Do not respond
I'm in a Slack with former coworkers and there's been a lot of negative talk about AI. Much of it is hyperbolic, unoriginal and uninformed. These are people I worked with and respected a great deal. They're all smart people. But I can't help but feel let down and disappointed by their dismissal of AI. I am sympathetic though. Some of them may never command the salaries or titles they once did, and certainly not without at least playing with AI. They all talk about the dumb things AI has done, they make jokes about some colleague that accidentally deleted a production server using AI and talk about it being a Ponzi scheme. I just can't relate to the utter lack of optimism, imagination and curiosity. I've wanted to jump in and respond, but what good would that do? Who would benefit from my doing something like that. Nothing I say is likely to change their mind, certainly not in a channel with hundreds of people. And who am I, really? I don't have the technical skills most of them do. And maybe if I had their careers, I might feel the same way they do. The world is changing so fast and many people are going to be left behind. I feel quite certain of that.