by James Wallace Harris, 9/4/26
Companies are spending trillions to win the AI race. They believe they will make back their investments and go on to earn trillions. That assumes people are willing to pay for AI. Millions of people are already using AI, hoping to make their fortunes. However, in all cases, for AI to win money, humans have to become economic losers.
This is already causing a backlash. As internet-addicted doomscrollers spend more time and dollars, they are encountering more AI content. Most consider this content AI slop.
Whether you consume news, fiction, music, video, advice, education, philosophy, religion, or even porn, do you really want that content created by AIs?
Yesterday I found a wonderful video of a kitten running in slow motion through the grass. I liked it so much I shared it on Facebook. Then the algorithm showed me several more like it. I thought the first one was real. But after seeing the others, I figured they were AI-created. I was disappointed. Artificial kitten cuteness felt like a con.
I used to enjoy videos of two species of wild animals playing together. Thinking that animals don’t always eat one another was very uplifting. But then these videos became a trend. Now I don’t know if wild animals actually play together. The AI videos make me doubt all animal videos.
The new trend on Facebook and Instagram is AI-generated sexy women. I think real women began the trend on those sites, offering teasers to get guys to find them on OnlyFans. But then real women were replaced by AI women directing users to porn sites. I didn’t follow those links, but I wondered if porn is being replaced by AI too. Will greedy folks with AIs put real humans out of sex work?
My gut reaction is to quit social media. If it’s going to be overrun by greedy people trying to make a buck using AIs, I want to walk away.
I’m already seeing fans of music and books protest AI content. There are young protestors on YouTube advising people to return to the analog world. And one piece of advice is interesting. Buy old stuff. That’s because the only way to know if content was created by AI is to buy content created before AI.
There’s been a flood of websites, YouTube channels, games, novels, albums, software, and other creative content produced in the last year simply because AI lets almost anyone create impressive results.
And some of the AI-generated art is impressive. I love fiction and music. What if AI creates novels and songs I love more than the books and albums I loved over my lifetime?
Doesn’t The Catcher in the Rye move me because J. D. Salinger wrote it? I just read a biography of Salinger, and I love his stories even more. Isn’t On the Road great because Jack Kerouac lived it? Aren’t the songs on Highway 61 Revisited meaningful because Bob Dylan composed the music and lyrics?
What if ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini produced an album that impressed me more than Blonde on Blonde? Is it brilliant because of a machine’s insight?
People who want to make money using AI only want to make money. They aren’t struggling to be creative themselves. As everyone discovers this, I think their greed will destroy AI.
I’m reading How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University by Theo Baker. It’s a fantastic book. Stanford is where kids who want to become billionaires go to college. In one of Baker’s classes, the students were asked to raise their hands if they were concerned with ethics when planning the inventions that could make them rich. Only Baker raised his hand.
The people and corporations spending trillions on AI don’t worry about ethics either. Baker’s book shows that so many of these tech bros who claim to love science and technology are really seeking money and power. I got into computers because I loved computers. I assumed a book about the brightest kids going to Stanford would be about kids who loved computers too. But what they really love is money.
This new generation of greed seems inspired not by technology but by billionaires. There are genuine reasons to create AIs, but greed isn’t one of them. It’s like the gold fever of 1849.
For the companies spending trillions on AI to make the money they desire, tens of millions of ordinary people have to become poor. AI might produce another 1,000 billionaires, but it will also create tens of millions of unemployed. Do we really want to back that kind of greed?
I assume most people will say no, and the AI industry will collapse.
But I could be wrong.
JWH
So far I haven’t spent a cent on AI directly (there can be a revenue from ads or other indirect way) and it helped me in a lot of stuff, even if some of its advices were wrong. So, seeing it as a zero-sum game is wrong. And also there are often more than two sides. e.g. AI-driven taxis and lorries – human drives lose, but if less accidents and more security for the rest of society…
I believe there are lots of legitimate uses for AI. And even for uses that take away jobs from humans. But we have to decide not corporations.
The corporations are currently spending billions to allow free access to AI. That won’t last. What you get for free cost companies plus it’s raising the price of electricity for everyone. And there are environmental costs, social costs, and to people living near data centers loss of property value and psychological costs.
I agree that corps give free AI access not based on good of ther hearts (if there are any) but as a part of their current strategy – to train AIs, to get marketshare, etc.
As for electricity prices, I’m in Ukraine, price of electricity is way at the bottom of the list of my problems. Plus actually, even for the USA is is more complex – if AI is chiefly run not 24/7 but when the power in cheapest (e.g. solar power during noon) then it actually balances the system, so it is a question of correct incentives
AI will only collapse if there’s a Third World war.
As for the young kids wanting to be billionaires and not caring about ethics, I think that’s always been the case. It’s a rare billionaire that cares about the public at large or the planet for that matter.
We were or are predestined for self-destruction, pure and simple. My hope is somewhere out there in the grand universe, there are species of intelligence and the ethics that works for the good of the whole community, as they will be the most successful and long lasting, but it is not us.