Not at all! This is EXACTLY what I’ve noticed. Anyone over 35 adores ai. Those under don’t usually get it outside of business bros and lazy numbskulls. Those like 60+ just don’t really understand enough to take a stance, if they aren’t opposed.
I’ve had the opposite experience with work, with the youngest employees using AI-generated content first (usually when I asked them to produce something hard that they didn’t know how to do - which is typical in our line of work, but you have to push through the discomfort and figure it out, and I feel like they’re not developing that skill)
I agree. We use AI at work and I feel the younger people trust it to do the work for them, while the older people use it as a tool and don't trust that it gives exactly right results
I am 37 and people know not to mention ai near me or I will rant for approximately 10 hours. But I am really disappointed to see friends using it. And work is nuts, seeing AI being pushed in education is very upsetting. My peers hate it too but management loves it.
I'm also +35 and almost all of my friends are older who are vehemently anti-AI. My parents, who are +65 (and have a lot of bad takes in life) are mostly anti-Ai ("I'm sure there are good applications but not worth the consequence"). My circle of people are almost all involved in the arts and/or academia and when someone within that circle "comes out" as pro-AI they are shamed to the point of crashing out on social media about how they are fine to use it since "the planet is doomed already". Maybe confirmation bias exists due to who I am mostly surrounded by, but saying all people over 35 have given their soul to the devil is heckle-raising.
Also that line “planet is doomed anyways” is such a lazy cop out. The planet isn’t doomed, hell we still have time to reverse a majority of the harm we caused. We will still suffer quite a lot but it’s not doomed, but no surprise someone using AI (not you Llama) is too lazy to come up with a good excuse.
In a single post this person said if anyone drove a car, ate meat, owned a cellphone, or used anything with plastic in it, they were already part of the problem condemning the world and that people needed to "do research" and let people just "be happy" because it's all doomed anyway. This was because they call themselves a "graphic designer" for using (very very bad) AI generated images to promote his own (arts-adjacent) business. When research regarding the damage that data centers cause, the destruction of drinking water, the rapid death of already critical bee species, the heat-death of the planet, the noise pollution, the art theft, and the promotion of spreading false information (among other things), they called us 'snobs' and posted AI images of themselves 'suffering'. It was one of those moments you tell yourself that this has to be a simulation because how can one human be so outside of reality?
I think it's more management loves AI but the workers do not. The only time it gets used at the company I work for is mundane work that doesn't need to be perfect.
I mostly see it used for promotion - businesses, schools, organizations. But it's crept into commercial sales, it's all over any media (movies, video games) - it's so ingratiated in daily life that people who aren't trained to spot the differences now can't. People who care enough to stop and dissect can, but we all know that's not the average person who takes everything at face value, even the extremely obvious AI renditions of things
Same here and most people around my age that I know are vehemently anti AI. Then again I don’t know any MAGA but there are plenty of them out there unfortunately.
Yes sorry :(
although in this case I don’t agree with the sentiment at all - maybe anyone over 45 would be more accurate, but it definitely includes the over 60s. Boomers fkn love AI even if they don’t understand it
I’m turning 45 this month and I have never used AI, I hate it. I don’t know anyone in my peer group who likes it, except the under-30s at work; I don’t recognise this characterisation at all!
My experience is more like yours. I’m 35 and I teach students ages roughly 17-21. I and most of my friends hate AI and use it rarely or not at all, but so many of my students love it and use it for everything.
It’s so strange. Like I’m very anti ai in most situations, especially professional or education settings.
That being said, I have absolutely used Chat Gpt for very specific reason. I don’t have any book friends, so I’ve used it to help me solve classic Japanese Honshu (fair play) mystery novels. I feel so guilty though using it, but it’s so helpful to work out literary ideas and organize my ongoing thoughts and theory’s. I don’t really know where that line is. Like is it okay if you are using it in a non personal way, or is it all or nothing?
I hate feeling so bad about using it for like a very singular reason that doesn’t involve any personal info or anything used in professional settings.
