Doctorow: 'AIs' are low-waged workers pretending to be robots

Cory Doctorow's Pluralistic post "That Makes Me Smart" argues that a long parade of AI and autonomy demos has been propped up by people pretending to be software. "This is entirely typical of the AI sector, in which 'AIs' are revealed, over and over, to be low-waged workers pretending to be robots," Doctorow writes, pointing to an industry joke that 'AI' stands for 'Absent Indians.'

His lead exhibit is Elon Musk. Doctorow says Musk has sold Teslas by promising 'full self driving in one year,' every year, since 2015. Musk also "told investors that he had a 'prototype' autonomous robot that could replace their workers, then demoed a guy in robot suit," and two years later demoed "a remote-control robot while lying and claiming that it was autonomous."

The AI examples sit inside a bigger argument about where fraud liability lands. Doctorow contrasts the Biden-era push against corporate deception with what he frames as an incoming 'that makes me smart' ethos, in which the burden shifts to whoever got taken. "It's not a scam, it's inspirational," he writes. "Of course, if he's wrong and you are scammed, well, that's a you problem." Two AI commentators on our tracker surfaced the post.