The Speed of Stupidity
While many may be experiencing existential angst that recursive self-improving "AI" agents may blah blah blah blah blah jizz all over your mama etc. My dread is that these news stories will just continue, and I think a big part of the problem has to do with the above ad, which as one commentator pointed out - this "news" story about how you can get a burger, fries and milkshake for &1.50 in under 25 seconds, but whimpy's still has waiters, plates and cutlery was aired on a newsprogram for children and it is still more informative and professional than news features now targeted at adults in 2026.
But I cite it as a kind of news archetype - because as objective as the story is, it is still basically an Ad for McDonald's "Tasty food in under 2 minutes for a dollar, what will they think of next?" and news stories about new tech, or even a new Nirvana album, or Taylor Swift concert.
Tech has been covered as newsworthy on the basis of "new shiny thing" even though tech also includes shit like weapons and munitions, food additives, pesticides, surveillance and other shit that is not cool.
Journalism has had for a long time, a benign tumour that sustained a certain population of journalist whose job it was to basically give free publicity to Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Krispy Kreme Klan.
And I think those on the 'tech gadget' beat, who for decades produces news stories about "the Portable phone" and "the Compact Disc Romulator" and the "Stemless segway people are calling 'hoveringboards'" were also assumed to be capable of covering the debacle that is Silicon Valley the past decade, and the tech sector no longer demands puff pieces of copying and pasting their press releases.
I got another draft post on the go, and I'm 80% confident this anecdote is in it, but anyway, in highschool one of the douchebag things I did was pick a target and 'prod' them, sinister as it may sound to your mind this involved gently poking them in the upper arm or ribs if exposed with an index finger while they were engaged in a task and saying 'prod' repeatedly - 'prod, prod, prod, prod..." etc. slow and monotonous, and the conceit was simply to do it until the person reliably lost their shit.
In the karma of the universe, journalism has been prodding me for 3.5 years now, and yesterday I just about lost my shit, when James O'Brien opened one of his hours on LBC radio with this:
O'Brien has a recurring...concept on his show 'idiot's corner' and so this kicks off with someone in 'idiots corner' making an argument via a question comparing the "AI" alarmists to "Y2K bug" alarmists, then spends 14 or so minutes being ridiculous ridiculing this 'idiot'.
"prod, prod, prod, prod, prod" is my OI summary, as O'Brien argues from personal incredulity "where are the activists" (never mind ALL of the activists, from the Writers guild in the US, through all the NIMBY datacentre community movements around the globe, to the climate activists, to the trade unions, to the artist societies, to the human rights activists, to the legal activists, to the consumer groups...) he cites an urban folktale about the "AI" blackmailing an engineer to prevent it's being deleted or replaced. He appeals to authority citing all these people who have said "AI" is dangerous including (yet another) "godfather of AI".
I'm about 90% confident, that in the next 3-4 years, there will be a 2008 GFC market crash, where a famous story from the '08 GFC was Queen Lizzie asking some economists "why didn't you see this coming..." and O'Brien, will I predict in such an event, be like "why did nobody see this coming?"
The answer to which will be, simply, that so many chose not to, and especially journalists who set the Overton window to somewhere between Jensen Wong and Elon Musk and ignore all the fucking research that uses evidence to establish that "AI" as the largest infrastructure build-out in the history of civilization is unpopular, unproductive, way to set money on fire and the planet, is a bubble and literally damages users brains.
So I'm writing about the failures of journalism.
In the late 2010's there was a notable failure of journalism in Australia about the kid dubbed 'eggboy' a teenager that went to a right-wing politicians campaign event after the politician had tweeted about the Christchurch murders, a white-nationalist Australian murdering innocent members of Christchurch's Muslim community, about how usually the roles were reversed. What a cunt. Where journalism failed was to explain to viewers, that breaking an egg on someone's head is assualt. A serious crime, you can't just go do that.
They didn't bring out pundits on the news coverage to discuss how eggboy likely escaped charges and prosecution because the politician had turned around, seen his smug face taking a photo of him with broken egg on his head and punched him, before some volunteers violently restrained eggboy. It was likely these circumstances that the politician decided it was best not to press charges and go to trial.
Some months later, a young woman attempted to smash an egg on then Australian PM ScoMo's noggin, and it bounced off, not breaking. ScoMo didn't punch the lady, and she was arrested for assault, tried and convicted. She didn't go to jail, and had to do community service or something, but I hold the GARBAGE standard of Australian journalism to account for her arrest with their recklessly irresponsible failure to get, not even a legal expert but like a legal undergrad to explain that eggboy had committed assault and was lucky to get off.
The same with Kyle Rittenhouse, whose eventual acquittal shocked many, though here likely the journalism was more polarised. But again, many simply lacked, thanks to journalism, the legal facts of his case such as they were, that the DA should never have brought him to trial, because even though he had a weapon he didn't have a legal right to possess in the state where he killed those people, it turns out that somebody illegally carrying an AR-15 or a Swiss Halberd is not fair game to attack with your skateboard, they don't murder you when they shoot you or slice you with the weapon they are not supposed to be carrying.
And journalism is failing hard right now. Because what Joe public needs to know, is basically the plot of "The Other Guys" the Markie Mark and Will Farrell comedy where the bad guys were trying to sell their bankrupt company to the police pension fund. Open AI, XAI, Anthropic have spent trillions of private money to develop an almost total-bust, and in its potential to ever pay back what it owes, an absolute bust. The only way they get a positive ROI is if they happen upon the Genie's lamp at a car-boot sale, like the development of "AGI" has nothing to do with what they are currently building.
The news story is, that all this talk of how dangerous and out of control "AI" is, is to get the public to bail out the rich who are currently holding this dead baby. Either through Trillion dollar IPO valuations, or by getting taxpayers to buy the companies at trillion dollar valuations through nationalization. A GFC style bailout. A somehow even more unforgiveable bail out, because most people's ability to go "back to 2022" is way fucking easier than going from 2008 to 1950.
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