The phony comforts of the AI industry's useful idiots

Newton proudly considers himself part of the "real and dangerous" crowd, but as Marcus points out only vaguely gestures at dangers while ignoring those that already exist: "Covert racism? Deepfakes? Propaganda? Discrimination in employment, insurance, and housing?" Marcus also points out the dichotomy comes with a glaring analytical blindspot: "thinking that if an AI is stupid (or overrated) it can't be dangerous." Newton charges the “fake and sucks” camp with a blindspot that overlooks danger but Newton’s is arguably more dangerous: his immaterial analysis would likely overlook AI-powered deepfakes, propaganda, fossil fuel extraction, insurance tech, and assassination drones, if it meant that chatbots were being used by hundreds of millions of people.

So where does this leave us? The real/fake and sucks/dangerous framework is at best useless: it overlooks financials, harms, impacts, political economy, and technical detail in favor of press releases and product launches. It bundles any technology that is compute heavy into “AI” as part of a bid to defend generative AI. It misrepresents the views of the sole critic named in its camp (Gary Marcus). If you are interested in phony comfort, this is the framework to use—not one that is skeptical of artificial intelligence.

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Newton’s framework seems to view any attempt at understanding OpenAI’s financials with suspicion, and instead insists analysis should follow flow the most vulgar input possible: narratives about consumer behavior. That may be fine if you are angling a job at a company’s PR shop or at some advertising agency, but one would hope a journalist or commentator might try to show some capacity for curiosity and ask even one question about why & how certain products are being offered, as well as how those offerings fit into the company’s business model (or lack of one).