Besides everything mentioned already here, I put a lot of blame squarely on the AI Cargo Cult of LLM outsourcing meatspace to hallucinating chatbots. If you told me that we’d be letting them run the global economy, I’d laugh in your face, but here we are, and the business idiots who drive these giga corps are doing exactly that and forcing them on everyone.
I refuse to budge. I like my technology to be efficient, quiet (no ads), reliable (no hallucinating, personality-glazing bots), and most importantly I like it to work for me and serve a purpose to solve problems. I have no interest in “solutions” in search of problems they themselves create in order to sell you a subscription. Widespread use of LLMs has diminished societal intelligence and problem-solving skillsets in measurable ways in just a short time span. Further, they are not profitable companies and their inevitable collapse may ruin not just the environment but also our financial futures with all the cash being shoveled into their fires.
I know that at the time of this posting I’ll be getting push-back from boosters for this staunch opposition, but history as it unfolds will prove me right, along with those who likewise see what’s going on and haven’t had their critical thinking skills snatched away by LLMs and social media addictions.
If you’d like to see the global IQ increase, I’d recommend unplugging from all of that, and gently telling others around you to experiment doing the same, even as a trial period. Not everyone will be able to quit cold-turkey. The “AI future” is not inevitable, in fact with token-based pricing models collapsing as enterprises balk at the cost with little to show for it, the unprofitable startups are making noises to slash prices on services they already can’t afford to provide. They can keep their LLMs, I’ll keep my library card and my wits, and when there’s a power outage, I’ll still know how to survive without asking Claude what to do next.