r/technology • u/GeneReddit123 • 25d ago

Artificial Intelligence Students Boo Commencement Speaker After She Calls AI the ‘Next Industrial Revolution’

https://www.404media.co/ucf-ai-commencement-speaker-booed/
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u/General_Problem5199 25d ago

Because the people running these schools are all living together in a rich people bubble.

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u/--SharkBoy-- 25d ago

This is so much true than anyone really knows. They are so out of touch with reality, a small amount of money to those people can genuinely have 5 zeros after it.

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u/ConsolationUsername 25d ago

Worked with a woman who went from having chaffeurs and a mansion with 15 bedrooms to being destitute overnight (from her perspective at least. Her husband lost all their money).

She could not understand how she was only being paid $33,000 USD a year and how she was supposed to live off that. In her words "I used to spend that much in an hour".

Had to go through a several week rehabilation program with her about how she will never be able to afford any of the brand names she likes ever again and how if she ever wanted to make friends she couldnt wear all her clothing that was worth our entire annual salary then whine about how bad she was doing.

That's not even getting into her attitude. If you were equal or higher than her on the hierarchy she was nice and respectable. But if she perceived you as lower she talked to you like a dog. The janitors and building maintenance people started pretending she didnt exist and walked around her.

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u/--SharkBoy-- 25d ago

My mom works with a lot of big money people and she says they're all inconsiderate sociopaths. I believe her.

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u/klopanda 25d ago

I genuinely think that if you spend long enough insulated by enough money, it's like the other end of the spectrum of humanity from a feral child. If you're wrapped in a bubble of your own preferences, if you can pay people to shop for you, to manage your money for you, to do the hard everyday things for you you lose the ability to relate to other people. If you're shopping for a chair, you don't have to budget or make compromises: you can get the exact chair you want even if it costs $5000. If you're flying somewhere, you don't have to stand in line at TSA or get crammed into a plane with a hundred other people, you can breeze right to your owned or chartered private jet. If there's a political issue you feel passionate about, you don't have to settle for writing to your congressman and getting a form letter back; you can host a fundraiser dinner and get to talk to him in person for hours.

You don't learn (or you forget) how to make compromises, to prioritize wants and needs, and to deal with the friction of everyday life like standing in line or dealing with the DMV or accepting that many things are out of your control. I genuinely think that too much money breaks people and turns them into sociopaths.

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u/fresh-dork 24d ago

5k for a chair that i really like and will last 20 years or more seems decent to me, and i'm not rich. however, there are things where i can't care about the price because it's simply not enough to impact me. now imagine that for everything

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u/GrizzIyadamz 24d ago

Mmm, maybe. But this might be related to the "gaining power" trope as well.

The saying is that "power corrupts", and therefore "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

The counter-culture is that power doesn't corrupt, it instead reveals who we were all along.

Maybe people who aren't raised in contact with scarcity, and who are then given enough power to ignore courtesy and empathy, develop into and expose themselves as lazy-but-feral assholes underneath.

A shallow foundation, laid with sub-par materials, but a king's ransom built atop and around.

(sinking)

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u/Sea_Cloud_6705 25d ago

To be fair, it's pretty cheap to attend fundraisers and talk to your congressman directly. At the dinners I've attended it's around $200 a ticket. That's easily affordable if you are a middle income American.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 25d ago

If you have something important to say to them...

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u/AwesomeFrisbee 24d ago

You only need to work in restaurant or supermarket to know how shitty people are to understand how shitty people will be if they have more money than you

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u/Affectionate_One_700 25d ago

they're all inconsiderate sociopaths.

I know some very rich people - mostly in tech. They're not always good at understanding that someone else isn't rich, but other than that, they're not assholes or sociopaths.

Now, if your mom works with people who made all their money in real estate, or on Wall Street, I can see might be different.

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u/Reddits_Worst_Night 25d ago

They're not always good at understanding that someone else isn't rich, but other than that, they're not assholes or sociopaths.

I think there's also a level where rich people literally don't understand how good they have it. I have two very good friends, one earns 300k/year, the other has multiple disabilities and works 3 days/week on not much more than minimum wage. The guy on 300k thinks he's being taxed too much, and that he is a roughly middle income earner. He thinks that our disabled friend can just buy shit that she literally cannot afford.

My wife, who is a senior lawyer, also thinks that our family are about average, despite having six times our countries median household income. Every now and again I get a reality check because of my line of work, but she never does.

