On AI

A long time ago the Wirecutter used to review some piece of tech--smart tvs, maybe?--and would note that of course they came with inconvenient ads and surveillance. First it would show up in reviews as a valid concern to be addressed seriously, and then it was treated with some well-of-course-what-did-you-expect handwaving, and eventually it moved to "objecting to your tv trying to learn as much as possible about you is stupid, stop complaining about it" before being dropped entirely. Of course you must put up with surveillance, what else are you going to do? So now my tv tries to collect data on me, it will occasionally freeze and restart itself while I am watching it, and occasionally the buttons on the remote won't do anything at all. A very clear step back that I guess people pretend not to notice because of some nominal convenience?

There's a certain amount of AI hype that feels exactly like this. Of course people are going to use it, of course people aren't going to look too closely at what it outputs, of course the only way to get an answer to your question is to do a bunch of matrix algebra and waste amazing amounts of power and water. There are some obvious responses--if you couldn't be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it?--but it's extending even beyond this. I had an interview recently with a company that wanted their HR function to create AI agents to coach managers, and considered making these to be one of its highest priorities. If you work in HR you know there's a baseline contempt for everyone else in the company that is shocking, bordering in some cases on active hatred, but this seems one step further: I do not even want to pretend like I'm putting in the effort to fake writing something that you won't read; I will not interact with you and I want you to know that. The entire thing feels hostile to being human.

The inevitability of it is pitched to make you feel like resistance is useless, but there's still (for now) a world out there and still some merit in knowing about it and how to live in it. I'm not a doomsayer and I'm not predicting a tech apocalypse, but you might be better off having options about what you can do in the future.