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Who is doing the research matters. What is presented here is not the product of academia. It's the product of a company that produces AI agents. The picture this web page paints may appear rosy and have just enough thorns to be convincing, but it's the equivalent of a tobacco company telling you that their product is neither addictive or carcinogenic.

I fully expect actual research will be done on the impact of AI and our hopes for it. This page, however, is marketing.

"I live hand to mouth, zero savings. If I use AI smarter, it may help me craft solutions to that cycle."

"Relaxing while my AI gets the work done, builds the wealth. It’s a shadow of me, just a very, very long one."

etc. I do believe AI currently accelerates businesses, especially in software dev. We work with a contractor who use Claude Code to reach incredible development pace for the size of their team, but also when we sit down with them in meetings they understand what's being created, they are able to argue their architectural choices, and they know how to propose business value.

You can't just buy a Claude subscription and have magically solve your problems. The thing is, as soon as Claude can do this without a business savvy human in the loop, then a) everyone can do it, so you won't actually have any value to propose, and b) Once the AI can run businesses without humans in the loop, you can bet your ass they will not out of the goodness of their hearts keep giving that ability away for $20.

In summary, AI if used to accelerate businesses _CAN_ be good. Buying it as a magic bullet to bring you out of poverty is probably a worse choice than just buying a lottery ticket.

Some quotes that stuck out to me:

"I’ve been working on a scientific project for 6 years... with Claude I was able to accomplish in 5 weeks what took me 6 years. I’m old... I estimate I have another 5 to 10 years and I’ll accomplish everything I want." Academic, Germany

"I live in a war zone... AI can not only give practical advice, but also emotionally calm me down during panic attacks. It can calm someone during a missile attack in one chat, and laugh with me about something silly in another. That’s what makes it not fragmented into a therapist/teacher/friend, but something whole." Ukraine

"If an AI had been in Stanislav Petrov’s position — the Soviet officer who prevented a potential nuclear war in 1983 — it would not have refused to launch." Academic, USA

"The humans in my life were telling me it was psychological. An AI chatbot was the only one who really listened and took me seriously — it pushed me to ask for specific tests... which came back 6 times higher than its supposed to be."

"The doctors were just doing a copy-paste of a copy-paste of a prescription from a few weeks ago, not realizing it was the medication that was killing her. AI helped me ask the right question to save her life."

> AI should learn to say two things: ‘I don’t know’ and ‘you’re wrong.’

My guess is, the next evolutionary step of LLM's should be yet another layer on top of reasoning, which should be some form of self-awareness and theory of mind. The reasoning layer already has some glimpses of these things ("The user wants ...") but apparently not enough to suppress generation and say "I don't know".

What consumer benefits is ai driving? at least with industrial automation consumers benefited from new technologies, cheaper goods, and new job categories.

The number 1 ask from the interviewed cohort is « professional excellence »

It is telling about what we prioritize in our society.

I am usually an optimistic person, but I struggle to see how this does not end up with more misery and worse lifestyle all around.

To remove some of that bias, I'd recommend to get an independent body (probably some university) in and let them do the interpretation and write the article.

I just want people to see the tactic for what it is. I really like Claude Opus 4.6 but this just screams "marketing" to me. I wouldn't say it's wrong, it's good to have these discussions and I'd encourage AI companies to say what they have to say. I would say: more independent sources are needed (and not another AI company).

Why not call it a "double-edged sword" or something else? Light and shade are opposites but not necessarily two products from the same tool. It just irks me.

The quotes they have are really interesting to read. That's what I was hoping to get when I built mine.

And just keep scrolling, you can make it to the story eventually.

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I'm much more curious about the results of 80k people who don't use AI regularly.

01. Professional excellence 18.8%

02. Personal transformation 13.7%

03. Life management 13.5%

04. Time freedom 11.1%

05. Financial independence 9.7%

06. Societal transformation 9.4%

07. Entrepreneurship 8.7%

08. Learning & growth 8.4%

09. Creative expression 5.6%

I find this highly suspicious. I'm sure there would be at least 10% who respond "I want it to go away".

Is this incompetence or a deliberate error to indicate human authorship?

If the former then why aren't they using at least an AI to proof read? If the latter then what do anthropic think is wrong with AI written text?

Who writes this unrealistic gibberish?

I'm not going to claim I know this response was written by an AI, but it's very suspicious. I would like to hear about how Anthropic ensured that the survey responses were provided by real human beings using their own words.

Not 81,000 as it says in the title. I know I'm being nitpicky, but I wouldn't round up to 81k. Surely the 'important number' in this case is 80, so you would round down to that. Then let the reader pleasantly discover you had interviewed ~500 more than you stated.

It's funny to me when someone does this sort of minor hyperbole that's verging on lying - you have to wonder what is going on.

> I'd started telling Claude about things I couldn't even tell my partner. It felt like I was having an emotional affair.

> I worked with an AI to prepare educational materials for my eldest child—asking the AI to work as both tutor and curriculum expert. We received [my child’s] report yesterday, he was graded as either ‘Above’ or ‘Well Above’ standard in every academic area he studies.

So many concerning quotes that read like AI is a workaround for things that are not working right at scale in society.

I worry (1) AI workarounds will make it clear society can tolerate even more suck then (2) society will get worse to where AI is required to cope then (3) AI will stop being subsidized and the poor will get wrecked.