How AI will destroy us

Adam Conover sums up the state of AI.

I agree with him, mostly. What all the AI hype is about is finding a way to sneakily glean the products of human intelligence from their babbling on the internet, scrape it up into a goulash without paying any people for it, and use it as a marketing tool — a bad marketing tool. Tell me, does anyone seriously believe that claiming there’s “AI” in your search engine is a great selling point? People are starting to catch on that it’s all annoying nonsense. It’s “the algorithm,” that excuse marketers were using previously to justify unwanted behind-the-scenes rules on Twitter or Facebook that they claimed were there to increase the likelihood you would see stuff you wanted to see, but was actually an excuse to make sure you got served up lots of ads and spam.

The only advantage to AI is that it does cut out direct human intervention and gives the companies the means to circumvent paying authors and artists, so it might be cheaper. For now. Until the companies kill off their competition and starts gouging customers again, as they inevitably will.

Behind the AI facade, of course, is the real villain of the story, capitalism. Skynet isn’t going to kill us all, we’re instead going to be drowned in a glurge of computer-generated bullshit that will temporarily bring great profit to the techbros of silicon valley, all the Elon Musks of the world.

Genius investor!

I admit, I’m impressed. Elon Musk has thrown away $24 billion in less than half a year. That takes real money savvy.

Elon Musk has revealed that he believes Twitter is currently worth $20 billion, or less than half the $44 billion he purchased it for just five months ago.

In a companywide email Friday obtained by the New York Times about employee stock grants, Musk admitted that the company’s value since going private, in his estimation, is roughly $20 billion; in the aftermath of Musk’s acquisition, many advertisers — the social network’s main source of income — fled the service, and as Vox reported earlier this week, haven’t returned.

That’s not the punch line, though. This is the punch line:

Elsewhere in the email, Musk said that at one point Twitter was four months away from running out of money, which sparked the need for mass layoffs and other cuts. However, an optimistic Chief Twit also told the employees that still remain there that “I see a clear, but difficult, path to a >$250B valuation,” and that he now views Twitter as an “inverse start-up.”

As ever, Elon Musk is the master of hype and self-delusion. No, he doesn’t have a plan to increase the value to $250 billion. Right now, he’s playing games with checkmarks that people can buy. I never saw the point of getting verified and getting blue checkmark on my twitter account back in the day, when the company was run by only semi-incompetent management, and now that Musk is imposing weird arbitrary rules to get people to pay for it, I have even less interest. He thinks this will help him increase the value of the company by $230 billion? That’s nuts.

Rising, so far

I woke up this morning, dreading the day — I have so much work I need to get done, and I have doubts that I can get it all done. But I must! I fired up iTunes while I was getting ready, and the first random song is Bauhaus’s “Bela Lugosi is Dead”, which calmed me right down. Second song: Patti Smith, “Horses,” which fired me up and I’m ready get things done.

Then I opened up the Washington Post, and there on the front page is an honest, positive article about trans people, “Most trans adults say transitioning made them more satisfied with their lives”. Yeah, obviously. About time a national paper was brave enough to say it.

Transgender Americans experience stigma and systemic inequality in many aspects of their lives, including education, work and health-care access, a wide-ranging Washington Post-KFF poll finds.

Many have been harassed or verbally abused. They’ve been kicked out of their homes, denied health care and accosted in bathrooms. A quarter have been physically attacked, and about 1 in 5 have been fired or lost out on a promotion because of their gender identity. They are more than twice as likely as the population at large to have experienced serious mental health struggles such as depression.

Yet most trans adults say transitioning has made them more satisfied with their lives.

“Living doesn’t hurt anymore,” said TC Caldwell, a 37-year-old Black nonbinary person from Montgomery, Ala. “It feels good to just breathe and be myself.”

That’s what we should want, that people feel good about being themselves, and that we should be aware of the discrimination some people suffer. Let’s fix that. It’s especially welcome to see that kind of recognition after the embarrassing, awful Richard Dawkins/Piers Morgan interview (I’ll have more to say about that later, after I get an exam assembled and after I figure out how to recover from a disastrous turn in my genetics lab.)

Good morning! It doesn’t take a lot to get a little uplift to start the day.

Never ever read your email

I’m in trouble now. I was late reading some official email, and learned (was reminded) yesterday that I have to submit my annual report describing what I’ve been doing for the past year. The report is due on 20 March…oh. Yesterday.

You’d think I’d learn. This has been a bureaucratic ritual every year for 23 years, and I should learn to expect it. First comes my birthday, which is OK; then comes my wedding anniversary, which is very nice; then comes spring break, which is excellent; and then…darkness descends on my consciousness, and my brain averts away from the cursed next step of administrative paperwork.

OK. I’ve pulled up the form on my computer. Now I have to go through my old records and remind myself of what I did in 2022. Then I have to justify my existence, despite the howling void at my core telling me that I don’t deserve to live and nothing I have ever done matters.

I’ll get it done today somehow.

Not my spring, yet

I get these nice postcards, including a poem, from Theo Nelson every quarter, and I thought I’d share this one because it’s an interesting contrast.

I wish my region looked something like that right now. Instead, it was -16°C yesterday, and my yard is fenced in with 1.5 meters of accumulated snow. There is no color but black, shades of gray, and blinding white. Spring ain’t springing yet.

Maybe my wife thinks I’m Ben Shapiro?

Mary is off to spend a week with our granddaughter, and it’s been a struggle. She’s supposed to have just gotten her own priorities straight — you know, packing, loading the car, that sort of thing — but instead she’s been fussing over me, as if I’m going to be helpless.

The cat’s even worse. When she sees luggage appear by the back door, she knows something is up and has been freaking out and puking all over the place.

I’ll be fine. I got a week’s worth of lectures organized and queued up this morning, and am looking forward to making a jambalaya loaded up with shrimp (Mary doesn’t like shrimp, so usually have to leave them out), and then, of course, the wild parties at my house starting tonight.*

*There will be no wild parties, sorry to say. Teaching resumes Monday.