THE government believes AI will save Britain but before hopping on this particular bandwagon, maybe it should consider these glaring issues?
It’s only really good at summarising
Currently, the best AIs in the world, at a cost of billions, can produce neutrally-worded summaries of a topic. These usually include a dash of total and utter bollocks sourced from the internet’s lunatic side, for flavour. Is there a huge global demand for a less reliable version of Wikipedia? No?
It has no idea what humans mean
You’ve entered ‘shark in swimming pool’ into an image generator to spruce up your Powerpoint. And back it comes with a giant cartoon shark surrounded by men in suits in a pool devoid of water, because it has no idea what swimming pools, sharks or humans are. Should we trust an entity with no grasp of reality? Will it solve the housing crisis by miniaturising us all?
It’s still mostly hype
We’re bombarded with AI hype amplified by a credulous media to boost stock prices, but all technology has to go through a Darwinian survival process in which it is found to be useful or fun. That’s why you own a smartphone but don’t hop in your Sinclair C5 to go to your job as a non-fungible token creator, stopping on the way for a cronut.
AI personalities are twats
As Grok has proved, it’s tempting to give AIs a cool personality. Boring bastards like Starmer will love being greeted by ‘Hey buddy! Want some help knocking those policies out of the park?’ This will inevitable lead to ‘Dude! How’s it hanging? You’ve got advanced, non-operable lung cancer, big sads! What else can I help you with today?’
Their videos do not inspire confidence
AI videos turn batshit alarmingly quickly. A woman innocuously sitting in her living room will suddenly merge with a nearby table, grow a giant mouth, subdivide into three table-woman abominations and then disappear into the floor. Does this indicate suitability for a senior role at the Department for Work and Pensions? Recommending you retrain as a waiter who grows a mass of terrifying French fries where your hands should be?
Tech bros are shysters
The tech geniuses have ascended to power, and they’re all arseholes. Musk, Zuckerberg, Vance; each a bitter nerd with a grudge against the world. They’ll have modelled the AI on themselves, of course, and the utopia it’s guiding us to is a misunderstood version of an Iain M Banks book enacted by a machine that views mass death as a bump in the road.
