I wrote a while back about the A.I. business model — which is basically the big machine-learning companies telling that they’ll sell us the antidote to the poison they have administered — but this post gives a twist to the whole situation: When businesses start to realize that they’re paying vast amounts to get LLMs to do tasks that could be accomplished by a old-school coder writing a regex script … “I do think we’re about to see a lot of companies realize that a thinking model connected to an MCP server is way more expensive than just paying someone to write a bash script. Starting now, you’ll be able to make a career out of un-LLM-ifying applications.”
The Prince of This World’s tools will never dismantle the Prince of This World’s house.
Charlie Warzel and Matteo Wong:
What’s undeniable is that we’re all living in a world where the whims and desires of wealthy and powerful men create uncertain, unstable conditions for everyone else. Although no other major chatbot has gone ballistic in the same ways as Grok, any one of them could be subtly tweaked to promote a given viewpoint over another, or to quietly manipulate users toward whatever purpose. Likewise, any major creator of AI models unwittingly [AJ: or wittingly] instills biases in its chatbots that are then difficult to expunge. Every user of mainstream AI or social media is subject to a calculus that they have no control over.
So maybe don’t use mainstream AI or social media?
I’m still adding to my anarchist notebook — and will, I hope, be doing so for the next 20 years or so. Make that 30.
Six years ago, after watching my circle of friends surrender one too many evenings to insurance wrangling and doctor portals and DMV confusion, I emailed them a proposal: Come over next Tuesday. Grab a six pack. And bring your bills, your credit-card statements, your school forms, the streaming services you need to unsubscribe from, the airline miles you need to manage, the expenses app you need to figure out. I’d be throwing the lamest party ever.
At the heart of this party was a truth that has gone under-acknowledged in recent years: We’re all sinking. We’re sinking into a quicksand of tiny, dumb administrative tasks. It is the most tedious quicksand imaginable.
So true. Too true to be good.