AI: Will *We* Be The Product?
Also, Talking to Sperm Whales.
(caution: This is a bit of a tech-grump rant; There’s some good news down at the end though)
Despite a tough VC environment, there was about $42B invested in AI businesses in 2023.
If you stacked $42 Billion dollar bills, one on top of another, how high would that reach? 15 billion feet?
That’s about 2850 miles? That’s, like, the distance between NYC and LA:
First, That’s a lot of money. If “F*** ton” was a unit, I bet this comes close.
Second, let’s not think about whether that money would have been better spent to, you know, do some good (e.g. how many kids could have college tuition wiped out for one year)1
After many decades of AI being a mostly backwater, unsexy research project, AI is now, for all intents and purposes, a business venture: All the VC money is being invested in commercial enterprises, as a first step to make all the investors even more money.
We all know this - it’s obvious because we’re all using the internet - but when the VCs show up with bags of money, projects that started out with a noble objective (like “lets connect all the computers so we can share our studies easily”) can get, well, re-purposed.
And now, more and more, the incentives for AI companies are being aligned around profit. When research projects have to turn a profit, comprises are made.
So, we probably should start thinking about how all those investors will get a return. It’s going to be in profits and that will have to come from us, either business users or ultimately, consumers through subscription, usage fees, or advertising.
For emphasis: Duh.
That’s America: Free enterprise, free markets, $1 hot dogs and $10 blue jeans and “free” internet stuff.
We’ve been through this already with the internet, the web, mobile, and now AI.
For the web, advertising was the original sin. What started out as a way to fund the content, turned into the point. All those websites, all the amazing media brands, existed to deliver eyeballs to advertisers. And the web became a grift.
What do we get when “free” artificial intelligence is being woven into every screen that we use? Applying the most advanced tech that humanity has ever known will not be good for us: More screen usage, more app usage, more time getting information from AI-driven tools.
Our attention will be the profit driver. Our attention will be the way the money will flow back to the investors. We’ll continue to be the product.
Is it too late? Is it inevitable? Has the enshittification of ChatGPT and all the others begun? will it all, in the words of Jim Bernard, “shift to grift?”
I don’t really know what to do, other than happily pay OpenAI for ChatGPT so they don’t start sliding ads into my chats.
On The Other Hand (Good News)
Maybe we can use AI to finally talk to whales? After reading A LOT (maybe too much) about whales while making my way through Moby Dick, I feel excited about the idea that we might be able to talk to them someday. (Ahab would have been even crazier if he could actually know what the whales were saying about him).
And, we can keep talking to Lou Reed?
So it’s not all worrying. Just somewhat worrying.
Music for The Vibes
If you haven’t yet, you should definitely be listening to Khruangbin, a trio from Houston that plays instrumental stuff: It’s gumbo of world music, jazz, rock, a little bit of dub. It’s so good with headphones on, too.