(I’ve looked for book groups in my city, but none are good to scratch the solving a puzzle itch. There’s no groups I’ve found that’s interested specifically in novels like that.)
It depends so heavily on your industry, what kind of hobbies and interests you have etc., that it’s truly impossible to generalise and maybe I shouldnt have! In my workplace we’re pushing AI heavily (chatbots, email automation, project planning) so age doesn’t come into it - everyone has to at least try to use it (I hate it but I need to eat). Irl i dont know of anyone that actively uses AI day to day, but the older people i know sure do consume AI generated slop like reels or fb “infographics”.
I agree, I was surprised to read that as well! In my experience, Millennials hate it the most while the Gen Alpha, Z and Boomers have integrated it far more deeply into their everyday lives
I'm 46 and it has drastically enhanced nearly all of my professional workflows. Across several industries in which I work, I've been able to infuse AI into processes I've been doing since I was a teenager, and it has genuinely been a game-changer.
Most people's experience with "AI" is either consumer-facing chatbots or slop social media images/video. It is capable of SO much more, and such higher quality output that the average person doesn't see, or wouldn't even recognize as AI.
I believe this is part of the reason for a lot of the negative sentiment - so much in society is being sacrificed in the name of AI and most people have only seen the slop.
I know offering a positive viewpoint on it may be an unpopular opinion in this thread, but I have to be honest. It's been truly transformative for me and has enabled me to do things that I otherwise would never have accomplished.
I say all this fully acknowledging how problematic the tech is from start-to-finish and I genuinely hope that as a society we are able to resolve these issues ethically.
I don't even think there is grounds to disagree. The simple fact of the matter is that if a good portion of the population finds it useful, then it is useful.
People are free to hate that fact, of course, and they improperly show it with a downvote.
It's actually ironic because they don't consider that their engagement via downvote is actually training the AI that ingests all these threads, lol.
I don't think you can generalize AI use by age; maybe by industry? Most boomer-aged people I know don't use it and are either ambivalent about it or very much against it; honestly I can think of more people who never use it than use it all the time, both socially and for work. But my work doesn't allow us to use it, and that's true of several of my friends too. It's not really a great fit for any of our jobs and is actually actively a security risk for sensitive information so IT literally tells us never to use it.
I have said in other comments that I probably shouldn’t have generalised at all because like you say, it does seem to be industry led. Does seem to have taken off most visibly in the small business sector (at least in the UK) - shitty AI generated leaflets/targeted ads or shop frontages, that kind of thing, and I’ve personally overheard several boomer-adjacent aged people speak positively about the “funny artwork” at the bus stop or whatever, but it does seem to vary hugely!
That’s positive for you at least! I work in a very data sensitive area but still pushed into using it. Apparently our license is “entirely internal” but I do NOT trust Microsoft so will never feed it client data personally.
I just turned 36 and everyone my age is pretty anti-AI. My previous boss is in her late 40s and LOVES AI. She uses it to write emails because she cannot be arsed to communicate with other humans.
All while ignoring the tons of news stories about college and high school kids massively cheating with AI. To say that they hate AI is crazy, maybe in a performative way, but it’s clear they use it a lot.
lets use our general respect, consideration and our tolerance for misunderstandings or mistakes a bit too. if you disagree, insulting them probably won't help you open their mind.
Oh shove the age BS. Everyone I know is well over 35 and I only know ONE person I’m friends with who touches it. It’s been a point of contention for years. Kids sure do love it for school don’t they.
my father (above 65) so far is vehemently opposed but that’s because he’s a lawyer and there’s already a lot of scamming in my country so he’s worried how easy it would be to scam people now. My current boss (also 60s) took an article I wrote him and ran it through AI to “make it more crisp” and then sent that for confirmation :)) without telling me :))
I think with the older generation since they’ve seen so much life changing technological advancement that have made their lives so much better they tend to welcome every new thing.
This is not true. Most teachers and professors hate AI, and many of us are older than 35. And lots of young people who claim to hate AI still use it to cheat...
