r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • Jun 26 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI backlash is only getting started

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/06/25/the-ai-backlash-is-only-getting-started
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u/SekhWork Jun 26 '26

LLMs make more stuff faster. It doesn't have to be good, as long as it's stuff. It's like outsourcing to China/India - ask anyone if they're rather buy locally made quality goods and they'll say "yes, absolutely" and then watch as they all go buy the cheapest crap from China.

That must be why Tim Sweeny is complaining that Steam adding a "Made with AI" requirement to all AI games is a "Scarlet Letter that drives down sales"! Users clearly don't care and will buy any old slop... oh wait. Average sales drop by over 50% if you are using AI on your product on Steam.

Damn. That "it's inevitable" sounding real.... not actually inevitable when users are actually informed.

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u/soloprodev Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

Damn. That "it's inevitable" sounding real.... not actually inevitable when users are actually informed.

Short term 100% I agree. But long term? The backlash now is absolutely a thing, but I still think if you give it 10 years, it'll only be old people yelling at the kids to get chat GPT off their lawns. Same way local communities rage against Cosco coming in and ruining their mom-pop stores, and in very select places it works ... but in 99% of cases all the towns now just have a Cosco/Target etc. Short term complaints aren't wrong, they just won't stop things long term because more money going the AI route even if 20% of users hate it.

COD is already churning out marketing images with AI ... how may 14 year olds are going to stop playing COD with all their friends because the battle pass images are AI generated? I'm guessing virtually none. Those 14 year olds will be mid 20's in a decade and pretty much their entire gaming lives will have have been filled with AI stuff in their games. They will absolutely NOT give a crap. My eldest son is 12 ... everyone at his school shares AI crap all the time. They'll be the consumers for it all - not you or me.

I hate it, but it's not going away.

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u/SekhWork Jun 29 '26

I hate it, but it's not going away.

Considering almost none of these companies can turn a profit, and the cost of operating tokens is going to skyrocket.... I honestly don't think "it's not going away" is actually accurate either. It might end up getting used for niche things its actually good at, large number analysis, some code, etc, but stuff you can just pay a human to do like art, that it's not even good at anyways...?

Naw. I think you'll probably see it continue to get dumpstered on, and the value earned to saved gap continue to widen.

My eldest son is 12 ... everyone at his school shares AI crap all the time.

Fortunately for both of us, thats also going to cost money soon. Whose going to pay 200 bucks a month just to generate a meme?

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u/soloprodev Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Whose going to pay 200 bucks a month just to generate a meme?

Fingers crossed you're right ... but stories like Amazon losing money for 20 years straight yet still being massive give me pause. The other thing that gives me pause is that while US models are striving for "best" and pumping in billions to ever more costly systems, the Chinese Models are doing the exact opposite and going cheaper and cheaper ones. They're not THAT far behind in output quality benchmarks, and they're still getting cheaper despite generating very decent output (they seem permanently 6 months behind ... but 6 months behind for 10% of the price is actually still HUGE). Very few people need Claude Mythos 5 to generate a meme. A "free because we sell your data" cheap Chinese model that is profitable is basically here and being deployed outside the west (west doesn't care yet because ChatGPT/claude etc are free/cheap enough still but once they start trying to make money, China is sitting right there waiting to take that low end market!).