The Shareholder Supremacy
We recorded 15 claims from this post. 15 can’t be checked. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (15)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“OpenAI is run by Sam Altman, an unqualified non-technical founder who has conned his way to the heights of Silicon Valley.”
Our reading: OpenAI is run by Sam Altman, whom the author calls an unqualified non-technical founder who has conned his way to the heights of Silicon Valley.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Altman himself is a seedy charlatan, one that’s grown incredibly powerful in the Valley despite never really having done anything”
Our reading: Sam Altman is a charlatan who has grown powerful without really having done anything.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“When you have a society and economy dominated by people who neither create nor understand the things they’re selling, people that don’t experience or respect labor, their natural thought will be that any form of creativity or “work” can (and should) be automated.”
Our reading: The rush to boost AI is explained by an economy run by people disconnected from labor who think all creative work can and should be automated.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“Generative AI is exciting to the disconnected business freaks running our economy because it’s a way to abstract and outsource even more forms of labor.”
Our reading: Executives are excited by generative AI because it lets them abstract and outsource more labor.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“The AI bubble has been inflated by people excited about the prospect of not having to deal with those filthy “laborers” that “do work,””
Our reading: AI is a bubble, inflated by executives eager to avoid dealing with workers.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“They don’t care that the output is mediocre, that the product is unprofitable, that there is a quickly-approaching wall that generative AI can’t leap over as it runs out of training data, or that the transformer-based architecture of Large Language Models has hard limitations that are impossible to overcome.”
Our reading: The transformer architecture of LLMs has hard limitations that cannot be overcome.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“It doesn’t matter that data centers might end up using as much power as India by 2034, or that generative AI isn’t actually that useful.”
Our reading: Generative AI isn't actually that useful.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“It doesn’t matter that data centers might end up using as much power as India by 2034, or that generative AI isn’t actually that useful.”
Our reading: Data centers might use as much power as India by 2034.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“In some respects, generative AI is morally worse than Welch’s odious anti-worker philosophy.”
Our reading: In some respects, generative AI is morally worse than Jack Welch's odious anti-worker philosophy.
No horizon
Qualifier: in some respects
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“The law, I note, tends to regard actual contracts more seriously than unspoken (and, let’s face it, imaginary) social contracts, and I desperately look forward to the day when Suleyman’s ideas are tested in court. I don’t fancy his chances.”
Our reading: If tested in court, the claim that online content is freeware for training AI is unlikely to prevail.
No horizon
Only if: if tested in court
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“It’s almost a little too on the nose — a tool that only seems revolutionary to people that haven’t written, or coded, or drawn, or sang, or created anything in years.”
Our reading: Generative AI only seems revolutionary to people who haven't created anything in years.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Sam Altman gave them something to do, and he packaged it in a way that told them how to think about it — and, of course, lie about it.”
Our reading: Sam Altman gave big tech generative AI as something to do and packaged it in a way that told them how to think about it and, of course, lie about it.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“And once they do, the real fun will begin, as big tech reconciles with a lack of innovation”
Our reading: After markets punish generative AI investors, big tech will have to reckon with its lack of innovation and leaders who lack ideas for what comes next.
No horizon
Only if: once markets punish those most invested in generative AI
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“There is no prompt that could have told a generative AI to write what I’ve written”
Our reading: No prompt could have told a generative AI to write what the author wrote in this essay, because great writing comes from the labor of choosing words and finding the theories behind what one sees, not from probabilistic generation trained on other people's text.
No horizon
Scope: what I've written (this essay)
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Generative AI is an act of theft in and of itself, perpetuated by people that have stolen innovation in the name of Shareholder Supremacy, creating a degenerative form of innovation that optimizes the tech industry to create things that sound cool rather than actually help people.”
Our reading: Generative AI is an act of theft in and of itself, carried on by people who have stolen innovation in the name of Shareholder Supremacy, creating a degenerative form of innovation that optimizes the tech industry to make things that sound cool rather than actually help people.
No horizon
Qualifier: in and of itself