Big Tech's Big Problem

It’s easy to blame AI for everything, and to be fair it has decreased the overall enjoyment of the Internet and many services we frequently use. AI made Google Search damn near unusable. It’s led multiple people to suicide. It’s created fake videos that have made people believe things that aren’t real, and fake people to astroturf social media, pushing people away from these sites overall. Don’t get me started on the environmental impact and the thousands who have been sickened or unable to live in their homes because of data centers. It has not made us better; it’s made us worse.

Our focus should be the companies and people behind the overwhelming push to make everything AI.

Innovation has been dead in the technology sphere for a while. All phones and tablets look the same and have hardware that barely differs from device or model. One thing takes off, and every company rushes to copy it. There’s no new, earth-shattering inventions that have taken the world by storm — other than AI. Because it’s the only thing that’s gotten a foothold in a sea of failures, Silicon Valley is clamoring to create the next AI service that will take the world by storm.

The problem is, no one wants this shit.

Even if we weren’t inundated with movies, books, and video games that explain why overreliance on computers or AI is A Bad Fucking Idea, it’s solving issues that don’t exist. There are legitimate uses for AI, especially in scientific and medical fields, but Big Tech wants us to generate soulless, derivative content to divide us and make people emotionally attached to chat bots to the point where they slip into psychosis and lose touch with reality.

The AI companies can’t even get companies to buy into their programs long term. They tell businesses that AI will help them do X, Y and Z but then make no real improvements to workflow. Companies are ending up spending more money to hire humans to babysit or edit these models, or they find customers want to talk to a real person instead of a bot. My full-time job made a big push to use a chatbot for training, and after some fairly hilarious errors, it quickly fell to the wayside, and I have heard nothing about it for months.

The AI facade is slipping, and Silicon Valley has nothing else to fall back on. I’ve done AI training, so I recognize that I’m part of the problem. However, I can also recognize that these models are not currently being used to further human development or significantly improve life. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should” has been lost on many developers.

When everything becomes “for profit” and a way to make money rather than improving the world you lose sight of what actually matters. Everyone is afraid to take risks, even with something as simple as a logo or a design. Many of these “techbros” are insanely wealthy and are completely out of touch with what normal people deal with on a day-to-day basis. Consumers want medical and scientific advancements, repairable gadgets, and safety. They want well-paying jobs. They want homes. They want sustainability.

Instead, we got 700 versions of a slightly smarter BonziBuddy from 1997 and rising energy costs.

Wealthy folks don’t have the same concerns and increasingly cannot relate to what consumers want from their ivory towers. The shareholders are buying and selling aspirations and derivative products to each other, and expecting consumers to fall in line and purchase whatever they say we should. Convincing the masses that paying exorbitant prices for bland, unnecessary items is a Sisyphean task when those masses are already struggling to pay for food, healthcare, child care, and/or housing.

How these tech companies are running and using AI is so reminiscent of how their models generate “creative” works — scraping and copying from others rather than taking the time to dream, learn, practice and perfect their output. When everything is about speed, safe bets and profit rather than ingenuity, creativity, risk-taking and problem-solving, you’re destined to fail. That’s going to be a tough lesson to learn.

I do want to highlight some tech companies that are working on truly innovative stuff:

Framework — Modular, upgradable, and repairable computers

Minimal Company — minimalist phones with an e-paper display and a keyboard

Nothing — genuinely unique phones, earbuds, watches and accessories

Open Home Foundation — Protecting data from your smart home devices and making them work well together

Zipline — drone deliveries!

AmberCycle — processing used consumer materials into a new polyester

Homeward Health — bringing better healthcare access to rural and underdeveloped communities

Betterway — Fingertip blood testing that requires less blood and is affordable