A Rant About AI

A Rant About AI

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sick of hearing about AI. It seems the powers that be think sticking the term “AI” in everything from search engines, to recipes, to lawn mowers will entice me to buy/use/want it.

Even AI experts disagree on where AI will lead us. Some so-called experts say that we’ll be able to control AI and use it for the benefit of humankind, while others say AI will be as dangerous to humans as nuclear weapons and deadly pandemics.

What is going on in the world? I’m certain that AI has its place, but why is replacing humans with AI-powered robots always presented as a good thing?

Did you know there’s a burger joint in California (where else!) where robots cook and serve customers. No humans needed. It’s called “BurgerBot,” where robots build your cheeseburger and serve it to you, too. No, I am not kidding! Watch…

My son works for a college and counsels students. Five years ago, he was encouraging them to get into computer programming and computer science. Now he says AI is taking over all the computer programming jobs that those students were supposed to get.

Microsoft is getting annoying by pushing Copilot (AI) down everyone’s throats. Chat GPT has so many iterations and price plans that I can’t keep up. The White House is generating AI images and publishing them. Google has Gemini, Twitter (X) has Grok. Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.)is powered by the Llama family of large language models (LLMs). The latest version as of the last update is Llama 4, with different models like Scout and Maverick.

And now we’re discovering that the more AI learns, the more it hallucinates. We’re putting AI in charge of our water and power plants, eliminating the jobs, they say no one wants.. Maybe no one wants to work in a burger joint, but what about a water treatment plant or an electric power plant? Are they saying no one wants or needs to work anymore?

Remember Mad Magazine and Alfred E. Newman’s “What me worry?” A statement released by the Center for AI Safety in 2023, signed by numerous AI experts, said:  “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” This highlights that while the probability might be debated, the potential consequences are severe enough to warrant serious attention.  

AI is catching up with pandemics and nuclear war on the “Human Extinction” scale.

There’s a lot of money in it: no employees, no paychecks, more money to be made. When there’s money in it, it will be nearly impossible to stop. It’s hard for me to believe that ethical considerations or human dignity will ever overtake monetary considerations.

AI has its place, no doubt. But I don’t think most of us need to have AI rammed down their throats by Microsoft, Google, Meta, Chat GPT, Elon Musk’s Grok, or any of the dozens of AI companies now in the AI game.

And we ain’t seen nothing yet. AI-powered self-driving cars, self-driving trucks, buses, and taxis are already on our streets and highways. How long do you think it will be before passenger planes will be no more than giant drones guided by robotic pilots, powered by AI?

Moderation has gone out of style…

It seems to me, however, that the AI problem is more a symptom of our society’s growing disdain for moderation. It’s not only the techno-geeks who lack any sense of moderation, our politicians have no idea what moderation is anymore,

And, no, it’s not a matter of liberal vs. conservative, far-left vs. far right; there’s no moderation anywhere left or right. There’s no “center” anymore. No compromise, no moderation, just take everything to the limit until no one can take it anymore – and no one cares anymore.

Anyway, I’ve always been a fan of technology. I embraced the internet when it was just a bunch of black and white pages only accessible by CompuServe on Commodore 64 computers. But I’m getting sick of hearing about AI and having AI-powered everything shoved down my throat. AI has its place, but its place is not every place, and I fear it’s already out of control.

Am I just an old out-of-touch old fogie, or do you think I have a point?