The age of AI is here! We’re all so excited for the machine to finally generate an incomprehensible amount of garbage, but just imagine if all that garbage was actually useful.

Well I refuse. I’m not interested in imagining how useful you could be to me if you did anything I actually wanted. If you want me to be excited, then maybe do something interesting1.

Inexplicably I’m alone with this opinion and everybody and their dog is trying to get into AI. Investors want the stocks badly enough that none of these companies are public. Executives want to implement the technology badly enough that they are making direct threats to their employees. American politicians and oligarch are talking about this technology as if it’s opium, and they can’t wait until we’re addicted. This from a technology that is fundamentally disconnected from physical reality. It generates text. It can never build a house or grow a potato.

In the light of this absolute depravity I urge caution. Not caution of developing the technology. I don’t give a shit about that. I caution of allowing this technology into your life. American Big Tech has shown time and time again that they are willing and able to abuse and hold they have into your life to try and extract maximal value. You cannot personally afford to give them that handle. You will feel like you are being left behind, but that feeling of being behind will quickly morph into a feeling of freedom when Big Tech decides to up the price for the addicts.

The same can be said for our organizations. The best thing you can do, whether the CEO of a large enterprise or the appointee of governmental agency, is to distance yourself from corporate connections to these toxic entities. Do not enter into contracts with AI providers. Make serious and detailed exit plans for any product you buy from one of them.

In times like these, the best investment you can make is to stay away.

  1. Before you say anything, generating text you’ve already seen is not interesting. That’s lossy search. ↩︎