Meet the Sad Wives of AI

My father was an EE and applied physics professor at Stanford when Silicon Valley was still someplace down there where he went to consult - it didn't encompass Stanford, let alone SF. This sounds like my parents' typical dinner party. The men couldn't help talking about what they were working on. But they were really working on things, developing new technology that led to patents and real-world outcomes, and they were making things, not blindly destroying the environment or eliminating human jobs. They would have been horrified if they'd known their intellectual fervor was going to come to this assininity. It was also the 60s and 70s. A lot of our moms were on Valium. Some of them got divorced. Sounds like you desperately need a revolution.

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I can relate. My partner is creating an intelligence platform for an industry that is usually late in adopting new technology. He has been working on this latest transition for over 3 years. He demo's his product to me every 3 months or so. It is interesting but I still do not grasp what is 'under the hood'. He has in-house (not cloud) versions he uses of different AI tools/models. The urgency is always present - what can he achieve today in the way of a new feature or new workflow. I am struggling. I was laid off over 6 months ago and I feel constant panic because I am not working and already the gap is widening to where I may no longer be considered a good candidate for jobs. It is angering and depressing all at the same time. The one good thing is he has recently picked up an old hobby again which gets him partially out of the AI headspace. But even the hobby, photography, is tainted with... AI. I wish I didn't feel that the tool is 'dumbing down' most people though. As I saw yesterday, even the tool Claude has stated it did not 'think' its use as part of Maven in the selection of Iranian bombing targets was an appropriate use and humans just rubber stamped their approval. Just UGH.

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AI—and all the energy and resources it takes to run it—depend upon Earth and Air,Fire and Water. You know what I mean—essential elements, limited resources, energy from Mother Earth and her kids. There is no “cloud”—there are machines, mad of earth stuff, running on earth energy. Soo—there are limits. A reckoning of some kind will come. I am 82–yes, i use AI—various ones-s-carefully. I know there are actual physical limits to their expansion. No false gods here.. useful. Exciting—and eventually—limited.

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I, personally, cannot wait for the AI bubble to pop so at the very least whatever remains should, ideally, be actually helpful for society like what (arguably) happened post-dot com bubble.

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