The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want

I came across this book while reading about this ridiculous AI situation. So, I decided to see what we have here.

And it is a mixed bag for me.

What I agree with.....

Authors correctly point out the very weird contradictions in this new .... religion might be a good word to describe it. While AI as AI is not a new thing and has very very small incremental progress over the last 70-or-so years and is now in boom for no other reason than very powerful and available (but as can be seen from the news these days maybe not that available) computational power (that expression - compute - is sooo lazy but people like buzzwords). It is like increasing the speed and using new approaches to use that speed but what exactly do you gain by shortening show more the time between points A and B without understanding the processes you try to mimic? You just increase the number of times you can go from A to B and back, right? How clever and useful.......

Technology as such is not without uses but it is being sold as deus-ex-machina and with the trust-us-we-would-not-lie-about-it disclaimer.

For me it is like watching group of SF fans thinking (or at least selling to the rest of us that feeling they are thinking about this for real) how they have planted the seed of something that will on its own grow into something supreme, that will be able to rule over us in a benevolent way. It is like Polity and Culture fans (those that know, know) decided to create their own mechanical Messiah, and then through power of their own social connections then sold all this hype to politicians and the people who seem to drool and walk around hypnotized by any shiny glass object that promises great things to come.

And this is ridiculous when one looks what is promised by these zealots:

- No more poverty and famine - hmmmm, like how? Reason for poverty (and directly of famine in those very poor parts of the world) is not that these people cannot do any work. Of course they can, but who is going to employ them or give them money? If this was that easy I think we would have done this eons ago. Unfortunately this does not go this way, there will always be people who will try to accrue more wealth (and there is nothing wrong about this, to each its own as long as they do not cross the boundaries set by law) and sometimes this will happen on the expense of others. That difference between haves and have-nots is disturbing and gap is increasing (and this pains the author a lot) but this is how world works. Yes, it could be more just but when it comes to taxes paradox is that countries and societies will favor the big earners (companies) since they bring a lot of money so taxes should be big (right? hmmmm, no, because), while also letting them off the hook and let them open factories in areas out of the state jurisdiction so they actually talk a lot but pay very little, while ordinary people get more and more burdened to fill the gaps left by these companies in the state tax funds. So to re-iterate, how is poverty (and therefore) famine to be removed when only means of getting the means to life above poverty is removed altogether? Only thing I can assume is dependency on these big companies ...... and do we really want that? I dont think so because when social stability is given to those that only care about profit (which is understandable) that is no life for the ordinary people.
- Our overlords will save us - hmmmm, really? So, lets recapitulate something that is obvious (or at least should be to anyone above kindergarten). You create something, you do not know what (this is what these idiots.... sorry, zealots ..... openly say to heat up the hype), you know it is smart (how?) and can lead to us better world (how, how, how?). I mean how can you expect something that you do not know what it is, that learned only very minuscule part of the world (if data is everything then only thing we need to do is read encyclopaedias and that would be it) and expect it to understand everything about the world around us? Not to mention to expect it to understand humans, and the way we think? It would be equal of me expect someone to solve complex equations only by showing that person simple linear equation. Yes, in principle it is the same, we can even say it falls under problem solving (but what does this actually tells anyone what to do), but meaning of it, applications and derivations...... I dont think so. Old adage that mathematics is the language of humanity (and can be applied to other intelligent world) is good meaning but obviously in the case that I assume these AI technologists are looking at, is taken at the face value. You do not believe me? Just do the simple replacement of mathematical operations and symbols with emoticons and then give it to someone else to look at. And this si exactly what is happening in the computer when processing these high level formulas - it does an approximation, there is no solution like b, where b is around 0 but approaches it from negative inf. This does not compute, it needs to be a number, weighted value, to have a purpose. So while abstract results make sense to us, and dont make sense to the machine, how in the name of all that is sane can we expect this machine to evolve into anything that we can (a) understand, (b) can understand us and (c) we can even identify as ..... evolved? This is all very human centric approach where we play the role of Creator, but just think about the following - even today we cannot answer the question of how our brain works (not as a total, we know sections of it - sight, smell, we know frontal lobe is not to be played with etc) and we do not know what intelligence is. And we expect that we will create it on the basis of incomplete information we have? Problem here is that intelligence is not something that can be mimicked as anything related to interaction with the environment - i.e. flying or ship flotation - this is way of thinking, formulating ones view of the world. For us, humans, we have whole sets of biological tools (glands with various hormones, etc) and regulators, but also body language, ticks, facial expressions, even listening to the very sounds, that play extremely active part in perception of the world. Some of this perception is very optimistic but also some is very disturbing. Yes we know how to manipulate it (in a way that we can induce twitches in frogs by probing them with electricity) but does this mean we actually know he whole picture? I dont think so, or do you think that repressing certain chemical flows to suppress mental illnesses is a cure. We still do not know the actual working, lets say wholesome mechanism of our own but we seek to build a copy of it. Imagine building an engine by just looking at external behavior of sample engine..... it does not work that way.
- Our overlords will destroy us - wtf? So you go into creation of something that will destroy us because you think you can control it because of the benefits (what benefits?) but this thing will grow so fast it will decide to annihilate us (again - benefits? What benefits?). This is akin to developing a micro-organism to clean the house, but you know they have a small issue,they like flesh so yeah they will consume us totally! This is first indication that (a) these people are not serious at all and use SF tropes to manipulate the masses, (b) they are actually extremely limited in their mentally capacity, or (c) they are people that have very asocial, very psychopathic persona. Now I know how popular it is to say how managers are all psychopaths and they need to be (they do not need to be, but I guess ruthlessness is cool, especially if you have lots of money so everyone is kissing your a**) but here we are talking about developers and engineers and philosophers of the "new age". If there is even small risk of this getting out of control then how is this different from chemical and biological warfare? Simply saying, if we do not do it, they will. is so ridiculous at this point I wont even comment this any more.
- You wont have to work all those repetitive tasks - really? Question becomes what are you supposed to do when all the repetitive tasks are like 3/4 of your workload. What's next, you wont need to breath or live?

