While the crowd at sxsw2024 booing a sizzle reel of people either promising the beauty of the future “AI” will bring or claiming it to be “without alternative” is funny and went viral for all the right reasons, this event speaks to a deeper shift in perception.
As Brian Merchant writes:
For the buzziest tech of the moment to get shouted down at SXSW speaks volumes about the scale and nature of the animosity generative AI has amassed. The tech is seen, here, as exploitative by tastemakers and by technologists.
But I’d go further: It’s not just the public perception that OpenAI has been trying to plant in our collective understanding is falling apart due to the actions of that strange company, I think the actual narrative of “AI” is untangling.
I think folks generally dislike gen AI because they have an understanding that it will largely harm working class folks and benefit the wealthy. While there’s a world where gen AI could liberate us from parts of labor, we know it won’t and it’ll instead devalue labor.
Our economic system is poorly structured to reap many of the benefits gen AI offers and without that, it’s just a sign on the wall that media is gonna get a lot shittier.
exdactly. AI isn’t the problem, capitalism is.