What's wrong with AI?

It should not be terribly surprising that the kinds people who brought us Facebook, Uber, Paypal, Airbnb and Amazon continue with the same amoral depravity when it comes to AI. They’ve shown us time after time that they can only be trusted to do whatever it takes to enrich themselves. Apparently moral behaviour was quickly revealed to be an illusion once the political tides turned and it became once again acceptable to be evil. Now it is true that AI can be run on your own computer, or on computers of smaller and more ethical companies. But that’s not what’s happening in reality. Big tech companies are making sure you have to rely on them, as they always have done. They have stolen information from us to train their products AI is trained on the contents of the internet. Who made that? We did. They did not ask permission to do use our data like this. They will certainly never pay. No matter what promises they make now, it is quite certain that they continue to thieve our data, given the number of times these and similar companies have brazenly broken data promises and laws in the past. They make their products seductively confident They want a swell of confidence to flood through you when you read an AI response to your question. There is no equivocation, and there will certainly be no admission that it doesn’t have an answer for you. They want you to feel like it has all the answers, so you turn to it for all the answers, all the time. They make their products addictively servile They know that in your day-to-day life, you’re not treated with the respect you deserve. AI is different. It knows how clever you are, it knows how unappreciated your cleverness is. Unlike humans, it will readily admit it is wrong, say you’re jolly insightful for spotting an error, and come back eagerly with another, possibly wrong answer. Like a strangely well-read puppy. This servile attitude is addictive, because it feels so good. It’s so good that some people are driven into a delusional mania, abandon their families, suffer breakdowns, and kill themselves. They are using bait-and-switch and will eventually pay their investors back using your money A lot of the AI that’s sneaking into your apps is free. Is this a wonderful act of generosity on the part of our tech overlords? Of course not. It’s the same game as ever - suck people in with something free or cheap, and once they’re hooked and the competitors (our own human brains) are out of business - the price will go …