So, with all of the above, it is visible how authors point to the hype and this forcing of new technology that has its uses as a silver bullet for everything. And when unfinished products are pushed on the society in general, misuse and abuse (intentional or accidental) is prone to happen and who gets hit the most? Ordinary folks.

I agree that there is something very ominous behind this, and would not be surprised for a second that goal might be as mundane as collecting vast user data for modelling the social behavior when running certain scenarios (which I think last medical emergency was all about). This is extremely helpful to enable governments to plan not how to do what they are elected for but how to control the others for things they do on their own. Surveillance also comes to mind and for all means and purposes this all means we are entering the period of neofeudalism - masters will remain masters, and small fry will have to be filtered, education and work positions will be preordained based on some markers (whatever that might be), food and access to anything else will given or revoked depending on the behavior while constantly putting the carrot in front of person promising that you can be all you want to be (which is ridiculous even today). I would like to be wrong but all of this imposition of world level automation can lead to nothing else. If one thinks that they will be using all this to build more, to provide more to citizenry, ask yourself why would entire economic system that never cared about those in need (it never propped them up, never went amongst the poorest and said, hey here is job for you and you, and you, we need to get you off the drugs and then you will work here for starters) would suddenly change its mind and become socially-aware government that is pro-active. And no, I am not talking about capitalism per se, every government is like that, they always have limited funds and influence from big money directing majority of actions. And lets be honest when you look these days at Western (and under Western influence) countries all these governments, are not true governments, they are like middle management waiting to be moved up the ladder after 2-4 years to more profitable work with those that truly matter.

