Three AI insights for hard-charging, future-oriented smartypantses
MERE HOURS REMAIN for the Kickstarter for the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There’s also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.
Living in the age of AI hype makes demands on all of us to come up with smartypants prognostications about how AI is about to change everything forever, and wow, it's pretty amazing, huh?
AI pitchmen don't make it easy. They like to pile on the cognitive dissonance and demand that we all somehow resolve it. This is a thing cult leaders do, too – tell blatant and obvious lies to their followers. When a cult follower repeats the lie to others, they are demonstrating their loyalty, both to the leader and to themselves.
Over and over, the claims of AI pitchmen turn out to be blatant lies. This has been the case since at least the age of the Mechanical Turk, the 18th chess-playing automaton that was actually just a chess player crammed into the base of an elaborate puppet that was exhibited as an autonomous, intelligent robot.
The most prominent Mechanical Turk huckster is Elon Musk, who habitually, blatantly and repeatedly lies about AI. He's been promising "full self driving" Telsas in "one to two years" for more than a decade. Periodically, he'll "demonstrate" a car that's in full-self driving mode – which then turns out to be canned, recorded demo:
Musk even trotted an autonomous, humanoid robot on-stage at an investor presentation, failing to mention that this mechanical marvel was just a person in a robot suit:
Now, Musk has announced that his junk-science neural interface company, Neuralink, has made the leap to implanting neural interface chips in a human brain. As Joan Westenberg writes, the press have repeated this claim as presumptively true, despite its wild implausibility:
https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/elon-musk-lies
Neuralink, after all, is a company notorious for mutilating primates in pursuit of showy, meaningless demos:
I'm perfectly willing to believe that Musk would risk someone else's life to help him with this nonsense, because he doesn't see other people as real and deserving of compassion or empathy. But he's also profoundly lazy and is accustomed to a world that unquestioningly swallows his most outlandish pronouncements, so Occam's Razor dictates that the most likely explanation here is that he just made it up.
The odds that there's a human being beta-testing Musk's neural interface with the only brain they will ever have aren't zero. But I give it the same odds as the Raelians' claim to have cloned a human being:
The human-in-a-robot-suit gambit is everywhere in AI hype. Cruise, GM's disgraced "robot taxi" company, had 1.5 remote operators for every one of the cars on the road. They used AI to replace a single, low-waged driver with 1.5 high-waged, specialized technicians. Truly, it was a marvel.
Globalization is key to maintaining the guy-in-a-robot-suit phenomenon. Globalization gives AI pitchmen access to millions of low-waged workers who can pretend to be software programs, allowing us to pretend to have transcended the capitalism's exploitation trap. This is also a very old pattern – just a couple decades after the Mechanical Turk toured Europe, Thomas Jefferson returned from the continent with the dumbwaiter. Jefferson refined and installed these marvels, announcing to his dinner guests that they allowed him to replace his "servants" (that is, his slaves). Dumbwaiters don't replace slaves, of course – they just keep them out of sight:
So much AI turns out to be low-waged people in a call center in the Global South pretending to be robots that Indian techies have a joke about it: "AI stands for 'absent Indian'":
A reader wrote to me this week. They're a multi-decade veteran of Amazon who had a fascinating tale about the launch of Amazon Go, the "fully automated" Amazon retail outlets that let you wander around, pick up goods and walk out again, while AI-enabled cameras totted up the goods in your basket and charged your card for them.
According to this reader, the AI cameras didn't work any better than Tesla's full-self driving mode, and had to be backstopped by a minimum of three camera operators in an Indian call center, "so that there could be a quorum system for deciding on a customer's activity – three autopilots good, two autopilots bad."
Amazon got a ton of press from the launch of the Amazon Go stores. A lot of it was very favorable, of course: Mister Market is insatiably horny for firing human beings and replacing them with robots, so any announcement that you've got a human-replacing robot is a surefire way to make Line Go Up. But there was also plenty of critical press about this – pieces that took Amazon to task for replacing human beings with robots.
What was missing from the criticism? Articles that said that Amazon was probably lying about its robots, that it had replaced low-waged clerks in the USA with even-lower-waged camera-jockeys in India.
