A New Survey Shows Consumers Are Not That Freaked Out By Tech (fastcompany.com) 52
Lippincott, a global creative consultancy, asked 2,000 "leading edge" consumers in the U.S. whether they were excited to welcome our robot overlords or terrified of them. A report on FastCompany adds: Some of their findings go against conventional wisdom, like the belief that consumers are scared about the future. Turns out 80 percent said they are excited about changes in technology. Some 78 percent feel more powerful and in control of their lives thanks to the support from smart machines, artificial intelligence, and robotics. There is some anxiety about the incursion of tech into our lives, with over 40 percent reporting that they are scared about changes to the economy, society, culture, and the government. Despite that, 64 percent of them still expect that the world will be better in 10 years than it is today.
Slashdot users are more terrified than anyone (Score:1)
For a supposed bunch of tech enthusiasts, I see the most technophobia on this site. It's really quite pathetic. The government and advertisers aren't out to get you. You people are batshit crazy.
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I don't know about slashdot users, but the main people I hear being afraid of AI are CEOs.
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I'm not afraid of AI - I'm afraid of the humans controlling AI, and the H1-B workers putting bugs in them.
And for the GP troll, I think slashdotters are more worried about many technologies because they understand them, and how they can be abused. Some of us were part of creating such technologies, and know all the pitfalls. While the average man in the street doesn't know the details, and was surprised when batteries blew up or toys were subverted to creep on children.
Re: Slashdot users are more terrified than anyone (Score:2)
It's not the tech itself that poses a problem, it the people ("What a bunch of bastards.)
Tech is a force multiplier. It allows good people to do more good, and allows evil people to do more evil.
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For a supposed bunch of tech enthusiasts, I see the most technophobia on this site. It's really quite pathetic.
Every day that goes by, I see another company locking us out of our products for our own protection, and taking them away from us by force whenever they want.
The electronic equivalent of book burning most definitely scares me. The only thing that's pathetic is that most technophiles I've come across never studied history and just don't give a damn.
At least it's a change (Score:2)
"It's 1984" is the new "Oh well" (Score:1)
Re: "It's 1984" is the new "Oh well" (Score:1)
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Now if they would only figure out what Ingsoc stood for.
Hype (Score:1)
Wait...you mean all of the tabloid headlines are making this seem more horrible than it actually is? Could never have guessed that...
The ALGORITHMS...them algorithms are coming to get us!
Easier to be happy when you don't understand (Score:4, Interesting)
Layers [Re:Easier to be happy when you don't un (Score:4, Insightful)
Same with us in IT. Over time there's more layers. Just the other day someone was helping me diagnose app performance problems on a given server. She discovered a problem in the virtual-server-to-physical-server translation layer, related to the file system.
She was slinging server virtualization terms that were new to me. There's a new layer on the block and I know diddly squat about the details.
And we have to rely ever more on JavaScript libraries to get the eye-candy UI's executives want to see in web pages, including "responsive" for diff device sizes. I'd like to dig into how those libraries work, but I got too many other projects; so I have to blindly trust those libraries.
I was just reading about nostalgia for the Commodore-64 days among techies where one had almost full control of applications from machine-language and each pixel in the UI. I can see that other techies are also a bit unnerved by "layer-ification".
More turtles will hop on the stack, get used to it. Most of us IT mortals can only master a handful of turtles. Eventually even the Sheldon-memory-level techies won't be able to keep up on all IT turtles.
2,000 "leading edge" consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S. Dewey didn't beat Truman, even if the survey said he did.
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100% of doctors surveyed* believe vaccines cause autism
*Survey sample drawn from names suggested by Jenny McCartney.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics (Score:1)
Lippincott, a global creative consultancy, asked 2,000 "leading edge" consumers in the U.S. whether they were excited to welcome our robot overlords or terrified of them.
Well no shit. If you ask a bunch of people who already into a thing, if they are into a thing, it's a no brainer that your results will say that people are into that thing.
In other news, a survey which asked 2,000 gay men if they like sex with other men, showed that men like sex with other men.
asking the wrong people. (Score:2)
Ask some folks that are long haul truckers if they are scared of new technologies. Ask racists grandmas if they are scared of new technologies. Hell, just ask people that aren't subscribers to a technology magazine if they are scared of new technologies!
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Question: (Score:2)
Not freaked out, but.... (Score:2)
The masses still can configure or use anything because they do not bother with learning or even reading the manual.
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Society is not ready (Score:2)
Automation taking enough jobs to destabilize society is a real possibility. It can be a good thing when machines do most the grunt work.
However, if the wealth generated by machines is not sufficiently distributed, there will be major unrest. And idle people tend to get into trouble.
There may be plenty of work in monitoring machines, people with problems, politicians, etc., but our society is not set up to allocate resources to such tasks.
I don't know if the solution is "socialism" and make-work projects, o
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When we're finally forced to give up the fantasy of wealth redistribution through employment we'll have to come up with a better system. That will probably involve some nastiness. But we'll be the better for it.
It's not really new territory, we've been through it before. It's just that this time the usual solution, make-work, is probably going to be so obviously ridiculous nobody will buy it.
Wrong demo (Score:2)
I'm pretty certain that the "leading edge consumers" aren't the ones who have the most to fear from/fear of robots.
in order to enhance your user experience (Score:1)
We can expect a steady drip of articles such as this, intended to marginalize anyone who does not utterly embrace the technology that surrenders the intimate details of our lives. We're not supposed to care that this data is traded without our control, having ceded it to corporations only interested in maximizing profit. The curated walled gardens that congealed in the ashes of the free and open internet will boldly proclaim such news as trending, making sure as many people as possible realize that they rea
Bias (Score:2)