I don't have to tell you that AI is everywhere. Odds are you're reading this post from a device which has an operating system that has some form of AI integration. If you're on Windows, you've got Microsoft Copilot. If you're on an Apple device, you've got Apple Intelligence - whatever that means right now - and if you're on Android, you probably have Gemini floating around somewhere. But doesn't it feel... underwhelming?
It's all the rage for otherwise stale-feeling multi-billion dollar corporations to implement AI wherever they feel it may make money. Sadly, it's causing more harm than good at the moment. We've seen prices for computer hardware skyrocket, vibe coded apps make some truly horrific mistakes, and false information become increasingly hard to dodge. Let's not even talk about the environmental impact all of this is having. Years of innovations in clean energy and power-use reduction have been for naught as these AI server farms use electricity as if it's infinitely available. In short, we're blinded by AI assistance while these corporations race on as if they're about to achieve something miraculous.
Now don't misunderstand me; I'm no AI doomer. I truly believe that AI will some day help us answer some of human kind's most important questions. We will have major scientific breakthroughs directly realized by, or at least assisted by some form of AI as we have already seen with Alphafold. The problem is... this race for the major adoption of AI tools feels early. In fact, it feels like a false start for what should otherwise be a technical marathon unlike any other we've seen so far.
Let's not be naive. The corporations currently building massive AI farms, investing trillions in GPUs and electrical grids aren't building it so our lives can improve. They're building it either in the hope of building AI that can replace workers - increasing the wage gap - or so they may become the first to invent "Artificial General Intelligence" - a type of intelligence that closely matches a human's in various forms - which will simply be used to achieve the exact same thing. Yes, this investment will help AI develop beyond what it can do right now, but any help it brings to regular people will pale in comparison to the damage it will do to the societies that supplied these companies with their time, their effort, their money, and now their art. We find ourselves looking out over a wasteland of AI server farms, built by corporate greed.
To me it feels like the introduction of AI into our daily lives came early, before it was efficient and scaleable enough for it to make sense on a financial, but more importantly, human level. And now we're just stuck with it as we hope it develops enough for it to become actually useful at some point.
I'm not an AI researcher. I can't tell you whether throwing everything we have at scaling AI is what is required for AI to develop into more than it is today. I don't pretend to know what the future will bring but I can look at where we are today, and I can say that maybe it's less important that we have AI-assisted search in Google, or that you can save 10 minutes by asking ChatGPT how to bake a cake instead of finding a recipe, than it is that we're systematically destroying much of what has allowed technology to make living in this day and age so great.
TL;DR: ChatGPT, summarize this article please.
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