None of Our Business
Definitely someone's though!
Money is a clean motivator. That’s the beauty of business. I don’t need to listen to what you say, I just need to look at where the checks flow. Does it make the number go up? Then it matters. The rest is just marketing. In which case, it’s my business.
Either way, a fun puzzle to solve.
The problem with oligarchy (only one) is lack of suspense. If it’s happening, it improves the lives of one or more of a dozen men. That’s it.
Naturally, people are having a hard time accepting this. Take the decline of the Washington Post: “‘It’s a really bad business model to push out talented reporters and then have them report against you,’ said another Post staffer.”
Sure, it would be. If the goal was running a newspaper. But that’s not the business the Washington Post is in. The Washington Post is in the glory-to-Jeffery-Bezos business. The modest profits of a successful news empire can’t begin to compete with the fringe benefits of dismantling a free press and ingratiating yourself to a dictator.
Why would Elon Musk kill the popularity of Tesla by dicking around in politics, or destroy the value of Twitter by optimizing it for hate speech? Because there’s a lot more money to be made from deregulation, union busting and government contracts than from bipartisan appeal.
We’re not trying to balance out an economic model. We’re just watching a few people ferret out the best ways to extract money from the rest of us.
That is helpful to remember as we turn to recent developments in AI. The boy masters of Artificial Intelligence would like you to believe they’re selling utopian breakthroughs. To do that though, you have to have some evidence people can buy into. Fear, on the other hand, does not fail. Which is why Sam Altman of Open AI is warning bankers about the “imminent danger” of AI fraud and Dario Amodei of Anthropic is clanging the bell of widespread job loss. It’s all marketing, but marketing matters.
It may seem counterintuitive to play up the risks of achieving your technology goals, with the help of all the world’s resources. And yet, if you can convince people that the threat is already here, how better to fight it than by giving money to these fresh-faced U.S.-based geniuses already fretting about our safety? After all, if the U.S. can’t provide the necessary resources, CEOs like Amodei will have no choice but to turn to those frightening Middle Eastern monarchies to fill in the gaps.
“Unfortunately, I think ‘No bad person should ever benefit from our success’ is a pretty difficult principle to run a business on.”
Indeed. If you are in the business of enriching yourself, an ethos is nothing but a limiting factor.
This level of grift? It’s boring. I don’t need to bust out my string and pushpins when the criminals are standing there holding neon signs. There’s no business logic to break down, that job is gone. And it doesn’t seem like I’m the only one wondering what to do next. Does anyone know what work is supposed to look like now?
Genuinely, I’m asking. Chicago business isn’t the topic it once was — none of the boy princes live here, a point of civic pride. And nationally, the Nothing Ever Happens principle collides with the These F**king Guys principle so frequently that it feels like everything has been said. Yes, a new level of depravity has been reached and no, it’s not going to slow the horrors down. Writing seems absurd, but not writing somehow feels crazier. .
What’s helping you work through it? Solidarity, visibility, cheerful mockery? I am open to ideas.
Links to explain what working is now
If there is a perfect use for AI, it has got to be reflecting our own worst behaviors back onto us. In this case, ChatGPT is encouraging women to accept lower salaries than men. We can’t blame the technology for correctly understanding power dynamics.
What a shock then, that only 12% of women think AI will positively impact the U.S., compared to 22% of men. Positively impact WHO in the U.S.? Seems like maybe it’s hurting women more than helping at the moment, and it’s not working out so great for the folks who fought the hardest to be here either.
Don’t worry though, AI will affect everyone’s wages soon enough. Microsoft is laying off thousands of people, mostly in sales, another in the long list of companies eager to put some fear back into the workforce.
Still, it’s worth noting that we have been here before w/r/t technology that’s going to eliminate drudgery and propel productivity. See: the washing machine. There’s a pile of tiny socks on top of my dryer that demand a word about liberation.
Do the socks need to be paired up and folded? Absolutely not. Sort of like AI being able to read and synthesize the top 1,000 search results. That is maybe not the flex you think it is babe. Giving me the cliff notes of the cliff notes that end up on the internet, all the way down to the answer that’s worse than the first 999 — that does not replace research. Call me when AI can read microfiche!
On the flip side, pelicans on bicycles.
One for the weekend
Barbara Kingsolver’s garden. Contributing to the general ennui: No one knows how to spend money anymore! Thank you to Barbara Kingsolver then, for giving us a model of how to turn our winnings into a beautiful life. Icelandic sheep! The tomatoes!
Let Barbara show you something that’s actually worth working for. Then subscribe to Plants.lol for more.