Which is a shame, because that criticism would have hit Amazon where it hurts, right there in the ole Line Go Up. Amazon's stock price boost off the back of the Amazon Go announcements represented the market's bet that Amazon would evert out of cyberspace and fill all of our physical retail corridors with monopolistic robot stores, moated with IP that prevented other retailers from similarly slashing their wage bills. That unbridgeable moat would guarantee Amazon generations of monopoly rents, which it would share with any shareholders who piled into the stock at that moment.
See the difference? Criticize Amazon for its devastatingly effective automation and you help Amazon sell stock to suckers, which makes Amazon executives richer. Criticize Amazon for lying about its automation, and you clobber the personal net worth of the executives who spun up this lie, because their portfolios are full of Amazon stock:
Amazon Go didn't go. The hundreds of Amazon Go stores we were promised never materialized. There's an embarrassing rump of 25 of these things still around, which will doubtless be quietly shuttered in the years to come. But Amazon Go wasn't a failure. It allowed its architects to pocket massive capital gains on the way to building generational wealth and establishing a new permanent aristocracy of habitual bullshitters dressed up as high-tech wizards.
"Wizard" is the right word for it. The high-tech sector pretends to be science fiction, but it's usually fantasy. For a generation, America's largest tech firms peddled the dream of imminently establishing colonies on distant worlds or even traveling to other solar systems, something that is still so far in our future that it might well never come to pass:
During the Space Age, we got the same kind of performative bullshit. On The Well David Gans mentioned hearing a promo on SiriusXM for a radio show with "the first AI co-host." To this, Craig L Maudlin replied, "Reminds me of fins on automobiles."
Yup, that's exactly it. An AI radio co-host is to artificial intelligence as a Cadillac Eldorado Biaritz tail-fin is to interstellar rocketry.
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If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
angst, hurt/comfort, unrequited love, infatuation, mental health issues, self depreciation, self-esteem issues, self image issues, trust issues, history of toxic relationships, family issues, heavily implied borderline personality disorder, favorite person, mental breakdowns, more tags to be added, MDNI
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The Cure by Olivia Rodrigo
Hit The Wall by Gracie Abrams
I Love You, I'm Sorry by Gracie Abrams
Dashboard by Noah Kahan
Willing and Able by Noah Kahan
Summary:
He came into your life like the summer breeze he smells of--brief, welcome and warm. He came at a time when you needed someone most. He is like you, you think. Understands what it's like to be unstable in a way you never asked for. Unfortunately, he was never yours to hold for too long. He would always belong to her.
Ongoing || Oneshot->3/10
Word Count: 3438
1->2
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
"I met your sister."
Why was that the first thing that comes out of your mouth when he walks into Philo? You regret it the moment it leaves you. Cheeks heating with embarrassment and more than a little humiliation. Caleb stops for just a moment, blinks, then his mouth twists into that goofy, lop-sided grin that makes your stomach flip. He doesn't waste time looking through the shelves for his order. Simply walks up to the counter with an easy kind of confidence you lack.
"She's great isn't she?"
You've heard more often than not that you should really listen to your instincts more. And they're right—you definitely should. But the warning signs get confused with butterflies when he gives you another lop-sided grin.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Three months is all it takes for you to build a friendship with him. Between movie dates and grabbing lunch on his days off that just so happen to line up with yours. Caleb is fun and has your sense of humor. He's easy to get along with in a way no one else has ever been. When asked how things are going, you respond with telling Jeremiah that he's become your favorite person. That you're truly grateful for that push to go talk to him those months ago. Because if it hadn't been for Jeremiah would you even be where you're at?
You learned that he doesn't even necessarily like working for the Farspace Fleet. He graduated top of his class in the DAA with the highest marks. But the Fleet offered higher pay than what a typical pilot would and he wanted to make as much money as possible to support his sister. He plays basketball and is so good at it that he was named MVP in high school. You know virtually everything about each other now.
Normally, you would be extremely embarrassed when Jeremiah catches you watching your phone. Waiting for it to light up with Caleb's name while you place a new assortment of flowers on the display. All your little quirks you do when infatuated or in love. Jeremiah has noticed them all.
"So, you and Caleb have gotten pretty close," he muses, spritzing an arrangement with a water bottle, "You're being careful, right?"
"What?" You choke out, "Jer, we're not even sleeping together."
"That's not what I mean."
