People keep using the "can't put a genie back in the bottle" metaphor for "AI", even though in the stories they always get back in and current "AI" is more of a "we're spending trillions of dollars and the energy output of a continent trying to keep this bastard out of the bottle" situation
Current “AI” from my perspective is less like a technological breakthrough—“the genie is out of the bottle”—and more a research fusion reactor: no matter how much energy and money you throw at the thing, nothing changes the fact that it costs more energy than it produces
People only pull out the “X is not going away” when the “X” in question hasn’t fully arrived yet Data centres that haven’t been built yet can absolutely go away. “AI” systems that haven’t been rolled out can very much fuck off. Features with no adoption can absolutely be dropped.
Citing “lived experience” as evidence something works is literally the tactic of homeopaths and antivaxxers when confronted by large-scale or structured studies disproving their claims. That this now seems to be the go-to argument of the pro-“AI” crowd is a huge red flag.
Your semi-regular reminder that given the size and extent of the “AI” bubble it’s an absolute certainty that fraud is involved. We don’t know the scale or location of the fraud but you simply do not get a trillion-dollar bubble without fraud, both financial and in information/discourse
The “AI” doom narrative is really getting some traction this time around. Both got extensive coverage in Icelandic media and I’m seeing it spread far and wide among the web’s pseudo-intelligentsia. “Oh, no! These people know what they’re talking about so it must be true!” It’s exhausting
Anyway, since I’m always annoying my own brain by trying to come up with clearer and more specific wording for my own opinions: I reject the notion that LLMs can be deployed “responsibly” at scale and believe that anybody claiming otherwise is fooling themselves, conning you, or possibly both
What so many people sound like: “avoiding sugar completely is impossible so we should be eating all the sugar all the time” They’re missing the point of avoiding work made with “AI”, which is twofold: 1. Minimise your exposure. You can’t avoid it all but you can limit the risks 2. Picking a side
Just once I’d like to see journalists and politicians show at least a grain of scepticism about the claims being made by “AI” vendors. Just once. Just because anthropic styles their reports to look like scientific or academic papers doesn’t make them sound or credible.
Over the past couple of years, every time there has been a software system failure or disruption everybody involved has insisted "AI" and layoffs weren't the direct cause and that people should stop spreading fear about a new technology. It's a tactic to shut down criticism
