The AI Backlash, pt. 2
In a recent blog post on AI, I mentioned that humans would never be allowed to go free-range. I also mentioned the tax harvesting the state requires to function, and the problems of people abandoning downtowns and local businesses to stay home and work. One of the fringe benefits of the remote office is you can eat a can of soup in 15 minutes while standing over the kitchen sink before getting back to work. You don't have to go out and get food, or gas up, or pick up dry cleaning, etc.
Prior to the Covid-era spending and massive inflation, restaurants were the core of the American economy. Low-wage jobs in the "food sector" were the backbone of economic "growth, " according to the bulk of jobs report data. "350,000 (low-wage, dead-end) food service jobs were created last quarter..." Those of us who follow economic news headlines have been treated to this for decades.
Post-Covid, food scarcity is a much bigger deal now, and eating out is a luxury. I seldom go to a restaurant now, and much prefer eating a bowl of rice and beans with a scrambled egg.
The cost savings from food, gas, mileage, and vehicle wear and tear often amount to a pay raise for many remote workers. I wear sweatpants, shorts, and other prolewear and haven't paid for dry cleaning in over ten years. My closet sports a large collection of button-down shirts that haven't been worn since 2014. I periodically scoop some up and drop them off at Goodwill. I was a clothes horse at one point, not proud or anything. The weird thing about the last twenty years is that the garments from this period are still in style. Fashion stopped "evolving" after about 2002, and a button-down business shirt with a collar is still the same. More stylish clothing is dicier, but still likely to work now. Take that, anicca!
ZeroHedge today has an article outlining California's possible plan to introduce a "mileage tax" to replace revenue lost from gasoline taxes. As commuters switch to electric, tax collectors have to find new ways to cover the revenue decline. California has traditionally had a high gasoline tax, hitting the working class especially hard since many have to commute long distances for work, child care, etc. This is the same state with out-of-control homelessness. I spoke with a relative who lives there last night, and we discussed the plight of many Americans in his home state, how it was something that could be solved if only there was a will to turn away from war and the enrichment of our oligarchy.
I know many people still want to believe that AI will change everything for the better. There is no AI, just LLMs/chat bots, generative art, and so on. These are useful tools that have come under increasing criticism from different camps. The investor community understands that the companies pushing AI are grossly overvalued and over-leveraged, and the cracks in their business models grow larger every moment. Oracle is mulling firing 20,000 employees to fund its AI initiatives; based on declining revenues and skyrocketing debt obligations, it faces insolvency by 2027.
Among technical workers, we hear complaints of AI slop showing up in codebases. Among social media users, AI-generated images and text proliferate. AI produces content for what is now mostly bot traffic on the Internet. In other words, we pay a high price in water, electricity, and environmental degradation so that machine-generated artifacts can be consumed by automated, non-sentient bots.
School children are becoming even less capable at problem-solving, and college students flood their professors with AI-composed essays on all kinds of topics. Lawyers have been caught submitting legal briefs with bogus citations.
I am the last holdout, the true devotee of AI, and no, there is no intelligence there... yet. I get it. It's a tool, much like the search engine. When search engines began emerging in the 1990s, they were a rabbit hole into all sorts of bad ideas, conflicting and illogical viewpoints, and so on. They were a mess, and boy, were the 90s and early aughts fun!! I miss the old days.
"Oh, I guess you found that on the Internet..."
This kind of sneer was common at first and then faded. Saying it now makes you sound like a Gen X-er. You date yourself by uttering these words, since yes, we all get our information from the Internet now. That's life. The technology blended into our daily lives and became useful, at least for a few years. Search engines eventually became just The Search Engine, Google. It, in turn, became the world's portal to the sum of all human knowledge, but its quality began to suffer as its original philosophy was supplanted by the need to make even more money and shape public opinion. Don't be evil! became "Let us help you decide what is/is not evil!"
AI is not the same as the early search engine, but it shares many of the same qualities. Unlike its forebear, it's expensive and has no economic future as a business model with the current crop of companies. Many of these will be destroyed by greed and stupidity as economic reality catches up with the balance sheets. But as in the dot bomb era, e-commerce didn't die with the demise of Pets.com and the hundreds of other companies like it that went tits up. It emerged on the other end in the form of Amazon and Walmart.com. In other words, e-commerce became a pillar of consumer activity, but in the hands of yet another capitalistic cartel. We think nothing now of buying groceries, clothing, cars, houses, saxophones, and so on from a website.
Capitalism's proponents always point to the benefits of competition as a way to provide consumer choice, even when cartels produce the same cars at the same price point and so on. Do you know who also hates competition? Capitalists.
Hence, the cartel is created as a compromise. We will agree tacitly to create the same generic objects overseas in exchange for a kind of tranquil equilibrium where a few of us can prosper and grow the K-shaped economy. We keep up the image of competition, and the consumer deludes himself into believing he has a choice.
