I just got back from Thanksgiving holiday with my family. Grade schools kids all the way up to great grandparents up to 81 years old. Engineers, active military, a nurse, high schoolers, two in college. Both coasts represented and Texas. Republicans, Democrats, and in-between. The one and only thing every single person had in common was an utter hatred of AI. And it wasn’t for a lack of understanding of how it will be used.
There are so many more reasons to hate AI than just “it is taking my job”. But even if we’re just sticking to that, some people don’t like that it will replace their co workers, neighbors or family members job.
1. The absolute explosion of AI usage (revealed preferences)
2. The polling on AI, which is mixed and reveals lots of pessimism and fear among a slight majority of Americans, but hardly universal “utter hatred”.
My guess is some combo of: your family is not representative, the hatred was not as universal as it appeared (bandwagon effect), or your own hatred of AI caused you to focus on the like-minded opinions shared and ignore any contrary evidence.
What polls are you referring to? We did a non-anonymous poll at work which went something like “has using AI tool X made you more productive”, and the results were something like 50/50. If you asked my thanksgiving holiday crowd something like that you might get mixed results. If you asked them is AI an agent of good, do you trust what is happening with AI it would all be negative. People don’t like it.
That is not anywhere near 50/50 and is your leading example. A charitable summary of the survey is, when pressed, in some areas, people can think of some potential benefits. Why are you skeptical a group of 15 people would all dislike AI? People’s perceptions are based on how it is being employed in the current moment, and they don’t like it, and don’t trust it, which is the attitude included in the /first/ bullet item of the survey you linked: “ Americans are much more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life, with a majority saying they want more control over how AI is used in their lives.”
One of the main points is literally “50% of Americans are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life”. The rest are a mix of either more excited than concerned, or equally excited and concerned. Which again, very different from your story.
This discussion is already way beyond fruitful, was just curious because your anecdote doesn’t match the actual data I’ve seen, and thus far you haven’t actually answered my question, so I’m going to move on.
I'm not really sure what your question is or was. You've just stated your skepticism that my family is negative on AI, which is weird, I was there and you were not. Maybe you are looking at the wrong surveys, or maybe you are conflating people's willingness to use AI with actually being positive and optimistic about it. Example: people use health insurance but you will not find very many that are happy to do it. You will find in the following surveys (and YOURS) that a very small percentage of people are positive about AI the rest actively dislike or at best tolerate it.
