The Generative AI Con.
The Generative AI Con.
It's been just over two years and two months since ChatGPT launched, and in that time we've seen Large Language Models (LLMs) blossom from a novel concept into one of the most craven cons of the 21st century — a cynical bubble inflated by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman built to sell
I refuse to sit here and pretend that any of this matters. OpenAI and Anthropic are not innovators, and are antithetical to the spirit of Silicon Valley. They are management consultants dressed as founders, cynical con artists raising money for products that will never exist while peddling software that destroys our planet and diverts attention and capital away from things that might solve real problems.
I'm tired of the delusion. I'm tired of being forced to take these men seriously. I'm tired of being told by the media and investors that these men are building the future when the only things they build are mediocre and expensive. There is no joy here, no mystery, no magic, no problems solved, no lives saved, and very few lives changed other than new people added to Forbes' Midas list.
None of this is powerful, or impressive, other than in how big a con it’s become. Look at the products and the actual outputs and tell me — does any of this actually feel like the future? Isn’t it kind of weird that the big, scary threats they’ve made about how AI will take our jobs never seem to translate to an actual product? Isn’t it strange that despite all of their money and power they’re yet to make anything truly useful?
My heart darkens, albeit briefly, when I think of how cynical all of this is. Corporations building products that don't really do much that are being sold on the idea that one day they might, peddled by reporters that want to believe their narratives — and in some cases actively champion them. The damage will be tens of thousands of people fired, long-term environmental and infrastructural chaos, and a profound depression in Silicon Valley that I believe will dwarf the dot-com bust.
And when this all falls apart — and I believe it will — there will be a very public reckoning for the tech industry.
antithetical to the spirit of silicon valley
Tell me you haven't been paying attention without telling me you haven't been paying attention.
The author seems to think that OpenAI having an unsustainable business model means generative AI is a con. Generative AI doesn’t mean OpenAI 🤦♂️ There is a good chance that the VC funds invested in OpenAI will have evaporated in 5 years. But generative AI will exist in 5 years, it will be orders of magnitude more useful, and it will help solve many problems.
The level of user sophistication required to use modern "Ai" in a productive useful way puts it squarely beyond the reach of the masses. Alphafold is fucking awesome, chatGPT O3 is nothing but a gimmick.
100% and like any tool, it can be used poorly resulting in AI bit rot, bugs, unmaintainable code, etc. But when used well, given appropriate context, by users that know what good solutions looks like, it can increase developer efficiency.
it will help solve many problems
And will make many jobs redundant.
It will. So has just about every other major technical development ever. Eventually those lost jobs should be replaced by even more jobs made possible by the new technology, but in the meantime it will suck.
Thats how you know its not just a gimmick. How many jobs did blockchain replace? Just about zero. How many jobs did computers or the Internet or the mechanical loom or the freaking steam engine replace? Tons.
I feel the frustration. I swear to God, the market evaluation of this technology, compared to downright environmental and financial costs, is absolutely insane. There is nothing they can solve that would excuse this kind of investment and damage, nothing. I love machine learning and data science, but my urge to violently bludgeon every stupid MBA biz-dev head to death for constantly over-promising and straight up lying to customers is rising every month. Fuckers will cause another AI winter, while burning the Earth so we can get more shitty slop.
“If we run terabytes of text through a statistical model, then spend millions of man-hours labeling outputs, we can approximate the way humans respond to a prompt.” –OpenAI, more or less
Wow, what a surprise. I'll do you one better: if you take me to a river, I can tell you where the water is going to go next! Maybe we can get some VC money by promising to deliver clean water to every business in the world without all the expense of pipelines and plumbers? I mean, just look at all this water. It may not go where you want right now, but let us dump sewage in it for a couple years and who knows what it’ll do.
Think of the Metaverse. Or Web3
They didnt really fall apart, they faded out as the VC money moved from them to AI. There is too much money sloshing around, courtesy of moneyprinting and inherited wealth from the largest and richest generation the world will ever see.
Neural networks work. We know they do, but they have some way to go before they learn to do the work for us. The current crop of companies will become obsolete as soon as the RSUs of most of their workers vest.
Patience
What is the E in WYEA? I’ve only seen this used in ways that had no context clues.
WYEA is the name of the website "Where's Your Ed At?" Ed is the nickname of the writer, Edward Zitron.
Ed as in Edward Zitron, the author of the site. The ttle is a play on a Basement Jaxx song.
Not the most important thing but god I hate this website’s image. “WYEA?” [rock man smiling smugly]
author complains about having to repeat himself in his ranting over and over again, 2/10
read this if you like angry people yelling at you.... tons of bold, italics, underlines, and even the occasional ALL CAPS
my favorite part: 1. Shut the fuck up!
it's called having a conscience, you might wanna try it