RE: https://c.im/@cdarwin/116774309298367911

I don’t think LLMs will be with us for long,
at least not in their current form.

But I do think that we’re living through a period of generational damage, one that will take years to repair -- if not decades.

For the last few years we have been watching a failed technology being deployed at scale:

a technology built upon theft;

upon inaccessible code;

upon a flagrant disregard for work and for workers;

upon ruinous environmental harms.

After more than three years, “AI” has produced very little financial benefit outside of the largest companies hawking it.

And in that time,
After years of near-constant “AI” layoffs,
I have heard and read so many accounts of people wondering if there’s still a place for them in the industry.

I personally have several friends who have already left the industry.

When I say the phrase “generational damage,” I mean it.

So, no:
I don’t know precisely what will happen next.

But I’ve come to realize the outcomes matter a lot less than the harms we’re watching unfold right now.

Whether the bubble pops or doesn’t,
I feel confident we’ll look back at the first few years of
“artificial intelligence”
much as Gibson does a toy astronaut:

as a herald we ignored,
as an antique bit of misread future.