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
Auxiliary Memory 