"If generative AI could REALLY make the next GTA in 6 months with 10 staff, or write the next bestseller, or produce 10 blockbusters a day? They wouldn't be trying to sell it to YOU. They would keep it for themselves and guard it from you ferociously."

I've seen this quote without attribution a couple of times. Whoever said it, they're spot on.

@JulietEMcKenna this. It’s like the amazing wrinkle cream that’s only $10 and will take away your wrinkles in one week.
@dropbear @JulietEMcKenna ah yes, ylang-ylang cream from Mt Fuji /ref

@JulietEMcKenna you know what's 10x worse? All the marginally-useful #AI we've seen so far - it only has some generally lackluster end results so far - might just be a massive scam to harvest free training labour from everyone who patiently corrects all the mistakes AI makes.

Once the AI actually crosses the dotted line from lackluster to awesome, it is *then* the doors to the public can be slammed down (to all free and easy usage) and the truly lucrative use cases, as in the OP, will be held private. Everyone will be played for suckers, who provided that free AI-training labour.

@d1 @JulietEMcKenna

Scientists have been using AI for some time—to crunch massive number problems. But NOT to write their papers.

Those who have tried this have had their credibility permanently damaged.

Although the history of their fraud might be erased by the current FraudPlus government regime, and future students will need to take appeals to authority with a grain of salt . . .

@d1 wrote:
> ... harvest free training labour from everyone who patiently corrects all the mistakes AI makes

Right.
My intuition as well.
Today's LLMs are unpaid apprentices and their users are their unwitting "teachers".

@JulietEMcKenna

@d1 @JulietEMcKenna The problem is getting it across that line. Correcting the mistakes provides a *fraction* of useful data compared to what it's already eaten. And there is no more ingestible data.

@JulietEMcKenna

I've said it before: it's the lottery system scam writ large

@JulietEMcKenna Absolutely!! I've seen it "write" stories and scripts and they barely even make sense. 🙄
@JulietEMcKenna It would be so, if AI had been invented. But it hasn't, it's the result of literally decades of distributed research. You can't keep it from anyone, it's been out there for a long time. With critical mass reached, it's now a race for the biggest piece of the cake.
@papageier @JulietEMcKenna People keep forgetting that the first neural networks were developed in the 60s and the only changes we've made to the formula since then is how big they are and the specifics of how they're trained
@JulietEMcKenna OMG every time I read the phrase “vibe coding” on LinkedIn I want to punch the author in the throat! I really should just quit that platform.

@paulboeck @JulietEMcKenna I'm in the *process* of quitting LinkedIn, not only do they platform such shysters, they're quietly un-protecting transfolk, and we all know what that's the first step towards...

But no. Big Tech's mentality is such that they can't not enshittify. Be it AI or social media or your bloody operating system. Time to deplatform them all. (We've already started, we're on Mastodon...)

@JulietEMcKenna they kept 3d printers behind close doors and a wall of pattents for 20 years

In capitalism we can t have nice things

@JulietEMcKenna that's not really true. They would give you paid access to a downgraded version of the software that would allow you to create something like GTA 3 with months of work but never fully get the perfect result. This way, they could string you along indefinitely and make you pay while you attempt to create something, while simultaneously selling you the next GTA that they created with the software you'll never have access to

@JulietEMcKenna @jay_peper Ah yes. The classic “Let me tell you the way to make your first $million” grift.

“First, sign up to my seminar for $$$$”….

@JulietEMcKenna So far, the real money in generative "ai" is in renting/selling compute power to companies losing money on generative ai.
@JulietEMcKenna like any financial advisor on news sites, etc: “read this to make money fast”, “secret stock you need to know” - the typical ones I wouldn’t even call scammers, but I do not trust them. With all your advice, YOU should be rich!
@Sarnau @JulietEMcKenna
I used to say that the best way to make a million dollars is to write a book telling people how to make a million dollars.

