Ed Zitron on what might come next for the AI bubble and the tech industry
Soundtrack: Masters of Reality - High Noon Amsterdam I have said almost everything in this piece in every one of these articles for months. I am not upset, but just stating an obvious truth. The current state of affairs effectively pushes against the boundaries of good sense, logic and reason,
Fire Satya Nadella, fire Sundar Pichai, and work out a way to fire Mark Zuckerberg. These men are unworthy. They don't truly find any of this exciting or meaningful. Big tech has been overcome with nihilism, and it must change its ways to not eventually face perdition.
I’m serious.
Do you think they’ve got a backup plan? Do you think they burned all of this money on such a mediocre and wasteful solution because they’ve got better ideas?
Here here, I'm sick of working in this bullshit industry that's been completely taken over by conmen. Fire all of them (into the sun) and let's get back to businesses being run by the people who actually know things.
And, fundamentally, this technology really isn’t that exciting.
I’m sorry, it isn’t. The *idea of a *“super smart friend that knows everything about me” is exciting, as is the idea of automating away drudgery — spreadsheets and documents, for example. Yet, generative AI doesn’t actually do these things. Putting aside any feelings I may have, it has not changed my life, a guy who loves using technology and is willing to put hours into finding solutions to automate or mitigate problems in his life.
I don’t know a single person — I have literally never met or spoken to one — that has meaningfully changed their workflow or life as a result of generative AI outside of being able to integrate it to speed up some processes in already-existing systems.
Nothing about this was real. It’s a farce. The promises of artificial intelligence will not be kept through the pursuit of generative AI, as generative AI is a dead-end technology that has peaked, one that costs too much — both financially and socially — to keep it going.
Yep. Pretty much everyone I know and whose opinion I respect said this at the outset. It’s like watching a virtual carnival of con men roll through town, feeding on everyone else, before moving on to the next town.
I mean, we all tried to tell the “leaders” and “decision makers” but. Money clouds judgement. And this was a LOT of money.
