Getting Out Of Generative AI

The ethics, economics, and application of generative AI technology and the market that has grown around it are largely unconscionable[1].

Available language models are based on content theft and slave-wage labour, they are subverting climate change goals, they are biased and damaging in use, and their results and performance are gamed. They have fundamental problems that more digging will not solve.

The genAI industry is sucking all the oxygen out of other technology markets. It is concentrating power in a few corporations. It is infesting all digital technology with untested gewgaws. It is harnessing the best and brightest, and all the rest of us, to questionable ends. It has attracted and rewarded the worst of us.

Some are predicting the crash of this boom but I don’t know: Damn it, Jim, I’m a a programmer not a prognosticator.

[1] I have never participated[1.1] in an industry that has left me feeling so conflicted. I worked on CaliberAI for nearly 5 years with Neil Brady and an ethical and productive team solving hard problems for embattled journalistic companies. CaliberAI has value and utility but our market was swallowed and then subverted by the rush to generative AI.

[1.1] I mostly avoided the previous generation of GPU-spade buyers; blockchain/crypto/web3. I hope to avoid the next GPU-spade buying fad. Nvidia are a dealer, you are their user.