12/09/2023
BLOG: AI Is Terrifying and Everyone Should Stop Investing In It
I’ve seen this movie before. Whether you’re an AI aficionado or just occasionally watching all of these technological developments from the sidelines, you have to recognize that there is truly a very scary path AI developers are on and I’m not sure it’s not a very good idea for everyone to continue to be investing in.
A few weeks ago, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and mastermind behind AI’s prominence, was abruptly fired by the company’s Board of Directors after reports of massive infighting at the “non-profit.” Immediately after his firing, Microsoft pounced on Altman like a pack of Hyenas and hired him to lead an AI development team. If you didn’t think that was weird enough that Sam Altman would voluntarily go from being a CEO of a world-altering company to an employee at Microsoft, a few days later he was hired back at OpenAI after employees there threatened to quit and follow him to Microsoft if the Board did not resign and/or hire Altman back.
So, basically, Altman won this power struggle and is back leading OpenAI with a new, non-hostile Board “overseeing” him and his activities (and you know Larry Summers just had to join this new Board of Directors, because Larry Summers joins every board these days). While this whole corporate Kardashian-esque episode was going on, you may have missed a new report about just what work has been going on at OpenAI in recent months.
Apparently, OpenAI engineers discovered a significant breakthrough with the technology a few months ago which reportedly produced an AI bot that was totally capable of solving math problems on its own without any human interference or hand holding whatsoever. Up until this point, AI has learned from humans, not itself. The fact that AI is now solving problems on its own is significant and terrifying because this means humans no longer have control over its learning process. We’ve all heard about how AI is going to replace certain jobs that humans have in the coming years. Hey, we may get a four day workweek out of AI. While this may sound good, I’m ok with bursting people’s bubbles and state that the costs of AI far outweigh the benefits.
Don’t get me wrong, AI can do cool things. Somebody used AI to create a new song between Drake and the Weeknd. As much as I want the Weeknd to make another album for Drake (shoutout to the Weeknd for writing Take Care and making it one of the best albums of 2011), I want that to happen authentically and not be made by a robot. If AI continues to develop a mind of its own, it will surely impact people’s ability to get jobs for themselves, especially in lower-skilled jobs that are already being threatened by automation. Also, referring back to the above that AI has a bot that can think for itself, has anyone seen the Terminator???
I don’t like the path that AI has put us on at all. But the biggest downside to this trend, from an investors point of view, is that the AI boom is so very clearly a huge bubble in the economy that is going to burst, collapse, and take everyone’s money with it. It is the latest Wall Street fad that everyone gets on board with, thinking that it’s a get-rich-quick scheme until it collapses, takes the economy down with it, everyone cries for a few years, and then we forget about it and move on to the next shiny object. We’ve seen it before. The electronics craze of the 90s, the tech boom and rise of Silicon Valley in the 2000s, Crypto, etc. AI may be here for the long run (just like all of the things above are in one form or another), but it’s not going to remain this huge, life-altering craze for speculators to gamble on. It will probably continue to integrate into our society in some fashion, but it’s not going to take over society (unless it decides to ) in the way that every AI-expert clown on CNBC talks about.
Stocks for companies like OpenAI, Nvidia, etc. will probably continue to do very well for the next few years or so - but once corruption and greed finds its way into this fad or Wall Street hedge funds figure out that the average Joe can use AI to make better stock trades then they can ( Cohen), people are going to pull the plug on AI real quick. Ok, I’m gonna go to the casino now.
Pax.
