Why are people fretting over AI?
It was already bad. Computers. Bad. When I hear people complain about AI I have to wonder, did they like computers before AI? Or is this the last straw of a gradual disillusionment?
When I started down this path, I was already cynical. I did it because I needed a good paying job, not because I thought it was magical to see green digits on a little screen. The people that were already doing it, that I knew, had some utopian attitudes. When the internet appeared, it was the one they were all waiting for. Open Source was a new politics and religion. It was actually strange to see such enthusiasm because the Silicon Valley I knew was very 9 to 5, reasonable, sciency and boring. They did not talk about their jobs partly because it was boring and partly because they worked for defense contractors. Apple was a big part of this new Silicon Valley where nerds were becoming celebrities. But it wasn't the only flavor. I think Google was the beginning of the end. After the .com bubble burst, caused in my opinion by vaporware that never full materialized because the makers were too busy raving, Google stepped up and gathered the last functioning believers under the banner of Do No Evil and creating an atmosphere of engineering freedom. Where salespeople weren't invited to the good parties. They released free (as in beer) stuff, while talking free (as in freedom). And then came the phones.
I remember a conversation I had in the beginning where I was being a hater as usual and someone saying no, I was wrong, it wasn't about counting money or making weapons, it was about communication because humans find each other infinitely interesting. I didn't get it for a long time until social media and smart phones wrapped human interaction in a blanket of tech.
I guess people were fine with that level of hell. It's the next level down they are afraid of.