Pyrite Hucksters

As is often mentioned, the primary profiteers during the gold rush were the sellers of the tools, and although some of the gold rushers got incredibly wealthy, the odds were grossly not in the favor of that outcome.

In regards to “AI in 2024”, while there are some amazing demos and progress and legitimate uses in many aspects of what can be grouped under the umbrella of AI, it is of no doubt that the LLMs are what have bedazzled and ignited the “gold rush”.

All of the sudden we have “AI rushers” who claim deep expertise and have made extraordinary claims about what LLMs are and will be capable of. The unfortunate part is that most of these capabilities are imagined and fantastical.

We also have a predatory and cynical group of executives, primarily the CEOs of some of the worlds most valuable companies, fostering and perpetuating the myth that LLMs are a path to something greater — that AGI is within reach. I say cynical and predatory because that myth is purely self serving. Jensen Huang, who I always felt was affable and trustworthy, saying that NVidia had ‘gone beyond the limits of physics’ was a key marker for me that something is very wrong with the rhetoric coming out of these salespeople riding the tsunami of hype.

As with most frenzies, there emerges a group of exploiters and conmen — but unlike other frenzies, they’ve never had such a vast and fertile landscape to exploit, and exploit quickly. Its also a statement of how integrity of our leaders is not a principle or value that is deemed important to the sociopathic venture capitalists that are on a serial killing mission to pick the pockets of the bedazzled and frightened.

It would almost be forgivable or understandable if LLMs were in fact gold, but what we have really is an unreliable and continually degrading set of models that are centrally controlled by ideologues that are trained on copyrighted and licensed data that is being used for purposes that don’t qualify for fair use.

So perhaps instead of the analog of a gold rush tool seller being the winner in these rushes, the current winners are akin to the gold rush era hucksters selling pyrite.