Rather than bantering on about the typical narratives that inundate topical discourse regarding debates about generative AI and LLMs, I’m going to just forego that debate to make a post about my own observations.
While keeping an eye on the AI industry (and tech industry at large), social trends, and common vernacular as it becomes established in day-to-day communications I’ve come to one singular conclusion:
The primary drive behind corporations pushing generative AI is about mitigating critical thinking. That is what is worth the billions of dollars of investment to them. The bells and whistles and flashy lights are just low hanging fruit; the bait to establish gradual acceptance and integration among the masses.
What benefits corporations and billionaire investors more than a complacent populace who has stopped thinking for themselves, and instead depends on the proprietary technology that they control to think for them?
Being your image/video/music “generation buddy” has never made sense in the balance of the huge investments being made. However, investing billions to gain a daily, constant influence upon the population and thusly influencing social perception, elections, policy, markets, and trends to their benefit very much does. It’s why corporations are clambering all over the place to cram generative AI into virtually anything and everything.
It seems obvious to me that they are working towards building a dependence upon the technology, to make it more convenient and comfortable for everyone to acquiesce to the proliferation of the tech into every facet of daily life. By making part of that integration “fun and engaging” they don’t even need walk that mile… many people will choose to willingly defend and promote it because it provides them with something they want, a proverbial instant gratification machine.
The prevailing tone: Don’t do that research, let us do it for you. Don’t work to find a solution, let us solve it for you. Don’t worry about engineering, we’ll provide the solution. Don’t bother with working on that problem, we’ll provide you with the answer. Don’t read that lesson, here’s all you need to pass the class. Don’t dig for the truth, we’ll tell you what you want to hear. Don’t put forth the effort to learn a creative skill, we’ll generate content for you…. so on and so forth: don’t think, just listen.
I don’t intend to have a lot of posts/discussions here on my wall about this topic (though I do often discuss it in comments elsewhere), but watching the droves of people over the last week or so as they hand over their personal information and identities to generative AI to make caricatures of themselves as part of a social trend just really resonated with an uncomfortable vibe for me.