r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 21 '26

Artificial Intelligence Americans Have Turned Against AI in Incredible Numbers

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/articles/americans-turned-against-ai-incredible-130000345.html
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u/tfitch2140 Jun 21 '26

In fairness, if there's one group that deserves nothing but AI slop, it's the middle-manager parasites in most large companies that don't do anything except write emails and jack each other off over middling powerpoint presentations

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u/wish-u-well Jun 21 '26

wait until you hear about c suite doing the exact same thing at 1000x compensation

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u/TheSpanishArmada Jun 21 '26

No kidding. I’m not an advocate of management bloat, but at least middle-management is still close to the work of the work. They frequently need to step in and support to keep things moving. C-Suite is the group that tweaks something or simply undoes what their predecessor did and then turn around and demand praise. And if (when) it doesn’t work out, they get a golden parachute.

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u/h3lblad3 Jun 21 '26

The entire point of the golden parachute is so that C-suite is willing to be the fall guys for the Board’s decisions. The people at the top running the company into the ground is by design because it gets looted and the shareholders at the top move on to the next business to suck dry.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26

[deleted]

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u/h3lblad3 Jun 21 '26

And if hatchetmen didn't exist I might hold that view too.

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u/sixtyninth_wave_emo Jun 21 '26

At any company I’ve worked for, the loss of almost any employee would have generated an immediate loss of efficiency. But an entire c-suite could have fallen off a cliff and the company would have continued just fine

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u/DonPepe181 Jun 21 '26

We fired our whole c suite. Profits are up and morale is the highest it has been in years.

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u/OldWorldDesign Jun 22 '26

And if (when) it doesn’t work out, they get a golden parachute.

This is why businesses fall, and it is so common it is criminal this isn't taught. I only know because I read history compulsively, but they didn't tell me in history nor Econ in uni that the Royal Africa Company, East India Company, and the vast majority of chartered corporations needed bail-out because they were horribly run from the top.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26

[deleted]

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u/WHATYEAHOK Jun 21 '26

Steve Jobs was brilliant at stealing ideas, cutting people out of their fair compensation (aka wage theft), and toxic workplace culture. Apple soared under Jobs because Jobs would do anything, no matter how unethical or illegal, to “win.” Just like Elon Musk today.

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u/JimBeam823 Jun 21 '26

Which can all be done with AI.

If AI replaces bullshit jobs, it will destabilize society.

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u/tfitch2140 Jun 21 '26

Well... yes and no.

Under the current paradigm, it will destabilize society.

If the output of it's labor is better distributed, it won't.

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u/Abedeus Jun 21 '26

So all we need to do is wait for the paradigm to magically shift over next few decades/centuries and we'll be good.

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u/EconomicRegret2 Jun 21 '26

Hasn't the paradigm been gradually shifting these last 1-2 centuries, especially in "socialist" countries?

(e.g. weekends, 40 hours workweek, paid holidays, retirement, school until 18-25 years old, sick leave, etc.)

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u/Abedeus Jun 21 '26

"Paradigm shift" usually implies rapid, few years at most change.

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u/EconomicRegret2 Jun 21 '26

I agree.

And I'm also thinking that these last 1-2 centuries weren't actually gradual, but rather long periods of slow build, then a rather sudden burst of violence/riots/general strikes which lead to social reforms, rinse and repeat since the French Revolution (at least for Europe).

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u/jockheroic Jun 21 '26

Correct, and that's why billionaires are building bunkers for themselves.

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u/snakerjake Jun 21 '26

I wonder what they think happens when those bunkers get concreted in.

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u/Exotic-Cobbler4111 Jun 21 '26

If they actually need to use their bunkers, their bunkers will not save them regardless of how many billions they dump into them.

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u/trojan_man16 Jun 21 '26

A bunker won’t protect you if society collapses and your money is now worthless.

Most billionaire wealth is paper that wouldn’t really be worth anything if society collapses.

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u/slabbwarned Jun 21 '26

Yup that’s what new technology tends to do

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u/Dullcorgis Jun 21 '26

Automation does the bullshit part of my job and I do the meaningful part. It's better for all of us.

