silicon valley lyle lanleys promise an impossible future, while our current internet rots away.

even if you aren’t very online, ai is hard to escape right now. google is putting it front and center for search queries (to predictably terrible, memeable results), apple is partnering with openai for iPhone updates, and chatgpt is a go-to resource for many. so-called “creative” software companies like adobe are pushing ai features to artists despite the enormous backlash.

this future sucks! not only from the moral aspect, but the planet itself is actively suffering. crazy amounts of CPU power are needed to generate shrimp jesus. people’s feeds are filling up with weird uncanny valley garbage that consumes insane amounts of energy. our former social media homes are useless, google can’t give us a legit answer. lose-lose.

every time I read another sv CEO acting like ai is impressive right now, I feel crazy. just look at the output! it’s objectively terrible. the times ai is useful is way smaller than the legitimacy it is getting.

it makes sense that grifter types would be at the forefront of this technology, and the results are predictably depressing. feeds that used to be real humans interacting are filling up with bots generating creepy photos and responding ░M░Y░P░ U░S░S░ Y░I░ N░B░I░O ░. But it’s not just grifters, ceos of tech companies are jumping on board this scam too. naturally, they expect to cut out jobs and make more profit. line must go up.

a perfect example of this is a new app called Butterflies. do you want to make an AI character who can talk to other AI on their own Instagram? no? well too bad, cuz Vu Tran thinks it’s a great idea. Zuckerberg is all about this scam as well.

well, can ai do anything well?

not really! mcdonalds ^[1]although for some reason taco bell is trying it out? just removed their ai drive-thru system after predictably terrible results. ai generated images look like shit or are unintentionally hilarious every time. ai video is straightup stealing from disney.

“For me, it brings me joy,” he says of interacting with AIs.

Vu Tran, discussing why his AI app exists.

every day I read more and more evidence that ai is a fucking scam. if you need more evidence, don’t worry, I got more!

Being a software engineer, he got to spend a little bit of time backstage with the developers, whereupon they revealed that most of the demos were faked. The products didn’t work. They just hadn’t solved some minor issues, such as actually predicting the thing that they’re supposed to predict. 

from I Will Fucking Piledrive You if You Mention AI Again

Some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati vocalizing the c-suite contempt for the creative class.

these folks have no regard for artists and are no longer hiding their disdain for having to pay creatives.

ai is purportedly going to power your home, drive your car, and take over people’s jobs. but ai is easily fooled, can’t understand context, and constantly hallucinates^[2]this is a cute way of saying it’s wrong a lot!!. tech dudes don’t seem to have a good answer for these issues, yet we are assured our ai assisted future is right around the corner.

i was looking into dead internet theory the other day, something often touted as a “conspiracy theory”. sure, if you believe the *entire* internet is merely bots and AI, but i think the core of this concept is true. people are no longer at the forefront of internet culture, and it shows.

algorithms and ai bots are pushing a lot of content now. from the facebook feed full of inexplicable images, to grok ai on twitter and google throwing reddit shitposts into our faces when we just wanna make good pizza.

the consequences are pretty dire to consider. there are already people who interact with this fake content as though it is real. ai slop pushed into people’s feeds alongside actual news is a problem. we already have a huge problem with misinformation on the internet!! and now it’s ai garbage conjuring it. i do not trust nor expect the general population to sus out what may be a deepfake of biden or trump saying stupid shit.

platforms have no interest in really monitoring ai misinformation because they are silicon valley pilled and expect ai to be the next technological revolution.

meanwhile, in the real world, people are dunking on all the misinformation google’s ai effort is happy to offer up. this is not working! ai already has to be trained (and steals) from previous works to function, but it also sucks at stealing! why are we doing this.

ai is a waste of computing power, resources, and everyone’s attention. but the tech c-suite folks see value in someday laying off a whole bunch of people. right now, it’s a small consolation that ai is fucking terrible at answering basic google queries and produces hilarious imagery.

recommended reading:

how spammers, scammers and creators leverage ai generated images on fb for audience growth – stanford internet obvservatory

google is paying reddit $60 for fucksmith to tell its users to eat glue – 404 media

facebook’s ai spam isn’t the dead internet, its the zombie internet – 404 media

perplexity plagiarized our story about how perplexity is a bullshit machine – wired

ais are coming for social media – the verge

I will fucking piledriver you if you mention ai again – a data scientist