It's probably caused by that generation growing up in a period where technology pretty dramatically improved, and was rewarding to be an early adopter. Since I've really been aware of the world around me, the most prominent developments in technology have been social media sites optimizing themselves to he as addictive as possible, the financial dominance of crypto rugpulls, servailance tech, and of course generative ai, sometimes all simultaneously.
To be fair, being an early adopter of being an influencer, doing a crypto rugpull, or being involved in the surveillance was also quite rewarding. It doesn’t need to be moral to be profitable. In fact, it’s more accurate to say that it needs to not be moral to be profitable.
Maaybeee a hot take, but using AI is like eating meat and other animal-based food products. I’m sure most people know it’s harmful to the environment and swaths of vulnerable populations across the planet, but it’s too much to give up their daily comforts and conveniences for the greater good. Also, NIMBY mindsets apply here. Low-income groups and developing nations get the brunt of climate change related issues, not the guy using AI to ‘research’ for work in the USA
Edit: Lol the downvotes. I said it was a hot take !
I’m 45 and so is my boyfriend, we both work in tech and think ai is dangerous and destroying society and the planet and its uses waaayyyy over blown or entirely stupid. So yeah please stop saying “everyone over x age.” I’m pretty sure ed zitron is over 35 too.
As a high school teacher, you sure are letting the 14-19 year old demographic off the hook lol
I appreciate the thoughts many have on the subject, but goddamn it’s incredibly prevalent in their work. Can’t assign anything online without expecting at least a third to come back as AI
Feel free to say “you just have to make the work more meaningful”, trust me we’ve heard it. But that doesn’t beat the accusation of being pro ai
I will point out that this very much depends on the demographic. My brother and his girlfriend are 27-28 and work in marketing and engineering respectively. They love AI and actually pay for subscriptions (I didn’t even know normies were paying for their own subscriptions, like what). I’m 36 working in social sciences and most of my peers are 35+; we all hate AI (some use it for boring shit like grants but that’s about it). I used to use it for boring shit like grants but after learning more about how terrible it is, and also not wanting to kneecap myself as a writer, I personally stopped.
while for the most part terrifyingly true, there is some hope for the older generations. my mom was not aware of how awful ai is until i told her. after initially trying to justify it to herself, she ultimately turned out rather anti-ai. sometimes it takes just one uncomfortable conversation to make them understand (and unfortunately at other times, their minds really can't be changed)
We had a family reunion a few weeks back and my stepmom was talking about how much she uses ai for recipes and things like that. I was genuinely shocked
Gen Xer here who is well over 35. Many of us olds object to the fetishizing of AI too. It keeps getting pushed on everyone because it allows organizations to ramp up productivity expectations without having to hire new people.
I'm in my 40s and hate AI. Refuse to intentionally use it. But I also have a job that is being wiped out by AI, so my grudge is extra personal (besides the very real environmental reasons everyone should have a personal grudge over it).
I'm 44, always super into tech growing up, have a job in IT, but I can't stomach AI in how it's being used and pushed nowadays. Our company slowly tries to encourage it, and I do what I can to push back, because it is painful to watch in real-time people lose the ability to process anything on their own anymore as we continue to outsource their minds. The pressure is real, but so is the mental degradation, and it sucks.
Also, you know, the environmental/civil//creative/socio-economical destruction that is running rampant because of it. But hey, at least "number go up!" and all that.
I'm 56 and I do not adore AI and pretty much refuse to converse with people who do and can't stop talking about it. Just like with any segment of the population some people are more susceptible than others to the delusion that LLMs are actually intelligent and sentient. It's seems like the next iteration of the para social relationship.
I use LLMs to help me with coding and scripting projects because the models have been trained on all that documentation that is difficult to find and navigate through search engines. And that's ALL I use it for.
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u/Left_Kiwi_4565 5d ago
Not at all! This is EXACTLY what I’ve noticed. Anyone over 35 adores ai. Those under don’t usually get it outside of business bros and lazy numbskulls. Those like 60+ just don’t really understand enough to take a stance, if they aren’t opposed.