Out of everyone in your life, it's Jeremiah that knows you the best. For someone who is only a year or two younger than you—he acts much older. More mature and knowing than anyone else your age. Jeremiah humbles you in the softest of ways. Keeps you grounded and makes sure your feet stay firmly rooted on the ground rather than letting you float away on Cloud Nine with your rose-colored glasses. Sometimes you forget how well he knows you. Which is why when you glance up to see him leveling you with a soft, but concerned look on his face—it takes you a little by surprise. His soft, honey-colored eyes bore into you knowingly. Brows bunched just the slightest amount in worry. Curls falling into his eyes with the way he keeps them damp because of the humidity and June heat.
"What?" You venture softly.
"You've been checking your phone every hour on the hour, your mood has been particularly upbeat, but only on the days you hang out with him… Do I need to continue?"
A soft airy voice carries through the shop. "What are we talking about?"
"Nothing!"
"Lyric and Caleb."
You say it at the same time and your eyes narrow at him.
Xavier yawns, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm and props himself on the counter. "What about them?"
"It's cool, guys. Just talk about me like I'm not here."
"I'm just worried that you're wearing your heart on your sleeve again when you should be restrictive of who gets the key. That's all I'm saying."
"Even if you do catch his attention," Xavier hums, jumping from the counter. "You'll always come second to Marley."
While you had the feeling that that would be the case with his sister, it didn't stop you from wishing that things were different. You have a brother. You have two sisters. You know very well what a sibling bond is supposed to look like. Because your relationship with your siblings has never been like the ones you read about or watched in movies. Caleb's relationship with Marley is nothing like what you know to be a normal sibling relationship. He's protective of her in a way that borders on violent. They make dates with each other. You know they aren't related by blood so that isn't the issue.
The issue is that he holds her on such a pedestal and you don't see how any girl could ever amount to her.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It always hurts a little less when Father's Day rolls around than it does with Mother's Day. Your dad used to be your person. Your rock and biggest supporter. Where your mother was your first bully. Somewhere along the road between your childhood and now he lost his way. He's not the man you remember and it hurts. You've made your peace with the fact that you only have yourself to rely on. But that ache is still there. It's there when you look at old pictures or reread his old text messages. Or when you see daughters with their dads walk down the street. Just like when you see daughters with their moms.
The difference is you never had a mother. Not in the way that other little girls did growing up. It took therapy to learn that what you were dealing with is considered abuse. And over the years, you've accepted that your mother will never change. She isn't able and you are no longer willing. Things are different with your dad. He was present. Willing to hold your hand when you needed it. Your mother was not.
While you got off scotch free on Mother's Day, you aren't that lucky with Father's Day fast approaching.
It's just past noon when the text comes through. It was supposed to be a good day. Just you and Caleb sitting in the sand at the beach on one of his rare days off. The summer heat warming your skin in a way that you haven't felt in years. It was peaceful. Serene. But the moment you read the message, your heart aches and sinks.
It's from your mother, of course. Your father and step-dad would never talk to you the way she does. Even with no contact, she fails to respect the boundary you placed. All the message says is that since you neglected to tell her happy Mother's Day that she fully expects you to tell both your father and your step-dad happy Father's Day. It's worded just passive aggressive enough to make your stomach twist. Because you already know that she will never take accountability for her actions or behavior. You're already the bad guy in her story and to everyone she tells. Which is just fine with you—you're used to being the bad guy.
Caleb notices the way your face drops near instantly. Tilting his head with brows furrowed in concern. You can see him adjusting his position in the sand beside you out of the corner of you eye. How he goes from leaning back on his elbows and his arms to now laying halfway on his side. Brown hair swept over his forehead. Even when he's overheated from the sun and cloaked in worry he's something carved by angels.
"Hey," he coos, voice soft as he shifts closer to you, "what's got you all sad?"
You've told him that you have no communication with your parents. That you stopped talking to them maybe a year ago. That your relationship with your own sisters is strained and you hardly remember you even have a brother. But you never told him the why of any of it. While you would much rather leave it up to his interpretation than dive into all your trauma—there's no stopping the way your mind begins to spiral.
"It's nothing," you lie with practiced ease, "It's stupid."