@murdoc @Sarnau @JulietEMcKenna
And the How To Get Rich™ ebook contains a single page, for only 49.95, reproduced here in its entirety:

HOW TO GET RICH

Don't Waste Money On Useless Crap Like This Book.

@JulietEMcKenna a friend of mine was tempted by a scam where they pay kinda big sum of money but in return they get a website generating passive income and it's clearly a scam, why would they ask your money for it if they could get more money from it? If it required human work they would simply employee people
@JulietEMcKenna I said this to a friend of mine who said he'd seen a lot of ads selling gold. If it's going to be so valuable and important in the future, why are they trying so hard to get you to take it?
@wesdym @JulietEMcKenna the price of gold depends on people buying and hoarding. So they have to sell the idea of needing to buy and hoard, find the next mark. See also: crypto.
@maccruiskeen Right. My point is that it's a marketing gimmick, not an actually valid pitch based on the customer's best interest.
@JulietEMcKenna During a gold rush sell shovels.
@JulietEMcKenna the mindfulness comes into play when you look at how it is basically going to be a free commodity and also that it is getting better at an extremely rapid rate, the domain creep is real but you have to be realistic, it is a force multiplier just like code is, we will see breakthroughs attributed to ai, protein folding has already happened so ai doesn't really need to justify itself at this point #matrix multiplication
@gary_alderson @JulietEMcKenna Don't conflate LLMs with other AI. Transformers are hitting a wall and all imptovements are either well-conceiled engineering bandaids or brute-force nightmarish Ressource killers. Even coding assistant's are basically stagnating.
@ftranschel @JulietEMcKenna i will conflate ai with ai - sorry #maths
@JulietEMcKenna Dead on. There's a reason they're selling shovels, instead of digging for gold themselves.
@JulietEMcKenna Altman in Thoe's podcast outed himself saying the true value is in the cluster owners, which is him. Nothing is free. If it is. YOU ARE THE PRODUCT!

@JulietEMcKenna

Nope. That's a conspiracy theory. But hey! It might be a good plot for a Science Fiction story.

@JulietEMcKenna I think there are two basic parts to Ai.
- The end user service like ChatGPT that keeps us curious enough to install it. That's the Trojan Horse.
- The accumulation of our private data to feed their Ai, which is their true goal. Know everything there is to know about us.
@JulietEMcKenna I had not heard this particular quote, but I reminded me of people trying to get investment for their machine that makes energy for free. I point out if it worked they could make energy for 'free' and sell it, that would give them enough money to make more of their generators until they were wealthy beyond imagination. Why aren't they doing that?

@JulietEMcKenna This is also why it’s so frustrating when you ask a question and someone goes “I asked ChatGPT this and-“

If I wanted slop, I can get it easily. Slop is readily available. I wanted an ANSWER. From PEOPLE.

@JulietEMcKenna the tech industry especially the bigtech one is broken. We don't solve any real problems we make some up to fit our software that we created

@JulietEMcKenna

To quote my biological father.
""If it was such a great deal I'd have to chase them down & beat it out of them."

@JulietEMcKenna AI "is like a gold-rush; the only people making money are those who sell the pans." ~ Will Hobbs
Maybe not the only ones, but they definitely make the most money
@JulietEMcKenna I disagree with the general idea... Imagine this with "If power tools could really cut a 2x4 perfectly in 2s, and drill 50 screws a minute, do you think they'd be selling them to you?" AI tool makers are tool makers, not video game developers.

@dneary @JulietEMcKenna This exactly. The world's greatest luthier isn't Jimi Hendrix. They're different skills.

Rarely - very rarely - you find someone who can bridge the gap. Think Les Paul or Tom Scholz. This is often where you'll see something miraculous occur.

