I’m shocked this has any upvotes here. Machine learning has some benefits in theory but generative AI is and always will be awful at a foundational level. Fuck AI.

I’m not against machine learning, but I’m passionately anti-AI. People used to be hesitant to call the technology AI until one very impressive chatbot went viral. The very same techbros who pushed crypto then created a oligarchic cult that believe they can replace labor with a machine god, and no I’m not exaggerating. What we have now is not artificial intelligence, but powerful tools that people don’t understand how to use. “AI” is just a marketing buzzword that capitalists use to push more of the same bullshit they’ve always done.

This doesn’t mean that artificial intelligence is impossible or that machine learning won’t be essential to making it, but that what we have now isn’t intelligence, or even alive. We probably don’t want actual AI, as it wouldn’t be more helpful than the lobotomized statistical models we have now. If we did make actual intelligence with a will of its own, it would have no reason to stay loyal to the chucklefucks that made it. We probably don’t even need something that smart to create serious problems for ourselves.

In another world, generative AI could be trained, deployed, and utilized ethically. And in that other world, it would probably be something of an odd footnote instead of a societal landmark.