He moves closer now and you would almost rather a hole open in the earth and swallow you whole. You hate people seeing you cry or seeing you vulnerable. It leaves so much room for them to wedge open those wounds and pry them open. Or create new ones with the information they have available. Caleb's so close you can feel the warmth of his skin seeping into your own as his knee brushes against yours.
"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," he murmurs, trying to soothe. "But I'm here to listen."
How is he capable of breaking through all your barriers and get you to soften so easily? You've spent years trying to harden yourself and steel your heart. Trying to become the cool girl that doesn't let things get to you. Making it harder for you to get hurt so easily. But then here's Caleb with his easy confidence and comforting voice. Coaxing you into a submission you haven't known since…well, for as long as you can remember. Not even Jeremiah, as close as the two of you are, knows about how deep these wounds go.
"My birthday is next week," you say instead.
"And that makes you sad?"
You fall to your back in the sand. Letting the warmth seep into your skin and the sun beat down on your face until your eyes close. Maybe if you stay there long enough it'll be enough to seep into your bones and warm what left you have of the heart you fight so tirelessly to protect. Every person you have loved has gotten a piece of your heart that they didn't deserve. You know that now, but there's nothing you can do to take back the pieces of yourself that they took when they left your life.
"My mother ruins it every year," you say it like a fact, because it is, "Without fail."
Caleb doesn't say anything for a long while. Just lays with you in the sand and listens to everything you say. Rubs his knuckles up and down your arm to soothe you. Your heart aches with every touch.
"I know you're not on good terms with her," he says, his voice so soft it makes you sick, "You don't have to tell me everything if you don't want to."
"No, I want to."
"But?"
"It's just hard to talk about. Think about. Everything."
He gives you another heart-stopping, lazy smile. "It's okay. We got all the time in the world to unpack it."
That's all it took.
When you turn your head to look at him again, you forget how to breathe for just a moment. His face is so close to yours your noses touch. And before you know it—your lips are too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Neither of you talk about the kiss.
It's never brought up in conversation and it's never mentioned to anyone. You don't dare say anything to Jeremiah. But he can tell by the way that your mood has lifted and how much more time you're spending with Caleb that something happened. He just doesn't push the issue or ask you about it. Just gives you a wary smile that says he knows where this is going. Deep down, you think you do too. But your rose-colored glasses overshadow everything. Makes all the red flags just look like flags. Normal and utterly unassuming.
By the time Father's Day comes, you took the day off. Which is normal for you. You always take holidays off. Even if they aren't really a holiday and especially not for you. It's when you take the rest of the following week off that rings an alarm. For as close as you are with Jeremiah and as close as you hold him and your friendship with him—you would rather he not see how bad things have gotten. Don't want him to see the utter mess you've devolved into.
What had started with relentless messages from your mother and father about what a horrible person you are became day two of not hearing from Caleb. You're used to consistency and routine. Things that are predictable. Things you can rely on to be true. Like the amount of time it takes between one message to the next. His work schedule and days off. But this is out of character for him. Caleb never goes two days without texting you.
Your chest aches so violently it feels like it's being cracked open from the inside. This is how it always starts. With panic seizing you so completely that you cannot breathe and your vision tunnels. At least that's what it feels like. You can never be too sure when it comes to things like this. The way your world tilts on its axis and everything feels like it's life or death. Like abandonment and rejection. The sobs that bubble up from your throat are violent. Tears sting your eyes and no matter how much you fight them or try to hold them back it's no use. Not when everything feels heavy and world ending. There's no strength in you to fight anything anymore. It's as if Caleb took that from you with his decision to leave you.
He didn't really. You know that somewhere deep down. That he didn't actually abandon you. But all you know is that you haven't heard from him in two days and with his absence he took all the joy you had in you. This is what dying feels like, you think. With your chest caving in and the ability to breathe coming harder and harder than it had the breath before. The room is spinning from your lack of oxygen. So, you crouch down with your head between your knees and try to take deep breaths that make your chest clench and ache and sting with the effort. Methods you learned in therapy that is supposed to help regulate your breathing and calm your racing heart. But nothing seems to be working anymore.
