In the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes the Emperor is convinced by his disciples that he’s wearing invisible clothes that only the wise can see. When talking about AI however, the story is more like “The Citizenry’s New Clothes” because the Kings (Billionaire tech-bros) are convincing the masses that they’re wearing the clothes. They’re convincing government agencies, business leaders, and the average Joe that AI is the inevitable next phase of computer science and the internet when it’s only inevitable because Meta, Alphabet, Space X, Oracle, and Microsoft have to continually show growth when they’ve already hit their market cap.
AI as it’s being sold is a scam. We’re being told that it’s so powerful it can do our jobs; that Artificial General Intelligence is on the horizon. In reality, AI can TAKE our jobs because a salesman can convince a CEO that it can do all the work when it really can’t, and LLMs won’t just magically become AGI by throwing more GPUs and RAM at it.
These AI companies aren’t profitable, and based on current trends they won’t be anytime soon. For every customer an AI company adds, it doesn’t make them more money. It costs them more. The hardware and hosting costs greatly exceed what they can charge companies and government agencies to use the LLMs. So what’s the end game here? The AI companies know this. Either they are just hoping to hold out with more and more investment money in the hopes that they eventually find a way to achieve AGI and align their pricing to profitability, or it’s just a big money laundering scam through NASDAQ to make sure that certain people make a ton of money before the whole bubble comes crashing down taking our economy and retirement funds with it.
This interview with Jon Stewart and Cory Doctorow is a brilliant explanation of this. How do all the CEOs not see this? It seems that everyone sees this coming but continues to act like everything is fine. Don’t worry your highness! You’re wearing invisible clothes that only wise people can see!