any slight to that comfort.

I don’t think any of this is even real to them. The same way that a majority of the white-nationalist 4-channers are just roleplaying and losing themselves in the storylines, as a species we tend to do that, we just get lost in a narrative because it explains how we feel.

The tankies are doing the same exact thing. They’re not impacting policy, they’re not marching for anything, they’re not taken seriously and it’s just another in-club that has its own language and imagery and secret handshakes and a unifying message to rally behind (America bad!) and instead of turning that criticism into actionable plans for changing representation and making anything better, they put on WW2 Russian Tanker helmets and have erotic fantasies about a communist uprising that will never happen.