How We Talk About AI
Every time Sam Altman and his parade of vacuous little conmen show us these expensive computer tricks, the reaction always plays a little bit into their act. We argue for the value of human art on reflex. Real human artists are better than AI because of this and that, a piece of our soul against the half-chewed bolus of a machine's drawing, robots replacing our jobs—I think all these dramatic reactions only make tech griftocrats shiver in delight.
Because we know these people, right? They're our bosses, people who think code makes them omniscient. They don't care what we think about art because they don't think about art in the first place. They don't think about anything but this empty vision of the future. When they see us passionately defending the soul in human art, it's validating to them because they see us as Luddites reacting to the turbulence of innovation—if we're reacting this strongly, they they think they must be doing something right.
And let's be clear on this: generative AI isn't a thinking machine. It won't lead us into the singularity, Sam Altman and people like him can barely articulate a real use case for it. It isn't going to replace our jobs, it's just going to make them worse. Hell, it happened ever since the start of the hype cycle (look at Philippine job boards and despair), and improvements on the technology have done nothing to alleviate the significant added tedium of using genAI to do things for you.
We need to think about how we're reacting to this slop. It's all a grift, and we don't need to give it any more legitimacy than we do a conman.
(a little recommended reading, because I know that a blog post as short and provocative as this will leave readers wanting some actual journalism:
I recommend reading Ed Zitron's work on AI companies and the current state of the tech industry in general. He's written, quite a lot, about this topic on his newsletter and podcast.)