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Cake day: February 2nd, 2024

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  • Brian Merchant’s given his thoughts on the situation, focusing mainly on the situation as a case of Trump’s administration falling for the AGI hype.

    You want my off-the-cuff thoughts on these tariffs, I’m putting them down as another nail in the coffin for AI as a concept, and a possible blow to “AI doom” narratives as a whole.

    For AI as a concept, this entire debacle is a very public and very high-profile example of AI failing to live up to the “AGI/Superintelligence” hype that OpenAI and pals have been cranking out - and failing in a manner which suggests their AI systems (rightfully so, IMO) to be worse than useless.

    For “AI Doom” narratives, whilst this economic clusterfuck is an example of AI dealing a nasty blow to humanity, said blow was dealt through a combo of unambiguous incompetence on the AI’s part, and the Trump administration overestimating the AI’s own competence. No diamonoid bacteria, no Skynet-style Terminator apocalypse, just sheer unfiltered stupidity on a government-wide level.












  • The government is backtracking on this cut. But when they said “AI,” they meant magical chatbots with costs in the fabulous future that would make them look cool. They didn’t mean medical systems that work, but cost money right now. This was always about the press releases.

    In the grander scheme of things, I expect this shitshow will further reinforce notions of “AI” being utterly useless as a tech - auto-contouring was a real-life example of AI being useful, and it got thrown in the bin because it wasn’t a magical chatbot that made radiologists obsolete.