After watching that posthumous AI statement, I had to drop my phone to say WHAT. THE. FUCK. The video itself was creepy as hell. But not 10% as creepy as a judge - a judge!!! - knowingly changing a sentence because of it. Dear Lord.
It raises serious questions about the ethics of using people's likenesses after they've died. Now anyone can be digitally resurrected and words put in their mouth.
Covered a lot of ground, and very well. Why must AI push into every aspect of our lives? Is it just greed or some techno dream that is really techno-feudalism? The bubble will break, none of this is sustainable, but the level of destruction is vast. It is the story of Midas - insatiable and unchecked greed.
This trend promises to go full circle in a matter of decades: people will be by then so uneducated (thanks to AI) that they will not be able to sustain the very systems that create AI (computers, servers, programs...). It will first degenerate until it is unusable, then it will die. All (natural) systems go in cycles. This artificial one makes the impression to have a really short one.
This is incredibly bleak. It absolutely will require some difficult conversations about the reasons for, and meaning behind, things like higher education and work in general. I suppose one of the benefits of the Trump/Musk midair disassembly of government and civil society is that when it comes time to rebuild we will have a broader scope of possibilities when discussing a transformative restructuring of society in the future. That might just be my bad habit of optimism talking, though.
Yes it is bleak. Bleak and true. But there is hope. I am a Business School professor and director of Master programmes. We are these weeks running courses on AI, GenAI and "vibe coding". Ethically, I am against this. Practically, I have to prepare my graduates for the real world.
Note of hope: many of my students raise questions about the consequences that you signal here. Others specifically request information on the potential impacts on climate, social structures etc.
With respect, critical thinking, debate...we stay on the barricades and some will join us.
The Eloi in the movie "The Time Machine" (I've seen just the one from the 60ies) are beings that are very peaceful but also indifferent, very young, beautiful - and also in reality held like cattle by the Morlocks, who harvest them periodically (by having them conditioned to react in a certain way at hearing the sound of emergency sirens). So, yes, I agree, the comparison doesn't quite fit. The upper and middle class are the ones in control (so they can't be the Eloi). The only parallel being maybe, that they live completely unbothered and unaware by the true reality of things - the right wing turning slowly into Morlocks and eating them alive.
I just read an article in Wired (April 26, 2035): “Code of Misconduct: AI Models Can Learn to Conceal Information From Their Users.” If you can read it and still trust AI, the you are either in denial or stupid. There is no other way to look at it.
The only option is refusal. In every single way. Mass refusal. I know that won't stop it but we will have at least 2 options - those allowing themselves to be forced into this world and those forcing their will against it. I will be the latter.
The comment by the university professor concerning illiterate graduates presages the future that was created by C. M. Kornbluth in "The Little Black Bag" (1950). It seems like a dystopia to us, embedded in the culture of the 20th century and early 21st century, but is it? Classic scholars bemoaned that students no longer memorized epic poetry. We use sophisticated machines with algorithms that we cannot recreate from scratch. Can we repair contemporary consumer goods, or fix bugs in software? Yet we can do extraordinary tasks with spreadsheets as well a host of specialty software packages that extend our capabilities.
The late Allan Bloom decried the state of US education in his book "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987). Did US education decline, or was it simply that what universities taught changed with the times?
Other than that, the 3 other AI dystopias seem genuinely worrying.
The thing that makes me so angry about all of this is that this is a feature, not a bug, when you understand that setting up a technocracy is what's driving this relentless push to infect everything with AI. The folks designing these systems are intentionally creating a class of unemployable, delusional people whose brains are so addled by technology that they no longer understand the difference between hallucinations and reality. Those kind of people are very easy to control and are well-suited to fill the void in the workforce that will be left after we deport all of the immigrants -- this is why no one in government seems to be worried about that issue: their solution for it is us.
"As Harvard historian Erik Baker put it in response to one of the above stories, 'Beginning to feel consumed by what I can only describe as climate anxiety but for AI.'": I sympathize, but I expect catastrophic climate change will overtake catastrophic "AI" adoption. Ultimately, Zuck and his ilk may be left to converse with their "AI" "friends" in underground bunkers. The rest of us may be dead, but there are fates worse than death.
About Bad Future #1, I commented at Read Max: "'A.I. girlfriend' is a truly dismal concept, so yes, that's probably the direction Altman et al. are heading. (Per Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin, 'No matter how cynical you get, it's never enough to keep up.')"
