AI Just Crossed a Terrifying Line

General Discussion TYT Shows and Hosts
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Turks segment

If you take non-AI software and hook it up to a machine gun (akin to the one used in the Breaking Bad finale…), of course that opens up dangerous possibilities. Hooking up software -including software that writes software, and can do so in unpredictable ways- to physical systems that can impart harm, whether it be accidental or not, is of course fraught with hazardous possibilities. It’s the same diff: a human or company makes non-AI software that does harm; or a human or company hooks up canned AI software/slop that does harm.

When a programmer writes non-AI software that uses defective software that s/he did not buy, it falls on him/her (based on the principle that there was no “implied contract” from having used a free component…) And when you use AI software, if it was purchased and the software did not do what it was supposed to do (or even what it was implied to do…), it will fall on the AI software company. If the AI software was free, it falls on the genius who decided to hook up the AI software to a physical system that can impart harm.

[Note that a company making a boilerplate disclaimer for software they are selling does NOT get them off the hook for liability -there’s a lot of precedent out there enshrining that principle.]

At the end of the day, this is all about software liability -NOT AI.

So we need to make sure good software liability laws are in place -they are not. Just look at the way the AI industry wants to trample on existing intellectual property laws. And they also want to continue to leave software liability to be loosey-goosey, where after the damage is done, victims will only have the recourse of civil litigation that many cannot possibly afford.

Frankly, much of this “the AI is dangerous” talk is just a hype vehicle for the AI Industrial Complex (Google, Microsoft, Meta, X, …) to generate interest in their slop. Look at how that works out: they control what you see online, and you’re seeing a message that AI is mind-blowing (I myself think it merits research and can help with queries -but sorry; it ain’t mind blowing!)

For better insights on AI, watch some Ed Zitron videos.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ed+zitron+ai

What I have seen so far is an attempt by the AI Industrial Complex to buffalo users into diminished expectations from software. It’s a greed thing. <sarcasm>Surprising, considering the stalwarts of corporate America that are backing it</sarcasm> (though Anthropic is not as greasy as the other players, like Sam Altman…)

For this, we lock up all software development funding on it.

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You can use AI when:

  • failure is an option (example: computer games, unless it’s in a tournament and a cash jackpot is at stake…); or

  • when you can verify the answer suggested by AI.

Some problems have a closed set of solutions;

and some do not!

I myself can’t wait until they hook up AI to voting machines.

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Great video; yep, Altman is a very Evil guy. Check out his “worldcoin”: biometric crypto.

Roger McNamee is either wrong or imprecise about crypto+blockchain: crypto as it is usually used is often a scam; but it has tremendous potential for constructive use. I think what ends up being built in crypto is not constructive because private funding provides the incentive for that. I think if more work is done in academia, where all work gets open sourced, and there be legal prohibitions from working in the industry if you got grant money to do research on that, it would foster much more work that benefits everyone. Think back to DARPA: it birthed the commercial Internet.

And many of the people who had worked on it in those early days did not leave academia to move on to a multimillion salary and keep the technical secrets to those companies.

Re: Kenya workers; yep, classic “mechanical Turk”!

Roger’s use of the word “exploitive” is right on the money; that’s what it’s all about. It’s a colossal back hole of capital for all software development funding to be redirected to, such that in the past few years not much of any good software is being developed -it’s all going to AI slop!

Regarding Roger’s desire to have us check out of the Silicon Valley tech bro’ trap, desktop Linux is a very good escape plan. I love it.

Meanwhile Apple and Microsoft’s OS’s get ever more invasive and inject more and more ads. If you need to use them offline, it is rarely an option…

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Who was calling out that it was all about liability?!

Time for a guest spot for me…

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So I ran across something quite audacious reading my Financial Times this morning. Microsoft was claiming they had lots of AI SALES, on the order of many billions. I wondered to myself: how is this possible? What AI services are being paid for with hard cash?? Are people all over the business world paying for voice synthesis? Are business websites paying for occasionally faulty searches?? My understanding is that most businesses were just experimenting with it; not paying tons of licensing as they had for:

  • Office;

  • Windows operating system upgrades (needed to run the latest Office…); and

  • < giggle>Bing advertising?</ giggle>

I read further into the article; the revenue came from CLOUD sales.

Now the latest version of Office requires some cloud usage; but that’s mostly factored into the cost of the license already. The article appears to imply that the cloud sales were coming FROM OPENAI.

So let me get this straight: Microsoft throws a ton of money at Altman and OpenAI; OpenAI needs lots of cloud to make their AI cars go (even though they periodically run off the road…); so OpenAI is buying back cloud from Microsoft.

What do we call that? A WASH SALE! It’s sort of like a “wash trade” [often done in crypto by two arms of the same entity; you sell crypto and buy it back, to mislead people on the sidelines that there is a lot of interest in an asset -Mark Karpeles of Mt.Gox had done this after some bitcoins had gotten stolen from him, to pump the prices of what he had remaining to cover his theft…] The only cost of making such artificial hype for the asset is the trade/execution fees. If it generates a big hype arc, it’s well worth that cost.

What’s mind boggling is that the major analysts and players like CNBC, Blackrock, etc. are keeping mum on how underwhelming that ““profit”” report actually is. They are so desperate to double-down on the widespread bad calls of most of the market on AI and Tesla, that they are in unison putting their fingers to their lips, making the “shush!” gesture.

If somebody in finance or Microsoft can explain the practical source of these cloud purchases, please do enlighten us! If anything, many companies are now experimenting with running their own clouds, having found out from years of experience that Google, Microsoft (Azure), and AWS are NOT going to be sweethearts with their cloud pricing! Nowadays most companies only use cloud to prototype site runs, to see if the product or service will work at scale -no need to set up your own cloud if the product or service just doesn’t perform well in testing.

It’s a rather scary time now in global finance.

If you’re wondering WHY would such companies engage in this seeming deception in AI: their job is to hoover up as much money as possible before the house comes down; then they and their staff can comfortably sit it out in their bunkers, until however long it takes for the next growth product to appear in tech (which might be years…)

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Just focus on making useful software products and services?
< honeymooners>That’s a mere bag of shells, Alice!< /honeymooners>

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AI stock analyst, right? Saying “AI is great…AI is great…”

Brought to you with a higher search rank by YouTube, a sockpuppet for Google.

Look on Google: search ranks say AI is great; look on Meta: AI is great. Look at Microsoft ads now bolted into their operating system: AI is great. Look at Twitter/X: AI is great, the Tesla FSD is going great. Cripes: the lousy puff pieces appear to be cobbled together with crappy AI.

This is a closed loop con run by Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla. I doubt they are formally coordinating their efforts, but they have all been simultaneously realizing it as a great opportunity to hoover up investor money…

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Whoomp! There it is!!

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