AI: The Scam

So what happened six months ago that made CNBC and the world of business go gaga over AI?

Did the Yellowstone caldera blow up?

Did an asteroid hit central Mexico?

WTF happened?

NVIDIA was on nobody’s radar before Thanksgiving.

Now, NVIDIA and AI is the future of the world.

Just like that with the snap of the ruling class’s fingers, we will be- we are told- be mowing our lawns with AI.

You can’t listen to a conversation on CNBC for five minutes without hearing someone say AI.

I am waiting for General Mills to put out a box of Cheerios that says: AI Enhanced!

I’ll tell you what I think.

You already know what I think.

AI is a scam.

It won’t work.

In fact, it will be a disaster.

You see, the conventional thinking, is that because something is new, it must be better.

After all Orville and Wilbur Wright invented the airplane. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Our lives got better; therefore AI as a new invention must improve our world.

But it won’t.

AI vis-à-vis (I just wanted to use this word in order to feel important) innovation is not the same as the Internet. The Internet and AI are two different things.

The Internet is a structural connection between all of us. It’s a fast neutral highway. It doesn’t manipulate information. Therefore it’s a plus.

AI is an aggregator and manipulator of information. It’s Joseph Goebbels on speed.

It’s not the same thing as a high-speed information highway.

Here is why AI won’t work.

First and foremost, we live in a curvy analog world, not a straightforward digital world. AI is digital information based upon a digital world. We ourselves are analog creatures.

Second, the world is much more than metrics. Metrics only gives you one part of the answer; it is adjunctive, not definitive. The Philadelphia 76ers who rely heavily on metrics have underperformed over the past 10 years despite having immense talent.

Third, AI was already foreseen by Gene Roddenberry (Yes, I will trust him over MIT bozos any day of the week) and his talent team of writers when they wrote Star Trek many decades ago. The M5 episode shows what will happen when artificial intelligence takes over.

Fourth, the information that AI relies upon is false. It is false, because the underlying motivation for inputting the information is money, not truth. In other words people are inputting information so that they can get paid.

For example, I as a physician many years ago, was not getting paid upon entering, a diagnosis of chickenpox. I discovered that I could get paid if I put down a diagnosis of viral syndrome. So I put down viral syndrome, which is true, but not true.

I wasn’t the only one. A radiologist told me many years ago that he put down the bullshit diagnosis first so that he could get paid.

This is going on all throughout healthcare. I suspect this inputting of false information is going on throughout every industry.

How about Boeing? Quality control reports are being filled out not to make the jet better, but to maximize profits. Quality control issues that are reported translate into more money being spent on fixing issues (as well as a reprimand for the bearer of bad news). Hence, quality control reports are pretty good I imagine.

AI is collecting all this information as if it is the truth.

It is not the truth.

Decisions will be made upon this faulty information.

Those decisions will prove disastrous.

Now let’s get to the nitty-gritty.

We as human beings are based upon carbon. Carbon produces compounds that are gooey, oily, flexible.

Vomitus, diarrhea and phlegm are oily, ugly compounds.

They come from us – shape-shifting, shady, oily people.

That’s who we are.

We don’t work in terms of absolutes. Everything with us is a gray zone. We don’t divide up the world into yeses and nos but instead maybes.

Silicon, which is what AI is based upon does not have that flexibility.

Silicon produces brittle compounds. It doesn’t have the gooeyness and the flexibility of carbon.

It doesn’t know how to lie. Because it doesn’t know to lie, it doesn’t know what a liar is. It accepts everything that’s put into it as the truth.

Human beings are pretty good at sorting out bullshit. Computers are not so good at that.

And that’s the way we want it.

We didn’t invent computers to lie. We invented computers for reliability and speed.

We will take care of the lying all on our own.

AI, based upon computers and silicon, is, not any good at weeding out liars and will therefore fail.

Spectacularly.

I only wish I could be alive in 30 to 40 years and look at the authorities in the face and speak to them like Daniel Plainview: I’ll bet you feel like a fool.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

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