This illusion is what made the current AI hype possible in the first place, and it is now causing humanity to take steps backward rather than moving forward. Yet AI technology could be used fairly and very effectively if it weren’t marketed exactly as it is: as a machine that supposedly enables everyone to do things they don’t have the slightest clue about.
This is what has made social media so profitable, and it’s also the reason why LLMs aren’t being used the way they should be, but are instead being sold as artificial intelligence to idiots who don’t have the slightest clue about the subject -not about what it takes or how long it takes to write a book, paint a picture, write a scientific article, code a secure application, or whatever.
The profit motive has turned the internet into the opposite of what it should have been, and AI technology has consequently ended up as an instrument of power in the hands of a small number of people who are incredibly narrow-minded but, unfortunately, also incredibly powerful due to their boundless greed.
It is the general public that bears the brunt of this boundless greed.
If things continue this way and we look just a few decades into the future, this is exactly what will spell the end of humanity, since profit is always prioritized over the common good.
On the contrary, everything is better than ever!
Internet connections are cheaper and more ubiquitous than ever. Second-hand junk is available for free or very cheap. It is common to keep a computer in your pocket, one which is faster and has more memory than seriously power-hungry and expensive equipment of yesteryear.
Yes, there are more bastards around, but you needn’t listen to them. Use the economy of scale that the thundering herds bring, then ignore them. Self-host private spaces for friends. Contribute to open source.
Use AI to learn. Instead of wasting energy to generate silly junk, use them to debug and fix bugs in open-source software.
Life is good.
Things aren’t better than they were last year.
Maybe not better, but not much worse either. Fuel got more expensive when Americans started their dumb war against Iran (the people of which I feel sorry for), but on the flip side, Russian war efforts seem to be getting weaker.
Besides, none of this matters at all to our discussion of tech getting worse, or not.
We literally invented a new word to describe how tech is getting worse: enshittification.