Mark Zuckerberg, trying to see his way clear to dominating the Artificial Intelligence race, is now saying that those of us who don’t use AI glasses will be at a disadvantage in the future. Reminds me of the X-Ray glasses hype from my childhood.
When you consider Zuckerberg’s checkered legend with starting what would eventually become Facebook, after running a college website called FaceSmash to rate girls, the comparison to the come on for X-Ray glasses does have a prurient parallel to many an adolescent boy’s fantasies.
I guess Zuckerberg needs to justify all of the money he’s spent building out AI infrastructure and wooing talent but it also is very reminiscent of the days he mucked up the media by declaring text was out and the pivot to video was in. In fact, much of this AI race feels very much like that. Sure, some of that stuck, but it mostly just made a mess and the legacy of that pivot left more than a few scars.
This entire AI race feels like that to me at the moment. I believe some of it is going to stick around and actually be useful. But mostly it’s just messing things up at the moment as everyone jumps into the deep end of a pool hoping to learn a new way to swim.
I’ve dealt with a few different companies of late trying to help some elder clients cut down on bills and solve some issues. Several of those companies have been switching much of their customer service to AI chatbots and the like. In those transitions they’ve more than made a mess of things for their customers and their employees who are left trying to clean up the mess.
I’m not completely down on Artificial Intelligence. I can see some benefits from the technology. At this point in the game it’s tough to sort out what that might be from the hype that seems to be authored by the folks who keep promising self-driving cars and those that promised X-Ray glasses.
You’d think by now someone would have developed an AI platform for investors and corporations that could see through the hype.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 