About Bad Future #2, I commented: "When I left academia 16 years ago, it was due to other shit, not because I saw this particular shit coming. However, I'm glad I don't have to deal with this."
About Bad Future #3, I remarked to some (non-"AI") friends: "It's developments like this that give me a creeping feeling that the world really, truly is unraveling."
About Bad Future #4, you said what needs to be said: "'AI' is not 'coming for you' or your jobs ... people like Micha Kaufman are coming for your jobs." Most likely, he already has a bunker, but in case not, he should get one - he's earned his own private hell.
At least with AI would could turn it off for no ill effect. We've probably already locked in 1.5-2C of warming and aren't slowing down. I can grow food without AI. I can't without rain or regular seasons.
Makes my kinda glad to be old. All this shit can only get so bad before I'm outta here. But then, based in family history etc., I expect to live about another 10 years, and lotta shit could happen in that time frame.
Something about attending the AI prompt college with your AI friends to graduate to a job punching words into the AI generator just destroyed me. It's so completely bleak. But also it's not THAT(?) much bleaker than some existing cubicle jobs I've had...
But it also made me wonder why I didn't pick up using ChatGPT when it released despite being open to the next cool tech thing. The fact it's a purposefully unreliable black box makes it uninteresting to try and understand perhaps? In that way it's unlike any tool/calculator/library/system I've tried to use or learn. Even natural systems which may as well be infinitely complex to our brains have their own order in how they respond to change which you can start to appreciate if you know the relationships between the parts.
After watching that posthumous AI statement, I had to drop my phone to say WHAT. THE. FUCK. The video itself was creepy as hell. But not 10% as creepy as a judge - a judge!!! - knowingly changing a sentence because of it. Dear Lord.
It raises serious questions about the ethics of using people's likenesses after they've died. Now anyone can be digitally resurrected and words put in their mouth.
I feel like we need to have a family meeting, but for all of civilization, over that college cheating piece. Here is the NYMag article, unpaywalled https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/everyone-is-cheating-their-way-through-college/ar-AA1EjCRk .
Thank you for the link, A.J. That was quite a read. Now I understand the seismic shifts happening in education from a more informed perspective.
Covered a lot of ground, and very well. Why must AI push into every aspect of our lives? Is it just greed or some techno dream that is really techno-feudalism? The bubble will break, none of this is sustainable, but the level of destruction is vast. It is the story of Midas - insatiable and unchecked greed.
This trend promises to go full circle in a matter of decades: people will be by then so uneducated (thanks to AI) that they will not be able to sustain the very systems that create AI (computers, servers, programs...). It will first degenerate until it is unusable, then it will die. All (natural) systems go in cycles. This artificial one makes the impression to have a really short one.
This is incredibly bleak. It absolutely will require some difficult conversations about the reasons for, and meaning behind, things like higher education and work in general. I suppose one of the benefits of the Trump/Musk midair disassembly of government and civil society is that when it comes time to rebuild we will have a broader scope of possibilities when discussing a transformative restructuring of society in the future. That might just be my bad habit of optimism talking, though.
Yes it is bleak. Bleak and true. But there is hope. I am a Business School professor and director of Master programmes. We are these weeks running courses on AI, GenAI and "vibe coding". Ethically, I am against this. Practically, I have to prepare my graduates for the real world.
Note of hope: many of my students raise questions about the consequences that you signal here. Others specifically request information on the potential impacts on climate, social structures etc.
With respect, critical thinking, debate...we stay on the barricades and some will join us.
"vibe coding" is now on my list of phrases that shouldn't exist.
“Those among the upper middle class that can still afford to go to college takes one step closer to becoming the Eloi. “
Leaving the rest of us to be Morlocks. Hmmm … didn’t the Morlocks kill and eat the Eloi? “Eat the rich” is an older idea than I thought.
The Eloi in the movie "The Time Machine" (I've seen just the one from the 60ies) are beings that are very peaceful but also indifferent, very young, beautiful - and also in reality held like cattle by the Morlocks, who harvest them periodically (by having them conditioned to react in a certain way at hearing the sound of emergency sirens). So, yes, I agree, the comparison doesn't quite fit. The upper and middle class are the ones in control (so they can't be the Eloi). The only parallel being maybe, that they live completely unbothered and unaware by the true reality of things - the right wing turning slowly into Morlocks and eating them alive.
