So, this is somewhat of a direct contrast to the other pretty reasonable thread which I would deem (in Zitron's style) The Hater's Guide to Ed Zitron. The reason I initially post this to ~society...
So, this is somewhat of a direct contrast to the other pretty reasonable thread which I would deem (in Zitron's style) The Hater's Guide to Ed Zitron.
The reason I initially post this to ~society instead of to ~tech is because, while it does inevitability circle back into the anti-AI economics narrative, it does so from a perspective that makes a lot of sense and I had not yet seen explored.
The first quarter or so of the article isn't about AI at all, but rather the sequence of geopolitical economic events that got us here: Hypernormalization (Adam Curtis's documentary).
Hypernormalization heavily focuses on post-cold war Russia, the means used to justify the Iraq war, and the rise of Donald Trump, but its lessons ring through everything I’ve been discussing for the last few years — that the tech industry and the markets themselves have moved beyond innovation or value creation into the realm of “managing” situations rather than addressing them, creating whatever reality is necessary to keep “things” going, no matter how ridiculous or unstable.
A lot of this comes from a lack of accountability. Nobody faced any real consequences for lying about evidence of WMDs in Iraq or the Great Financial Crisis. In fact, most of the people in question, even those who lost a lot of money, came roaring back years later. The amount of times I’ve read some bio of some guy who was working at Lehman, or Bear Stearns, or even Enron who eventually returned to their pre-crash status quo is enough to make one doubt the existence of consequences, or to convince oneself of the fact that they’re unevenly distributed.
It goes on to cite a whole lot of examples that solidly define our post-9/11 world: Iraq WMDs, Enron, Blackwater, Great Financal Crisis, Metaverse, NFTs, etc
And then proceeds to (deftly IMO) draw the parallels about what was done then and what is happening now. When you read this quote about Enron, it's really hard to not feel that same vibe about Anthropic and OpenAI:
A BBC report would talk about how “Enron played the media,” noting how it was called “a model for the new American workplace” for the New York Times, and named “America’s Most Innovative Company” by Fortune six years running as well as one of the 100 best companies to work for in America. While investment analyst John Olson said that Enron was “great at gaming the system…Wall Street…[and] the media,” the problem was far more obvious: nobody could explain how Enron makes money, and both analysts and the media were fine with it.
Edit: Oh, and it turns out I had married into a family that lost their multi-generation family business because they were downstream of Enron. Small world.
So, this is somewhat of a direct contrast to the other pretty reasonable thread which I would deem (in Zitron's style) The Hater's Guide to Ed Zitron.
The reason I initially post this to ~society instead of to ~tech is because, while it does inevitability circle back into the anti-AI economics narrative, it does so from a perspective that makes a lot of sense and I had not yet seen explored.
The first quarter or so of the article isn't about AI at all, but rather the sequence of geopolitical economic events that got us here: Hypernormalization (Adam Curtis's documentary).
It goes on to cite a whole lot of examples that solidly define our post-9/11 world: Iraq WMDs, Enron, Blackwater, Great Financal Crisis, Metaverse, NFTs, etc
And then proceeds to (deftly IMO) draw the parallels about what was done then and what is happening now. When you read this quote about Enron, it's really hard to not feel that same vibe about Anthropic and OpenAI:
Edit: Oh, and it turns out I had married into a family that lost their multi-generation family business because they were downstream of Enron. Small world.