Grok turning antisemitic yesterday was disgusting. It also showed that generative AI shouldn't be trusted, period. [View all]

None of the chatbots a lot of people (even some DUers, unfortunately) are using are truly intelligent, or even truly aware of what they're churning out. They aren't thinking. They have no beliefs. They aren't your friends.

They're machines owned and operated by individuals and businesses whose values may sometimes appear to agree with yours, but who can't be depended on. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, for instance, was once widely viewed as dependably liberal. Silicon Valley was once viewed as liberal. The tech bros lining up behind Trump should have made it clear the peddlers of generative AI are not on our side.

I've seen people here suggest that chatbots are better, or at least more convenient, than using search. No, they're not. And turning to them for answers not only leaves you dumbed down and vulnerable to being misled (people who turn to chatbots tend NOT to check their answers), it deprives the websites those chatbots are trained on - usually without permission - of the traffic they need to continue to exist. AI summaries in search are destroying the internet as well as hurting AI users' ability to reason. The goal of those AI summaries or overviews in search is to stop the search at that point - that's what's most profitable for the company offering that "convenient" AI tool.

Just as it's most profitable for them if people not only use their AI tools but become dependent on them. And those companies don't care what wreckage they leave in their wake, in terms of individual humans, economies and natural environments harmed.

Musk is the most extreme example of the tech bros behind generative AI not being on the side of liberals, or even humanity in general.

But it's been clear for some time that generative AI is inherently unethical, starting with the theft of the world's intellectual property, and continuing through all their fights against regulation and their lack of concern over the many harms resulting already from genAI. The AI companies all KNOW, too, that the tools they're peddling are flawed, and that artificial intelligence is a misnomer. But that hasn't stopped them from pushing people to use their tools and trying to make everyone dependent on them.

Stop falling for it.