THIS week OpenAI claimed an AI ‘went rogue’, but does anyone believe their melodramatic tales anymore? In fact scepticism is well overdue for AI nonsense like this:
Endless scaremongering
Is AI really a fizzing cloud of megalomaniac electrons trying to escape? Or do OpenAI and co just need to pretend that because they’ve got an overhyped product without many real-world applications? Apart from making copyright-infringing Family Guy porn, obviously.
It’s a guessing machine
AI is far less impressive once you know it’s just really good at guessing relevant meaningful sentences. And LLMs won’t ever stop hallucinating, so you can’t trust it with medical problems, information you could get sued over, or anything to do with air travel. In fact is there any use for something that’s constantly wrong? Except boyfriend?
It’s all about the IPOs
Floating on the stock market is clearly a way for many shareholders to cash out before everything really goes south. What a coincidence your AI has turned out to be super-powerful just now! And in the same watershed year that SpaceX decided to start mining the limitless resources of space!
Why haven’t all the jobs disappeared?
Sam Altman and others have been predicting that AI will eviscerate white-collar jobs since at least 2023. This conspicuously hasn’t happened. And if AI can’t even replace some of the morons you’ve sat in an office with, you’re not holding out much hope for it becoming HAL 9000 or Skynet. And The Terminator would be a pretty slow-paced film if it was one of Elon’s robots.
It’s clearly programmed to stroke your ego
Express a coherent thought, and the bumlicking toady that is Gemini will say: ‘That’s an incredible insight into [whatever]!’ Being told you’re good at something when you’re not is unhealthy, and likely to lead to heartache in all but a few rare cases, eg. Ed Sheeran.
Jesus, look at the actual accounts
AI giants are losing money in shit-yourself amounts. OpenAI, for example, will lose $14 billion this year and already effectively has debts of $96 billion. The truly scary thing is there’s no clear path to getting large numbers of people to pay for AI in a consistently profitable way. That’s a bit of a flaw in your business model, like inventing an iPhone without internet access or the ability to make phone calls.
It’s AI jam tomorrow
Ever noticed how literally every claim about the amazing things AI can do relates to the future? How many other businesses could stay afloat like this? ‘Don’t worry, our range of handy covers to keep acid rain off your noodles will be selling like hotcakes once we’re living in Blade Runner!’
