by BrenBarn | 2025-10-18 08:46:11+00:00
I feel like this is another case of an article kind of missing its own point. It says the majority view among tech experts is that AI is overhyped. And why does that matter? I guess because:

> If we were to simply listen to the smart voices of those who aren't lost in the hype cycle, we might see that it is not inevitable that AI systems use content without the consent of creators, and it is not impossible to build AI systems that respect commitments to environmental sustainability. We can build AI that isn't centralized under the control of a handful of giant companies. Or any other definition of "good AI" that people might aspire to.

So it's saying "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater"? We can have our cake and eat it too, we can have AI and also have it not be damaging? Except we can't. The article gives these two claims as reasons for other things but doesn't realize they are the reasons we can't:

> because the platforms that have introduced "AI" to the public imagination are run by authoritarian extremists with deeply destructive agendas.

> tech leaders are collaborating with the current regime to punish free speech, fire anyone who dissents, and embolden the wealthy tycoons at the top to make ever-more-extreme statements, often at the direct expense of some of their own workers.

This kind of thing to me is like saying we could make a really great machine gun that would be used just for peacfully shooting tin cans, if only we could get people to stop using such things to kill each other. Well we can't do that as long as the people who make the decisions about making such things want to make things that kill people instead of putting holes in tin cans. (Not the people who actually make the guns! The people who make the decisions.) And so this part doesn't matter:

> But it's important to remember that there are a lot more of us. ... Very few agree with the hype bubble that the tycoons have been trying to puff up.

But the tycoons still have the money and still call the shots, and that's why we're in the mess we're in. Neither the technical reality nor the majoritarian reality matters to the tycoons. The above quoted statement could apply equal well to all sorts of aspects of modern society --- social media, streaming services, telecom, political ads, gerrymandering, you name it. Most people don't like a lot of what we've got.

And the reason for that is that we're in a situation where what most people want doesn't matter. All that matters is what a small bunch of people with a lot of money wants. So this is off base:

> Once in a while, you might hear some coverage of the critiques of AI, but even those will generally be from people outside the tech industry, and they will often solely be about frustrations or anger with the negative externalities of the centralized Big AI companies. Those are valid and vital critiques, but [...]

No buts. Those are valid and vital techniques, so we can stop there (for now). The technical concerns are of secondary importance at best. The real issue is the concentration of wealth and power. If there were no Google, no OpenAI, no Meta, no Nvidia, no Amazon, and so on, there would be no one in a position to ignore the technical issues and instead spew pre-enshittified garbage out and call it AI. And then maybe people could get down to the business of using it in non-evil ways. But worrying about how many technical people think this or that is a distraction from the issue that it doesn't matter what anyone thinks except a small group of disproportionately powerful people.