How to Argue with an AI Booster (opens in new tab)

I think the "What is an AI Booster" could've been placed a bit more towards the top of the article to explain this was about business people and corporations and not actually about AI,

>So, an AI booster is not, in many cases, an actual fan of artificial intelligence. People like Simon Willison or Max Woolf who actually work with LLMs on a daily basis don’t see the need to repeatedly harass everybody, or talk down to them about their unwillingness to pledge allegiance to the graveyard smash of generative AI. In fact, the closer I’ve found somebody to actually building things with LLMs, the less likely they are to emphatically argue that I’m missing out by not doing so myself.

>No, the AI booster is symbolically aligned with generative AI. They are fans in the same way that somebody is a fan of a sports team, their houses emblazoned with every possible piece of tat they can find, their Sundays living and dying by the success of the team, except even fans of the Dallas Cowboys have a tighter grasp on reality.

While I tend towards the side of the article, I find it difficult to agree (or follow) many of the points it makes, which is a bit disappointing.

For example, under “ChatGPT Is So Popular”, they disagree with the premise then use the argument that “ChatGPT was marketed with lies” as evidence. The later argument is well researched, but is simply out of place, leaving nothing to support their disagreement.

I sympathise with most of Zitron's points but re the quips "You Just Don’t Get It" and "AI Is Powerful, and Getting Exponentially More Powerful", I think Zirton doesn't really get it. It's not that AI is getting exponentially more powerful but the hardware it runs on is in a steady Moore's law like way, which allows the AI to get better in more of a linear manner.

In the past, chess programs advanced steadily in ELO scores as a result or hardware improvements, allowing the year they would beat the human champion to be predicted fairly well and now AI is advancing in something like IQ in a similar way.

I'm not sure Zitron gets that - he acts like it's just some novel software we've come up with that isn't really that good. Which is sort of like thinking Computer-Chess 1975 was just some software that wasn't very good and so talking about computers getting better than humans was nonsense.

Of course Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997 and now chess computers are about ELO 3500 against about 2800 for the human champion. Similar will probably happen in AI.

It can't be mere coincidence that there's a significant overlap between crypto bros and AI boosters in my social circles.

I'm not an AI booster as much as I am an AI fatalist. Assuming that AI has short term profit potential for the entrenched ruling class, this genie is not going back in the bottle. You might as well get used to it.