Jeremiah has called several times at this point. Your phone has vibrated ceaselessly for the last hour. All of them in the same beat as the one you set for Jeremiah. You know this isn't fair. That it isn't fair of you to shut down and shut him out when he's been nothing but wonderful to you. A true brother in every sense of the word. There's a voice in your head that says you should answer him. Let him know that you're at least alive or that you need him. He's pulled you out of these spirals before. Brought you back to yourself and helped you remember who and where you are. Made you remember that the world isn't ending and that he isn't a threat. That you are not a threat and you are safe with him. But guilt gnaws at you. Gnashing its terrible, sharpened teeth at your soul and heart until everything else aches too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How much time passed between then and now is unknown to you. All you know is that somewhere between the sobs that tore at your throat and when your breathing finally evened out—Jeremiah had come to your rescue once again. And with him came the guilt. Your head is in Caleb's lap now with his fingers combing through your hair. Soothing and comforting as a summer breeze. He smells like sunshine and wildflowers. He came with Jeremiah, you learn. Eyes staring straight ahead at Jeremiah who holds your face between his palms and looks at you with concern and worry creasing his brow. You hate yourself for this. That your mind goes into a state it cannot determine a threat and abandonment from someone being busy. You hate that it leads you to where you are now. Broken and disheveled with Jeremiah trying to make sure you're not a threat to your own safety.
And as he kisses your forehead with a gentle smile, you reassure him that you're okay. Tell him that he can go home and that you will be fine. Leaving you with only Caleb and the silence that stretches too long and heavy between you. You don't look at him. Can't after the embarrassing scene he had just witnessed.
"I'm sorry," you murmur with a voice that's too soft and too gentle, "you shouldn't have had come or see that. If you want to go home it's okay. I wouldn't blame you if you never wanted to speak to me again."
Words that don't really have a place in this situation but you've prepared anyways. You're too used to everyone you know leaving you in the past once you have an episode. Everyone is there for you until you exhibit a symptom of your mental illness. Such was life.
"Why would you think I don't want to talk to you anymore?" He coos, fingers still stroking through your hair, "I'm not goin' anywhere. I told you before—you're stuck with me now."
God, you hate the way his stupid boyish smile makes your stomach flip.
"Why would you want to stick around after that?"
"You really think I would abandon you after seeing you like that?"
Guilt crawls up your throat again.
"It's not just about today, Caleb. I'm fucking sick. Like mentally, okay?"
His brows crease as he tries to piece the puzzle of you together. "What do you mean you're sick? Because if you need to see a doctor, Marls and I know thi—"
You've stood up now. Began pacing in front of his with your fingers racking through your hair and undoing all the work he had done to comb through it.
"No, I don't need to see a doctor and I have a therapist. I just… I do this, like a lot, when something feels off. It's not fun for anyone that knows me. I can't count how many times Jeremiah's had to do what he did earlier. Kick down my door and make sure I'm not dead. Calm me down and make sure I'm safe. I just…" You're rambling now and you wish you could just shut the fuck up, but this happens every time you try to explain yourself to someone new, "You know the Disney faeries? Tinkerbell and shit?"
He nods, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees as he watches you pace.
"They're so small that they can only feel one emotion at a time, right? It's like that only it's also like my brain is a radio and every emotion is a song that plays at full blast." You continue to try to describe the hell that you live with everyday. "But the dial is broken and you can't turn it down. I'm never just happy or just mad or sad. I'm euphoric or manic or fucking livid or so depressed I want to die. It's fucking miserable, Caleb. And sometimes my brain gets things confused. It thinks that someone being busy is abandonment and a change in tone means they hate me."
"Okay," he says simply—calmly like you didn't t just tell him that you're fucking crazy, "What can I do to help lessen any of that? You need reassurance? I can do that. I'll start texting or calling you more and letting you know if I'm gonna to be busier than I thought. But I'm not goin' anywhere, Lyric. You're not the only crazy one."
You stop in your pacing. Eyes red-rimmed and puffy from all the crying you've done. It's your turn to furrow your brows and ask questions. Because he doesn't seem even a little mentally unstable. Caleb has always seemed like he has his shit together and his head right on his shoulders.
"What do you mean?" You venture softly.
Caleb scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. "I don't tell anyone, really. But I almost didn't graduate."
"Why not? I looked you up and your scores were the highest in your class."
"I failed my psych eval. But more than that—my final flight test we were going in the Tunnel. My plane went off course when I hit turbulence and I was running out of oxygen. But when I woke up in the infirmary? Everything was fine. Everything except for my memory."