@drimplausible @dneary
There are power tools i.e. complex, CNC robots used in manufacturing, which can do exactly that, or equivalent - Husband has just retired after a 50 year career in car making, so I know about this stuff. They are used for specific, specialist tasks and the excellent output is there to be seen and examined. No one sells them to a garage hobbyist.
AI tools are being offered to all and sundry with no evidence that they can reliably produce what is claimed.
@JulietEMcKenna @drimplausible I understand - but other consumer power tools are built and sold to carpenters and hobbyists, and they are not built by carpenters. The argument is that tool making and using the tool are different.
@dneary @drimplausible
Any tool worth using can reliably produce the same results. Generative AI spews out random rubbish.

@JulietEMcKenna I was wondering about the source, but the best I can find right now is this reference (July 23) that implies someone said it over on Bluesky. No luck tracking that down further, so far. Maybe someone else has better luck?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1404116417142065/posts/1791008445119525/

Artists Against Generative AI | Found over on Bluesky: | Facebook

Found over on Bluesky: “If generative AI could REALLY make the next GTA in 6 months with 10 staff, or write the next bestseller, or produce 10 blockbusters a day? They wouldn't be trying to sell it...

@JulietEMcKenna the version of this that I have heard for years now is:

> Nobody will ever rent you a money-printing-press for less money than they could print on it themselves.

I first came across this quote in the context of renting hashing power for pooled crypto mining, but it has relevance in a lot of contexts.

@ojensen @JulietEMcKenna
Sidenote: Doesn't apply to a real money printing press.
@JulietEMcKenna this has always got me about companies selling crypto mining gear. If it's so profitable, surely you're minting money with them? Why sell them and not just keep them and run them yourself?

@anthony @JulietEMcKenna
This is pretty much what I had always told my dad whenever he talked about buying gold because fiat money is worthless.

"If that were true, why would they trade their precious gold for your worthless money? Are they running a charity?"

It got through to him in the moment, but he still kept getting suckered because he wasn't buying their logic, he was buying the narrative they built up around owning gold.

That's all these con men ever do. If crypto was really about disrupting the global financial system, they would talk about how people are actually using it for commerce, not some "get rich quick" bullshit. If LLMs were so great, they would talk about the results, not some fantasy about AGI.

@JulietEMcKenna Yes, just like the people selling crypto mining hardware
@JulietEMcKenna I didn’t switch to LED light bulbs and go all in on household energy efficiency just so a gang of artificial idiots could tell each other that 2 + 2 tastes like chicken. #ArtificialIdiocy
@JulietEMcKenna ...so the "point of sales" is probably something else than is marketed as "what it's being sold for"? 🤨
@JulietEMcKenna I've said it repeatedly, but I'm sure I'm not the only one.
@JulietEMcKenna it’s the next generation of the ‘take our £100 course on how to be a millionaire’ scam
@JulietEMcKenna I see that the same way I see all the "you too can make millions just like me" self help books, just a scam. Few who follow those rules will make millions, if any, and regardless, the capitalist system is designed to have small, rich group at the top and a large number lower down, so it can't support large numbers of people suddenly being super wealthy at the same time.
@JulietEMcKenna that quote feels wrong to me. Even with an infinite supply of "perfectly marketable" media products, there would only ever be so many that are technically best sellers. But what really rubs me the wrong way is this notion of a "they" that act against their own financial interest to harm the rest. A wise person once captured this logic very well: https://xkcd.com/808/
And I believe too much in the inherent greed of modern capitalist cooperations to buy this conspiracy.
The Economic Argument

xkcd

@JulietEMcKenna @andydavies

This sounds like that quote about psychics.

If psychics were real, they wouldn't waste their time with readings or long hours in show business. They'd keep to themselves, kick back, and play the casinos, stock market, or venture capital instead. Far less work.

No such thing as psychics.

Like most get-rich schemes, the money is not in following the scheme, but in starting your own, to convince the bottom of the pyramid that they can be in the middle like you.

@krinkle @JulietEMcKenna @andydavies

For that matter, Nvidia would be insane to be selling all of it's output to other companies - when it could just build it's own Master Brain and rule the world.

@dr_barnowl @krinkle @JulietEMcKenna To borrow an old analogy aren’t Nvidia just selling shovels to gold prospectors?