Ed Zitron: There Is No AI Revolution (DAMNING analysis of a house of cards built by con men & venture capitalists)

[highplainsdem]

This is extremely long, but still well worth reading in its entirety. Zitron analyzes all the info available on AI usage by individuals and businesses, and how much AI companies are spending - and losing - on a myth of the importance of generative AI and LLMs that was spun mostly by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Just a few excerpts below. I hope you'll read the whole thing. Not only is the analysis important, but Zitron is a brilliant writer. His scathing newsletters remind me at times of Harlan Ellison's best rants.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/wheres-the-money/

-snip-

Put aside whatever fantastical beliefs you may have about the future and tell me, right now, what business use case exists that justifies burning hundreds of billions of dollars, damaging our power grid, hurting our planet, and stealing from millions of people?

-snip-

Do you not see that this kind of sucks? Do you not see that generative AI runs contrary to the basic tenets of what makes science fiction cool? It doesn’t make humans better, it reduces their work to a stagnant, unremarkable slop in every way it can, and reduces the cognition of those who come to rely on it, and it costs hundreds of billions of dollars and a return to fossil fuels for some reason.

It isn’t working. The users aren’t there. The revenue isn’t there. The best time to stop this was two years ago, and the next best time is as soon as humanly possible.

I have said that generative AI is a group delusion in the past, and I repeat that claim today. What you are seeing in the news is not the “success“ of the artificial intelligence industry, but a runaway narrative created by and sustained by Sam Altman and OpenAI.

-snip-

[Strelnikov_]

1. Dot com bubble redux, on steroids

[highplainsdem]

6. Yes. So much money wasted.

[clevergrrrl]

2. Always looking for the next big thing

They were able to convince the whole planet to buy a pocket computer/ surveillance device also known as a cell phone. But every innovation they try to shove down peoples throats is met with rejection. Google glasses? Virtual reality glasses? Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme that has a carnival like following, it will like petter out too when that market crashes. AI is just the same. I for one don't want to live on a planet whose surface is one continuous data canter. Borg collective anybody?

[2naSalit]

3. Indeed.

Welcome to DU!

[Big Blue Marble]

4. Thanks

This article seems to confirm my suspicions that generative AI and LLM"s are over hyped
and overrated technologies. Eventually, AI will have real impact on our society and culture,
but not anytime soon.

[Initech]

5. The same group that sold us the crypto boom are selling us the AI boom.

And just like crypto, the same people getting rich off AI are people who you wouldn't trust with 15 cents, let alone 15 billion dollars.

[dalton99a]

7. Altman is a con artist like Musk.

[Prairie Gates]

8. Everytime somebody tells me AI writing is soooo good I feel like I'm talking to a fool

It's grammatically correct, and utterly mid. It's competent at pulling together the most banal observations about a thing, when it's not totally wrong. I don't doubt that it produces passable college papers, but the bar for that has always been very very low. The lack of insight, voice, elegance, incisiveness is evident to anyone who is moderately well read in a field or two. It's shocking that we're all supposed to believe this laughable hype about its quality. The miracle of AI is that a society that was very recently incompetent at writing can now have a machine produce average statements without a comma splice. For this we are expending resources and transforming all of social life. Meh. Meh, I say.

[Arrgh]

9. Thanks so much for this.

I liked this guy so much I subscribed to his newsletter. He is a brutal critic of the tech world, which is such a wonderful contrast to the fawning crap we usually get. He's well-researched and insightful.

[highplainsdem]

10. You're very welcome! I'm a big fan of his, too.

Btw, your reply won't kick this thread, as replies usually do, since the thread is so old. Replies only kick DU threads if they're still on the 30 board pages visible for each forum, and General Discussion adds new messages so fast that the Last Reply dates showing for GD threads on pages 29 and 30 are currently all from May 7. This thread's OP and replies were all February 24, till you followed my link to it and replied here. My Posts notified me of your reply. But the thread won't be kicked to the top of the board for others to see again, as even older posts on some small forums with few new messages are kicked.

[bucolic_frolic]

11. Maybe the plan is to build up Crypto, markets, equities to a collossal bubble

and then break it and scoop up all the assets. I mean if AI failed even at this point today, it could topple several of the largest mutual fund companies, banks, brokers in the world. They're all 33% AI invested because they have to be indexed or keep up with the indexes. You can hardly escape investing in these super large tech names.

[highplainsdem]

12. I agree with Ed Zitron that generative AI is a con job fueled by hype. The genAI industry deserves to fail,

and the sooner the better.