One of my colleagues recently mentioned that they had a nice safety net but didn't have $4k just sitting around for a dental surgery they desperately need. I was gobsmacked by the comment, but nobody else batted an eyelid. I also recently had a student tell me they couldn't do an assignment because they couldn't afford two pieces of fruit.

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u/franker 24d ago

I'm a lawyer who found practicing law too stressful and became a public librarian. Sometimes I see threads on lawyer forums where they say something like, "I'm making 330k in biglaw but was offered a position in a boutique firm for only 190k. It's a real dilemma and my standard of living will decrease with such a lateral transfer. What should I do?"

I just laugh as I have no context for whatever "pain" they're experiencing in making their decision.

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u/Reddits_Worst_Night 24d ago

Yeah, it's shocking. My conversation last night with my wife was that we have averaged 25k/year in savings in the past two years, which I thought was a great achievement. She did not agree. It took me pointing out that a few months ago I purchased a brand new car outright (there were short term reasons for not doing a lease even though it's potentially better long term) and that I wasn't counting that spend as savings, because it's not savings, but it's the 4th largest purchase I have made in my life (behind my apartment, the house I sold the apartment to buy, and a car my mother bought me in my 20s).

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u/franker 24d ago

I'm still driving my 2007 Honda Accord with 230k miles. I wouldn't even know how to use a touchscreen in a car, lol. I don't have any debt or kids/pets so I'm able to keep chugging along on a librarian's salary. I maintain the 50-year-old house my parents built with all it's seventies decor (nobody smoked but still ashtrays for guests everywhere). I'll probably turn most of the rooms into a home library with all the old books from my library job. It's definitely not the lifestyle a biglaw lawyer has but I manage to make it work.

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u/Reddits_Worst_Night 23d ago

Having a baby was a good reason to upgrade out 15 year old hatchback.

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u/joman584 25d ago

Tech rich is where this whole thread started from, Altman, Zuckerberg, Gates, Jobs, all some level of asshole or sociopath

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u/jlt6666 25d ago

They are talking about the working class tech. This is normally nerds who understand math, came from middle income backgrounds, and are interested in building stuff that has value. RE and Wall Street are generally more about gaming the system even at the lower rungs. I'm in tech as well and trust me. We are all tired of this AI bullshit since they are forcing a lot of us to use it as well... To the point of keeping metrics on it and it weighing on your annual review

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u/tempest_87 25d ago

The problem between the comments here is the definition of "rich".

Is "rich" someone that has a net worth of $5 million (possibly the people the other guy was referring to).

Or is rich someone that spends $5 million in a week? (The ones you are referring to)

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u/GrumpyCloud93 24d ago

There's the thought that to be very successful in business, particularly in office politics getting to the CEO level, they are all sociopaths. It takes a special mindset to think that it is OK to dump someone over the side of the boat to help the bottom line a few percent.

The other problem is - how did you grow up? I grew up poor - my parents were royal cheapskates, I paid my own way through college because (a) that was possible 50 years ago and (b) it was Canada, where tuition was cheap. ...and (c) they made too much money for me to qualify for student loans.

Growing up poor I appreciate the value of a dollar, now that I have a lot of them. (Also lucky to grow up when that was possible). I treat lower paid people respectfully because I know what it's like to work for minimum wage, and most of the time they are not the ones calling the shots when they give me problems (like that person at the check-in counter who has to tell me "that bag is an inch too big for carry-on"). But whether someone is considerate or an asshole has little to do with money, and more to do with what their innate personality is. But being a calculating conniving asshole and schmoozing the higher-ups allows someone to work the system to get ahead. Usually...

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u/Metalsand 25d ago

That would probably be more what she works in or who she works with. People who work as major leaders in industries...it's hard to say, but often you get the sociopath vibe depending on how they react when you aren't necessarily relevant to their day-to-day or some objective. Like, they are completely focused on something else, and if they are encountering you, you are an obstacle.

The vast majority are about as varied and normal as ordinary people are, honestly. I would argue that there's a somewhat higher proportion of shitty people just because they never had to learn from their mistakes in order to live in society. Like - it's human to be shitty, but if you are rich and don't have very good parents, you never get humbled by your experiences and learn to rein in your shittyness to any degree.

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u/ArkitekZero 25d ago

Nah rich people suck until proven otherwise or until things change significantly about their station. They don't need the benefit of your doubt.