I just read an article in Wired (April 26, 2035): “Code of Misconduct: AI Models Can Learn to Conceal Information From Their Users.” If you can read it and still trust AI, the you are either in denial or stupid. There is no other way to look at it.
About time Wired wrote more than just headlines from the future. We need full articles. 😅
It's from The Economist, and here it is unpaywalled https://archive.is/2025.05.04-034115/https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/04/23/ai-models-can-learn-to-conceal-information-from-their-users
The only option is refusal. In every single way. Mass refusal. I know that won't stop it but we will have at least 2 options - those allowing themselves to be forced into this world and those forcing their will against it. I will be the latter.
You’re speaking my language here.
Thanks for making me feel less crazy/alone!
LLMs are 3 things; theft, rape, and murder. Stealing IP, Raping innocence, and Killing jobs.
My least favorite advertising tag line RN: “powered by AI.” 🤖
Watch for it. It is everywhere. Even on products you might not remotely associate with AI. And it is CREEPY.
The comment by the university professor concerning illiterate graduates presages the future that was created by C. M. Kornbluth in "The Little Black Bag" (1950). It seems like a dystopia to us, embedded in the culture of the 20th century and early 21st century, but is it? Classic scholars bemoaned that students no longer memorized epic poetry. We use sophisticated machines with algorithms that we cannot recreate from scratch. Can we repair contemporary consumer goods, or fix bugs in software? Yet we can do extraordinary tasks with spreadsheets as well a host of specialty software packages that extend our capabilities.
The late Allan Bloom decried the state of US education in his book "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987). Did US education decline, or was it simply that what universities taught changed with the times?
Other than that, the 3 other AI dystopias seem genuinely worrying.
The thing that makes me so angry about all of this is that this is a feature, not a bug, when you understand that setting up a technocracy is what's driving this relentless push to infect everything with AI. The folks designing these systems are intentionally creating a class of unemployable, delusional people whose brains are so addled by technology that they no longer understand the difference between hallucinations and reality. Those kind of people are very easy to control and are well-suited to fill the void in the workforce that will be left after we deport all of the immigrants -- this is why no one in government seems to be worried about that issue: their solution for it is us.
"As Harvard historian Erik Baker put it in response to one of the above stories, 'Beginning to feel consumed by what I can only describe as climate anxiety but for AI.'": I sympathize, but I expect catastrophic climate change will overtake catastrophic "AI" adoption. Ultimately, Zuck and his ilk may be left to converse with their "AI" "friends" in underground bunkers. The rest of us may be dead, but there are fates worse than death.
About Bad Future #1, I commented at Read Max: "'A.I. girlfriend' is a truly dismal concept, so yes, that's probably the direction Altman et al. are heading. (Per Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin, 'No matter how cynical you get, it's never enough to keep up.')"
About Bad Future #2, I commented: "When I left academia 16 years ago, it was due to other shit, not because I saw this particular shit coming. However, I'm glad I don't have to deal with this."
About Bad Future #3, I remarked to some (non-"AI") friends: "It's developments like this that give me a creeping feeling that the world really, truly is unraveling."
About Bad Future #4, you said what needs to be said: "'AI' is not 'coming for you' or your jobs ... people like Micha Kaufman are coming for your jobs." Most likely, he already has a bunker, but in case not, he should get one - he's earned his own private hell.
At least with AI would could turn it off for no ill effect. We've probably already locked in 1.5-2C of warming and aren't slowing down. I can grow food without AI. I can't without rain or regular seasons.
Makes my kinda glad to be old. All this shit can only get so bad before I'm outta here. But then, based in family history etc., I expect to live about another 10 years, and lotta shit could happen in that time frame.
Something about attending the AI prompt college with your AI friends to graduate to a job punching words into the AI generator just destroyed me. It's so completely bleak. But also it's not THAT(?) much bleaker than some existing cubicle jobs I've had...
But it also made me wonder why I didn't pick up using ChatGPT when it released despite being open to the next cool tech thing. The fact it's a purposefully unreliable black box makes it uninteresting to try and understand perhaps? In that way it's unlike any tool/calculator/library/system I've tried to use or learn. Even natural systems which may as well be infinitely complex to our brains have their own order in how they respond to change which you can start to appreciate if you know the relationships between the parts.