AI BS
“I realize I have lost this battle forever, but these machine learning tools are not artificial intelligence. And yet, we're all just deciding to call it artificial intelligence. Does AI exist? No, but like fuck me, right?” – Dr. Angela Collier, theoretical physicist from Eastern Kentucky
Big news on the AI front, some random researcher from Anthropic came out and said he’s really scared, creating such a cavalcade of concern even Sam, Dario, and Elon, once known as the accelerationists, call for a slowdown. I guess the singularity will have to wait.
You can dismiss Elon's concern right away. He's proved time and again he's concerned about nothing but himself, but Grok's way “behind.” He’s been trying to monkey wrench others so his investors can believe his AI company – his words, marketed as a space company, is worth whatever trillions of dollars you can value a company with 7 billion dollars of revenue.
Meanwhile, Sam and Dario, whatever the tech value of their endeavor, are having a very hard time finding the business value, that is the profit, from trillions of dollars of debt already sunk or committed. Or, let’s look at Larry Ellison over at Oracle, also a big AI promoter, which signed on billions in debt, not counting his nepo-son's Hollywood ventures, and now can’t cut enough jobs fast enough. Bloomberg writes, “Oracle is under financial pressure because of an expensive build-out of AI data centers for customers like OpenAI.”
This is all part of AI's push to be "regulated," which then like weapons manufacturing and banking, will put us all on the hook for the debt, not to mention creating the latest edition of tyrannical corporate government. How can anyone look at the DC regulatory system, say for example the SEC's recent letting fly every idiot IPO, as a solution for anything? History will judge American political thinking died long before AI appeared.
In regards to the supposed rogue AIs that help initiate all the fuss. I recommend Eli the Computer guy here and here. Both pieces regard the long standard industry practices these companies seem to ignore.
Ed Zitron, who is getting funnier and good on Ed, sums up the grift and what is really scary, the debt:
Large Language Models using ever more powerful compute are marketed as AI. It is simply the latest generation of compute. Compute’s been around for 75 years. It's already changed plenty of things. No one can dismiss the technology, though we have no politics to deal with it, or much of anything else for that matter. Pushing fear is despicable. Haven't we had more than enough of that from our political class the last few decades? Unlike all the imbecile valuations of stocks and debt, it's impossible to under value the despicability across the top of society at this point.
In related energy news, the nuke renaissance sold as a solution for the simply insane energy demands promoted for AI seems to finally be meeting investor disfavor. Also, the Sauds announced they’re closing, due to being blown up it appears, the pipeline they were supposedly pushing 4 million barrels a day across. You can't believe anything the Sauds say. Whatever the correct number, the price of gas is going up. At least we won’t have to bailout the oil industry, but then that’s the least regulated industry in America.