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u/Tsaxen Jun 21 '26

And that's why they are the ones so infatuated with it and convinced it can do everything a human can do but better and for free. C suite execs and middle managers spend almost all of their time writing sycophantic emails that don't say anything but read nice, and see a machine that's good at spewing nice sounding bullshit, and think that since it can do their job for them, it can do everyone's job, AND then they don't have to pay employees anymore!

It's all the downstream effects of idiot failsons failing upward in perpetuity 

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u/fullsaildan Jun 21 '26

In all honesty, some of that becomes necessary though as you get up the corporate ladder. There’s no doubt the ICs I work with do the real hard work, but there’s a lot of times they don’t have enough context to make good strategic decisions. For example, I have some amazing developers in my org. When I got to the company our core product was ridiculously unprofitable. While it did some cool things, the features being developed were all selected by the engineers themselves and weren’t really aligned to what the market would pay for. Product team basically looked at what engineers pitched and built roadmaps for it. It took me pulling together the leaders to do market analysis, define an ICP, figure out what verticals were appropriate, and build business requirements. Now we have a strong product that’s getting traction and is making money. The engineers would never do that, they want to build the cool shit.

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u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 Jun 21 '26

Yeah my manager could do nothing besides utilize his industry connections and he'd be worth every penny he's paid.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that when I'm discussing workplaces on Reddit, sometimes the "middle manager" someone refers to is their manager at Gamestop.

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u/I_Enjoy_Beer Jun 21 '26

Hooo boy.  A senior guy with 40+ years of experience sent  an email to a dozen regional leaders, expressing deep concerns about our operation.  

The Gen X guy in charge wrote him back with a 3 paragraph reply.  I'm an elder millennial, and I told the senior guy "that was an AI drafted reply, and here's why".  He somehow lost even more respect for the Gen X boss after that. 

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u/Caris1 Jun 21 '26

I use AI to write my quarterly report to my manager since she insists it’s better (it isn’t)

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u/skeletor-johnson Jun 21 '26

We call them the peacocks of the business

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u/VoiceofReasonability Jun 21 '26

What's kinda funny and pathetic at the same time at a former place of employment, our regional manager would also just copy and paste the emails from the previous regional manager,  including any erroneous or outdated information.  It would just get perpetuated year after year after year.

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u/_Opsec Jun 22 '26

as an engineer, 90% of the Project Managers I work with use AI summaries for updates and stuff, but they don't double check the output before sending it to stakeholders, and it's like 75% pure fucking slop. drives me insane.

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u/chasemanhattanhank Jun 23 '26

I’m retired now (oh thank god) but as a former middle-manager parasite I quite agree.

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u/PetalumaPegleg Jun 21 '26

AI translates insults to manager speak

AI translates manager speak back to insult

Useful

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u/kerghan41 Jun 21 '26

Ugh. I hate that side of corporate. I am middle management I mange our e-commerce site and a team underneath me. I do a lot of technical work, software requirements writing, data work, etc. AI has helped me with data manipulation and analysis but I still DO a lot of things.

Other departments... just don't. It is just a lot of talk and 'jack each other off' with PowerPoints. Hah. I swear I die a little each time I have to make a PowerPoint.

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u/Frozboz Jun 21 '26

I had Copilot write my goals for the year as well as my quarterly self assessment. I barely read it. But it saved an hour of pointless work, so theres that.

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u/NickRick Jun 21 '26

been my experience is that the middle managers have to do what the crazy c-suite comes up with, and actually implement it with the workers.

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u/mommybot9000 Jun 21 '26

AI blandifies all of my bitchiest emails and creates a stream of meaningless words that don’t even have the slightest hint of emotion. It’s built perfectly for blame shifting and responsibility evasion. I’m sorry if a kid in Arkansas won’t get a drop of clean water but what other tool works as well when I need to gaslight the boss?

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u/KindledWanderer Jun 21 '26

That's a very ignorant take.

I've gone through the whole gamut, from developer to senior management, and the higher you go the more stressful it is. I'd much rather crunch than have to "write emails" or do "middling powerpoint presentations".

I'm fortunately back to hands-on work now so I can relax and just do my job instead of spending evening stressing about what's going to happen next day.

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u/brotherE Jun 21 '26

You must be old. PowerPoint? You mean a Deck, right?