No, a rogue AI drone simulation did not kill its operator, despite recent news reports. Why make up a story about something like that? Because it enforces the narrative that AI is super-powerful and threatens human extinction, which is bullshit. But it’s profitable bullshit for AI grifters, who are literally the same people who were peddling crytop/blockchain grift untill last year.
Cory Doctorow:
If the problem with “AI” (neither “artificial,” nor “intelligent”) is that it is about to become self-aware and convert the entire solar system to paperclips, then we need a moonshot to save our species from these garish harms.
If, on the other hand, the problem is that AI systems just _suck _and shouldn’t be trusted to fly drones, or drive cars, or decide who gets bail, or identify online hate-speech, or determine your creditworthiness or insurability, then all those AI companies are out of business.
Take away every consequential activity through which AI harms people, and all you’ve got left is low-margin activities like writing SEO garbage, lengthy reminisces about “the first time I ate an egg” that help an omelette recipe float to the top of a search result. Sure, you can put 95 percent of the commercial illustrators on the breadline, but their total wages don’t rise to one percent of the valuation of the big AI companies.
For those sky-high valuations to remain intact until the investors can cash out, we need to think about AI as a powerful, transformative technology, not as a better autocomplete.
We literally just sat through this movie, and it sucked. Remember when blockchain was going to be worth trillions, and anyone who didn’t get in on the ground floor could “have fun being poor?”
At the time, we were told that the answer to the problems of blockchain were exotic, new forms of regulation that accommodated the “innovation” of crypto. Under no circumstances should we attempt to staunch the rampant fraud and theft by applying boring old securities and commodities and money-laundering regulations. To do that would be to recognize that “fin-tech” is just a synonym for “unlicensed bank.”
The pitchmen who made out like bandits on crypto — leaving mom-and-pop investors holding the bag — are precisely the same people who are beating the drum for AI today.