As someone who has spent his entire life chasing whatever is new in digital technology, you would expect me to love AI. Indeed, one of the key reasons I was attracted to programming as a child was to "build a friend".
I had a rather lonely childhood.
I abandoned that goal pretty quickly for a few reasons:
- Computers in the 80s could barely display graphics, much less "think."
- I had no idea how to use BASIC's collection of GOTOs and SUBs to create consciousness.
- I discovered the modem.
A 300 baud Hayes modem was buried among the box of obsolete hand me downs I received from a family friend. A trip to the bookstore gave me the knowledge needed to not only connect it, but start dialing into the many BBS numbers listed in the back of the free local computer magazines I picked up each week at the Egghead.
My loneliness was sated by online forums, asynchronous online games (which we, for esoteric reasons, called "doors"), and the sense of connection made with other nerds who had to be like me in some way. BBSes were their own social filters - you had to not only own a computer and a modem, AND know how to use them, you also needed to bother picking up the local computer magazines and try dialing into these systems.
When I first experienced the internet in college in 1993, it was like the BBS network times a thousand. I convinced most of my high school friends to get their own email addresses at their college campuses so we could stay in touch. I participated in a variety of Usenet discussion groups on a wild array of topical interests. The technology was awesome, but it was the ability to connect with a human on the other end of the line that made it worth my while.
These experiences are the backbone of my personal philosophy when it comes to technology: Technology is best when it connects people and augments their capabilities.
AI, as it is currently being advertised and deployed, isolates people and promises to replace them. It is an insult to humanity.
But, worse than that - it's intensely boring.
Generative AI - the kind that creates text and images from models trained on human creativity - is especially offensive. The focus has largely been on the lack of concern for intellectual property rights when training the models and the potential for replacing those creative humans with slop, but I think the popular reactions against both limit their impact. Instead, the slop that is produced is not only frequently incorrect and obviously artificial, it often lacks any sense of "soul".
It's very impressive that we made rocks not only think, but create in a way that does seem to fool a lot of folks. The Turing test has officially been beat - kudos!
But the dreck produced is hardly worth the use of resources.
There are constant reports of people having meaningful chats with the AI - in some cases having truly therpeutic awakenings. Is this the result of a magical piece of technology capable of peering deeply, but objectively, into the human soul to find fundamental truths?
Or is it that these folks - perhaps for the first time in their lives - feel comfortable completely opening up to something that won't judge them for whatever they think or believe? Indeed, many of these models have been downright obsequious, which has led to many negative outcomes.
Generative AI is showing the holes in our society. It's highlighting our lack of humanity for one another by replacing it with a slick simulation of humanity that feels very wrong to most people while seemingly reinforcing certain aspects of sociopathy.
There's a lot of ink being spilled about how AI will negatively impact the economy, how the people behind it are - without exaggeration - some of the cruelest and least creative human beings to have ever walked the planet, how it represents a hollowed out technical industry that's run out of ideas and innovation and are clinging to any desperate hope for continued growth.
And all of that's true.
But generative AI's greatest sin lay, in my eyes, in just how unbearably boring it really is.
We've seen enough "shrimp Jesuses" to last several lifetimes. We've read the hallucinatory dreck produced by these models that are held in awe by the kinds of people who struggle to write a birthday card greeting. Worst of all, we've all had to explain to a friend or a loved one that the video or image they SWEAR looks TOO REAL TO BE FAKE is just more AI bullshit intended to cause you to question your own sense of reality.
What is the point of generative AI?
It makes a mockery of human creativity.
It allows people who have not taken the time to develop any skills to fool others into believing they are artists.
It makes it insanely easy to create convincing lies that force people to question everything they see and read. Not just news and politics - everything.
I got on TikTok for the first time this past month to do some work on behalf of a client. A completely new TikTok account has no user history to apply to its algorithm, so it throws up what it thinks is most likely to get engagement. The amount of very, very obviously fake AI videos on there - countless "cats confronting bears", "pets driving", "obviously fake products", etc. - was overwhelming.
Because I knew so many of the videos were faked with AI, I rapidly scrolled past. As I did, I saw a handful of things that, in the past, I would have found incredible - bike stunts, impressive animal feats, cool home-built gadgets - but for which I had no interest because the chance they were faked with AI was just too high. I'd stop a few times just to get a closer look, only to see tell-tale signs - like the "Sona" logo in the corner. Cool things are only cool when they're real.
What's the point of scrolling TikTok if half of it's just AI generated nonsense? The rise of the AI influencer means half the people on there posing for the camera are likely not even actual people - which would explain why so many of them look alike.
This is the "dead internet theory" come to life. It's the ultimate form of the Torment Nexus. And it's boring as hell.
I want to see more cool, creative stuff built with human hands and a human mind. I want software that a person carefully thought through and crafted, not slopped together using a code assistant. (For that matter, I want code from independent developers passionate about their work, not from corporate code monkeys delivering requirements for a sprint).
The only thing that has any value in human society is human life. Take that away, and what are you left with?
Generative AI is offensive to humanity, but even more offensive to my sense of what makes technology cool. Generative AI divides and replaces rather than connects and augments. Ultimately, it's a technological dead end - it only exists to serve and build itself. The things easily replaced by AI had little actual value to begin with. While there are definitely some good uses for many of the technologies underpinning generative AI, I question whether their value is worth all the human attention and resources focused on the industry.
I'm looking forward to it bottoming out so we can get back to working on more meaningful things.