While I love Douglas Adams, and there's a hint of truth there, I don't think it works well here. By that logic, anything invented after 2005 would be abhorrent to me. Yet, there's tons of new tech invented since that I find/found "new and exciting."
My dislike of GenAI stuff is based on practical, ethical, and economic concerns.
Practical: GenAI output is bland and untrustworthy. It also discourages thought and learning, IMO. Lest folks line up to tell me how wonderful it is for their learning, that may be true, but my observation is that is not how the majority uses it. Once upon a time I thought the Internet/Web would be a revolution in learning for people. Fool me once...
Ethical: So many problems here, from the training data sets, to people unleashing scraper bots that have been effectively DDoS'ing sites for going on a year (at least) now. If these are the kind of people who make up the industry building these tools, I want nothing to do with the tools.
Economic: Related to ethics, but somewhat separate. GenAI and other LLM/AI tools could benefit people. I acknowledge, for example, there's real promise in using various related tech to do better medical diagnostics. That would be wonderful. But, the primary motivation of the companies pushing AI right now is to 1) get people hooked on the tools and jack up prices, 2) sell tech that can be used to lower wages or reduce employment, and 3) create another hype technology so they can stuff their pockets, and the coming crash be damned.
Again, what is driving AI/LLM is not well intentioned. Ignore that at your own peril. Probably everybody else's peril, too.
Adams no doubt knew people who were aghast at PCs or mobile phones because they were not around when they were younger. I get it. But, well, I wonder how Adams would feel about GenAI tools that spit out "write blah in the style of Douglas Adams" after being trained on all of his work.
I think you could make identical arguments about any new technology. Amazingly expensive computers were once not very practical, it’s easy to point at any massive world changing tech and call it unethical, you can find these arguments about oil, railroads, 24 hour news, etc. and the same is true for economic incentives. Rubber barons and railroad tycoons were not well intentioned from this point of view. I don’t think there’s anything about AI that is inherently different from previous tech.
And isn’t that the entire point of the quote?
I’m not trying to be dismissive of your point, just to pose a counterpoint.
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
― Douglas Adams