This is a great two part look into why AI is a scam.
Crypto collapse? Get in loser, we’re pivoting to AI – Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain:
ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by Sam Altman’s OpenAI and released in November 2022, is a stupendously scaled-up autocomplete. Really, that’s all that it is. ChatGPT can’t think as a human can. It just spews out word combinations based on vast quantities of training text — all used without the authors’ permission.
The warnings of AI doom originate with LessWrong’s Eliezer Yudkowsky, a man whose sole achievements in life are charity fundraising — getting Peter Thiel to fund his Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a research institute that does almost no research — and finishing a popular Harry Potter fanfiction novel. Yudkowsky has literally no other qualifications or experience.
Yudkowsky believes there is no greater threat to humanity than a rogue AI taking over the world and treating humans as mere speedbumps. He believes this apocalypse is imminent. The only hope is to give MIRI all the money you have. This is also the most effective possible altruism.
The thing Sam’s working on is so cool and dank that it could destroy humanity! So you better give him a pile of money and a regulatory moat around his business. And not just take him at his word and shut down OpenAI immediately.
Pivot to AI: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
Venture capital is professional gambling. VCs are looking for a liquidity event. One big winner can pay for a lot of failures.
Finding someone to buy a startup you’ve funded takes marketing and hype. The company doing anything useful, or anything that even works, is optional.
Commercial AI runs on underpaid workers in English-speaking countries in Africa creating new training data and better responses to queries. It’s a painstaking and laborious process that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.