Big Tech Bullshit.
Big Tech Bullshit.
Spectacle is replacing reality, says author Jonathan Taplin.
There’s an expression which means to say something crazy but to say it so convincingly that everyone believes it without question: bullshit baffles brains. This phrase came to mind when I read what Elon Musk had told UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of an AI induced jobless utopia.
“'We will have for the first time something that is smarter than the smartest human. There will come a point where no job is needed. You can have a job if you want to have a job for personal satisfaction but the AI can do everything,” said Musk, who according to Forbes’ real time live billionaire list is the richest man in the world worth $233 billion, and who also has the biggest account on his own social media platform X with 162 million followers.
“One of the challenges in the future will be how do we find meaning in life. Everyone will have access to this magic genie. They can give you any wish you want. There will be no three wish limit, you can have as many as you want.”
Last week I talked to Jonathan Taplin, author of a new book, “The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasty Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto.” One of Taplin’s wishes would be that society stops revering our tech overlords and their bullshit “vision” quite so much.
Michael Lewis’ book on crypto creep Sam Bankman-Fried and genius genre chronicler, Walter Isaacson’s book on Elon are cited by Taplin as two examples of journalists acting like the teen reporter in the movie “Almost Famous.”
So how are tech thinkers looking to transform our world?
Musk wants to colonize Mars. Tech investor Peter Thiel wants to explore extreme longevity and maybe even immortality. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is taking supersonic joy rides to space. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is into autonomous weapons systems alongside Palmer Luckey, the Oculus VR headset guy. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg wants us to live in a virtual world, although he’s been downplaying the “Metaverse” since Wall Street’s preferred buzzword is “AI.” You can see what Taplin, the director emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab (and former Bob Dylan tour manager) is getting at.
In a phone interview last week, Taplin shared that he started his book with this quote from Yale Professor Timothy Snyder: “Believe in Truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle and the biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”
Today, Reuters reported that X is limiting the kind of data that researchers use to track hate speech and disinformation on the social media platform. That’s one way to stop the EU from locating grist for its regulatory mill but it comes at a time when the platforms are pulling back on their commitments to news and we are glued to our phones trying to sort out what’s true and false. If you’re not sure what to make of an event, ask a chatbot. They always make sense. Musk launched a new AI chatbot for X to rival ChatGPT today noting it would deliver results with a hint of sarcasm, just like its master.)
I asked Taplin what he thinks when he sees world leaders from President Macron in France, Prime Minister Meloni in Italy, Prime Minister Sunak in the UK, and Turkey's President Erdogan who invited Musk to a Teknofest next year, falling over themselves to court his attention and maybe some Tesla business.
“It frightens me. I think Elon Musk, like his friend Peter Thiel, is not really a fan of democracy,” he said, adding his concerns about Starlink’s refusal to give Ukrainian military internet access at a key moment. (This summer the New Yorker reported that Musk told The Pentagon that he’s spoken to Russian leader Putin, but Musk later denied it.)
Taplin said that his book explores two ways to look at the future. One involves the use of technology to improve the world we live in - solar and wind power, 3D printing or designing small homes for homeless people. The second vision suggests that in ten years AI and robots will do everything and all we’ll need is escape and fantasy.
Taplin is concerned that if the OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is right and the marginal cost of intelligence goes close to zero and the earnings power of workers is drastically reduced then it will make for a traumatic transfer of wealth from labor to the AI gatekeepers.
As for regulations, Taplin is pessimistic about the current state of affairs. “When a company takes from Getty, 12 million images without permission and not only ingests them into their system to make images but strips out all the metadata that’s just theft from my point of view. It’s no better than Napster.”
Taplin thinks President Biden’s recent order on AI is too watery. He says the US is simply recommending that AI content such as video, photos and audio be watermarked but is not requiring it. “Politicians are all too afraid,” he concludes. (Taplin is a council member of the Authors Guild which is suing OpenAI.)
For more of Jonathan Taplin’s thoughts about how tech took over the entertainment business you can listen to this podcast interview with The Ankler, where I’m a contributing editor.
Programming Note: I’m headed to Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal next week to listen to the tech industry debate some of these topics. If you’re there, come and see my sessions.
If you’re keen to learn more about how AI is transforming video and entertainment then you may want to check out the Content London conference conducted by international news and events company C21 Media. I’ll be hosting a sit down with the CEO of Europe’s biggest independent production venture Banijay later this month.