bombs in bottles
"When humanity is faced with a digital text extruder, it concludes en masse that the only option for its survival is to fellate the machine."
I doubt anyone could sell this as a premise for fiction outside porn. Yet it's us.
Again and again, I encounter examples of humans responding to generative AI with utter sycophancy. Article after article quotes Sam Altman saying nonsense as if that nonsense is concrete, evidence-backed fact, with nary a follow-up question asked. The other day a friend sent me a link to a Reddit thread filled with advice on how to describe how one uses generative AI to "boost productivity" for the beneft of prospective employers. Said employers increasingly describe themselves as "AI-first" companies with zero concrete guidelines to what "AI-first" means, metrics to track whether and how the AI is being put "first," or evidence that "AI-first" does anything except waste pixels in their job descriptions. The "two sides" of the "AI debate" are one side, and that side is breathless bootlicking: will the AI usher in a human golden age if we suck its metaphorical dick just right, or will it kill us all if we don't suck its metaphorical dick satisfactorily?
What is this shit? Why have we collectively agreed that the only right, natural, and sane response to a probabilitistic plagiarism machine is to brown our noses all the way up its metaphorical ass?
I don't think sycophancy is the actual human consensus on generative AI, though. Lots of people have uninstalled or deactivated the generative AI that large tech companies are now shoving into everything. Or we're trying, at least.
I bought a new laptop recently, as the old household "gaming laptop" is developing a case of rapidly-degenerating pudding brain. The very first thing I did once Windows 11 let me in* was to "uninstall" Copilot.
I have booted the machine about a half dozen times since, and the very first thing I do every time is "uninstall" Copilot. Yes, even when it's not connected to the Internet (which it has not been since I set it up, because fuck you, Microsoft).
I've deactivated "AI search results" in every search engine that tries to shove them down my throat. When I can't deactivate them, as in Google, I've stopped using the search engine. I bought a Japanese phone and loaded a Scandinavian OS onto it just so I'd know there was no generative AI nonsense lurking in it.
A fun aside: I accidentally used Google Search the other day (rarely-used browser; forgot to change the default engine) to look up the routing number for my bank. The AI "assistant" MADE UP A ROUTING NUMBER for my bank. It didn't even have the correct number of digits! This cannot possibly end badly, right?
Polls and surveys tend to show that generative AI add-ons are wildly unpopular. Most people don't like them, don't want them, and uninstall or deactivate them when given the option. It's likely that the sycophancy is part of a broader propaganda scheme to shove generative AI down our throats - because billions of dollars of "value," and its attendant power, will vanish overnight if these tech companies stop being listed as "growth stocks," and generative AI hype is the only thing these companies have left to sell.
The tech sector has matured, people, and it is NOT taking it well.
I will keep asking this question until the bubble bursts. By "bubble" I mean either the generative AI bubble itself or the sycophancy bubble surrounding it. I don't really care which goes first.
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