Someone needs to say it. And a few people are.
I started this article over a year ago. I should have posted sooner. But it’s still a prediction most people aren’t considering.
So I’ll say it out loud: Generative AI is doomed.
I know; you’re being told that AI chatbots or “agents” or “loops” or the buzziest AI buzzword you can imagine will take over everything. GenAI will transform employment, revolutionize education, improve relationships, and even make religion more accessible.
But I’m seeing the opposite. Why?
We’re all enduring some of the most powerful propaganda tech elites can unleash. It’s the complete propa-package: Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) combined with the inevitability thesis (we’re always progressing towards a better future, and this is the next thing, and utopian progress is inevitable …).
World-famous billionaires prognosticate multiple times every day that you’ll either make AI work for you, or work for it. Early adopters are excited about the magic of GenAI, and are pumping up their tribes. Even religious leaders are getting on board.
But we are blinded by the new, just like Marshall McLuhan predicted. With the promise of more efficiency, we enter a prompt (incantation) into an LLM and get a magic response, and we’re dazzled by the result.
The dazzling makes us think our intelligence, our time, our productivity is being extended. But we are numbed to the harmful effects as our critical thinking, discernment, and creativity are amputated.
So we let them pour trillions of dollars into energy-hungry, environment-destroying datacenters, ignoring the risks to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We nod along to the enchanting promises of tech bros, repeating their propaganda that GenAI will transform everything, it’s as important as the internet, as important as the printing press.
But for all the bluster and posturing and promoting and forcing it into every product, we see little actual benefit. And we’ll see less and less as time goes on.
Because GenAI has an Achilles heel.
GenAI’s Achilles Heel
And I’m not even talking about the AI bubble that must inevitably pop. That’s a given.
We can see GenAI’s fatal flaw if we think in purely economic terms. What do we pay for? We pay for things we value. We trade money for products or services that would take us too much time or money to build or perform ourselves.
We hire experts to cook, craft, build, teach, and inspire. Think of books you’ve bought, or cars, clothing, meals, appliances. Think also of special hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind items that you’ve paid extra for because they were unique and valuable.
So what happens now that AI is everywhere? And everyone is summarizing their meetings, their podcasts, generating images, brainstorming, writing (including sermons), ideating, coding, etc., with GenAI?
All that GenAI generates is bland, worthless, not special or valuable. Nothing we’d want to pay for, because we are already tired of it.
- No business amplified by GenAI is special or worth investing in, because any other business can be amplified in the same quick and easy way. No differentiation means no economic value.
- No skill amplified with GenAI is special or worth paying for, because if anybody can do it, then why hire for it? Again, no economic value.
Since GenAI will always produce average, non-special output, it’s just not valuable. We already sense when something was AI-generated, and we feel that since no human invested time to create this, it’s not worth our time either.
And as that cycle continues, GenAI content will become worthless. Nobody will want it (or pay for it) anymore. Why would we? If anyone can cast a spell that spews out probabilistic text, then why read it? Why care about it at all?
Bottom line? GenAI content, whether writing, images, videos, or software, will not be valuable because it’s not special. Nobody will pay for it. And it will implode.
But most of the billionaires will be fine. The propaganda-pushing prognosticators will be on to the next next big thing that we all must adopt or else be left behind.
But hopefully we’ll remember next time.
Humans Are (Still) the Answer
But every human reader, you and me, are valuable. We’re the hope beyond the doom.
We can continue to create value that is special and worth paying for, even as we endure the implosion.
Right where we live. Right now. We all have the unique, non-computable ability to hear and learn and know, and to apply our unique intelligence and creativity to the local context we find ourselves. Not perfectly. But even our imperfections are okay, because they reveal our need to work together.
Isn’t that the message of all the best team building books? That we need each other? That success comes when we learn to communicate clearly, to work together with integrity and care, to be humble, hungry, and smart, and to live out the Golden Rule?
(By the way: It’s no accident that GenAI breaks down team dynamics in org-destroying ways.)
All of the best teams have the characteristics of the best humans. We love. We care. We trust, and are trustworthy. And in that bond of trust and care, we create. We write. We build. Unique, important, special, custom, and truly innovative things.
And that’s where real value that is worth paying for comes from.
But we’ve been exploited by monopolies for so long that we’ve forgotten what a human community can be. Where special things are created. We’ve forgotten about the inventor, the musician, the farmer, the doctor who made house calls. We’ve forgotten about the salesperson with integrity.
Maybe too many humans have let us down. And humans have lied to us and oppressed us. Powerful humans in Silicon Valley have manipulated the narrative in order to control most of the rest of us.
But their tech-dominated world is not the future. It can’t be. It’s doomed, and must implode.
That’s why I’m saying this now: the implosion is coming, and it won’t be long.
And I’m betting on us. Made-in-the-image-of-God humanity.
I’m asking: What are we not creating because GenAI is taking all the creative air from the planet? If AI wasn’t presented as a solution to every problem, what problems could we actually solve?
The smart money is looking beyond GenAI to answer those questions. I hope you’ll join me so we can answer them together.
Caveats
- There will likely be some limited, narrow, long-term benefits from non-Big-Tech powered LLMs. Not chatbots. Not agents. But useful, embedded, value-providing applications of machine learning were available before ChatGPT dominated the world in 2022. They’ll continue.
- Big Tech may be bailed out in any number of ways so as to continue to hide their broken economic model and postpone their doomsday for a long time to come. Power has much privilege. But it can’t last. We should plan accordingly, even if it takes a while.