Neoclassical econ assumes rationality. The corollary of, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is "you're rich, so you must be very smart!" Thus, people assume that if powerful, well-compensated CEOs insist that "AI is changing everything," well then, *AI must be changing everything*. 1/
With "surveillance pricing," businesses have finally found something AI can do way, way, *way* better than people: price gouging. 1/
AI is alarming for many reasons: it's a dangerous financial bubble, an environmental catastrophe, and a tool for eroding wages and labor power. But in addition to all that, AI is an epistemic disaster. 1/
A new LLM-powered scam: research an author, research a publication they write for, research the title of something they've written, register a similar gmail address, go phishing.
We're repeatedly told that the killer app for pervert glasses - Meta's AI-enabled camera glasses and their imitators - is that they will remind you of someone's name and spare you the social awkwardness of not recognizing them.
Of all the weird recurring motifs of the stories people tell me about the AI labor wars, the *weirdest* is when bosses demand to be reassured that their contractors and workers will *absolutely* use AI to get the job done.
Since the mid-1950s, we have changed the thing that "AI" refers to every 5-10 years. The current thing we're calling "AI" is about a decade old, and all this label-switching leads to a lack of clarity as to what (this) "AI" is.
Maybe it seems weird that AI bosses won't stop rending their garments about the terrible potential of their bots, from the jobspocalypse that'll ensue when AI does our jobs, to the impending moment when the word-guessing programs learn too many words, wake up and turn us into paperclips. 1/
Creating an AI agent and asking it to email strangers on your behalf is like forcing strangers to watch you masturbate. Incompetently.
Just got word that The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, my book that was released last week, is the #1 bestselling paperback nonfiction book among Canada's 400 independent bookstores!