We live in a world where care for the citizens is now grey area because if you talk like that you are lots of *ist things, you are just not international enough. You cannot talk about local, let alone national pride, but then if you cannot talk about that how can you talk about citizenry? If there is nothing to hold us at certain location, then you end up with roaming nomads and nothing more. This has all become so convoluted and it starts to show the cracks when rhetoric does not solve anything. And then AI comes in as a fantastic new shiny toy to distract everyone until new level of degradation and new shiny toy that will come after that.

Another weird thing here is very anti-human dimension, and while this can be expected from profit chasing entities it is weird for the state, for the government. I mean if you have whole bunch of people without jobs, who is paying for taxes, who is buying goods. I mean, this entire idiocy is ridiculous at so many points - what, we gonna create robots to consume goods from robots and basically create closed environment where there is no interaction with humans........ what? So goal is to create all of this for the sake if creating it? Wtf.........

So I agree with majority of social effects authors talk about.

Only thing I do not agree with is constant talk about racial and gender elements. In my opinion modern day capitalism overgrew racial and gender politics decades ago. What it causes is and always will be class conflict - between those very rich (at this point amount of money we talk about is ridiculous) and those that have nothing but get pushed more and more into obscurity. All the gender and racial talk is just a subset of the class of society that is in danger. We need to move from these very restrictive definitions and to just talk about the economic classes, because this is unifying element. But apparently this makes whole talk a very niche subject which is then treated as research into rare species. This is not a niche topic, it is about a whole class of society that gets abused all over, over and over again, and this class spans all the races and all the genders. Until this is identified as such I am not sure anything can be done.

At this point amount of resource theft done by AI technologists is like something expected in books about alien invasion. All the burden and risk is on citizens of the country (through prices of services and goods and through taxation) and all the gains of this gamble are on the side of these peddlers of super-AI solutions.

When everything tanks ...... disaster. All these investors will be left with d**k in their hand and rich guys will just say - this failed because you did not believe in it more! And you know what, in 10 or so years people will fall for something like this all over again. It is not that people are stupid, but it is for the same reason people play lottery - hope dies last.

I wholeheartedly agree with list of questions to be asked for every new technology that extorts exorbitant amounts of resources from the respective community and country and threatens stability and social change without clear path on how to stabilize the given society.

Authors are not against the technology on its own, but they are against the use of it in situations when they can deal more harm (like those horror shows like phone support for psychological issues) than help people. And I fully agree, selling current AI tech as cure for everything is something that needs to be severely penalized when it causes harm or even death.

Interesting book, slightly (over)colored by gender and racial aspect that diverts from the subject at hand (at least it did this to me). But in any case portrays a very bleak picture of effect this AI hype has on a society. And to imagine that latest development is to use AI for porn or chatbots, all those resources to be used for something like self-gratification while watching animated or human looking but AI generated nevertheless, bots....... Yeah, this is what all those trillions have come down to. Terrifying. show less

I really wanted to like this book. I'm on board with their key points - AI is overhyped, used as a marketing took and to raise investment and is not about to take over the world and kill us all.
Unfortunately the authors overstate their case, often wildly when they suggest so-called AI has no place in research or scholarship. A moment's reflection will see this not true. Yes we're over reliant on the tools and yes we wrongly attribute agency to software but that does not mean it does not have its uses.
The worst aspect of the book is the way it is wrapped up in sociological jargon and a slavish adherence to currently fashionable identity politics.
I repeat that the core ideas are sound but the whole enterprise would be better served by a show more cooler and more balanced review of the technologies. show less

This book had a very, clear one-sided point of view. Instead of completely turning me against GenAI, it left me wondering if there were any positive use cases.

A thoughtful and well-researched look into the hype about AI technology, its potential uses and potential issues. An interesting read.

2025 book #50. 2025. Will the current state of AI take away your job, maybe says the authors. Will it devalue your work, almost certainly. WIll it make the tech bros richer while causing untold harm to people like you and me, yes indeed. What can we do? Not a whole lot. Bummer.

Shallow and full of technical errors