The Rise of Whatever

I agree with a lot of this at the outset, but don't really like the gloomy outlook. I don't think there's much to gain by writing off all this unfortunate stuff as people being stupid and greedy. I mean sure, that may be true, but you can flip it around and say that it's impressive that we have it as good as we do despite having to co-exist with stupidity and greed. Better yet, you can see it as a challenge to overcome.

And I'm not the only one saying this but - the bit about LLMs is likely throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes the "AI-ification" of everything is horrible and people are shoehorning it into places where it's not useful. But to say that every single LLM interaction is wrong/not useful is just not true (though it might be true if you limit yourself to only freely available models!). Using LLMs effectively is a skill in itself, and not one to be underestimated. Just because you failed to get it to do something it's not well-suited to doesn't mean it can't do anything at all.

Though the conclusion (do things, make things) I do agree with anyway.

> every single LLM interaction is wrong/not useful

I think it is defense mechanism, you see it everywhere, and you have to wonder, "why are people thinking this way?".

I think those with an ethical or related argument deserve to be heard, but opposite of that, it seems like full blinders, ignoring the reality presented before us.

The free models are also useful. A little more limited, but still useful.

> you can flip it around and say that it's impressive that we have it as good as we do despite having to co-exist with stupidity and greed

I have a feeling that line of thinking is going to be of diminishing consolation as the world veers further into systemic and environmental collapse.

You can—except for the researchers and pioneers at the low-level—write most of the fervor off as mimetic behavior.

We live in a world now where people scare one another into making significant choices with limited information. Person A claims it's the future you don't want to miss, Person B takes that at face value and starts figuring out how to get in on the scam, and Person C looks at A and B and says "me too." Rinse and repeat.

That's why so much of the AI world is just the same app with a different name. I'd imagine a high percentage of the people involved in these projects don't really care about what they're working on, just that it promises to score them more money and influence (or so they think).

So in a way, for the majority, it is just stupid and greedy behavior, but perhaps less conscious.