The Promise Of Easy Solutions Is An Easy Sell To The Uninformed
Back in the early days at Atari we had that original 2600 game machine. It had really clunky graphics. (Remember Pong?) Pixels were very large, big rectangles. A soccer ball would just be several rectangles pasted together moving around the screen. It was the way the machine worked, the hardware. It was just the way it was. But “marketing” (Warner Bros executives) didn’t understand the tech they were in charge of, and were always complaining about us game designers, demanding we “make the ball round.” They regularly threatened to replace us if we couldn’t make the ball round. They were convinced we were holding out on them. (A dozen or so of us were making the company millions. Originally we were not paid much at all, they were cleaning up.)
AI Sold As The Big Solution
In a Volts interview with David roberts, Cory Doctorow (“enshittification” guy) talked about how corporate executive types see AI as the solution to their big problem – employees. They see AI as the opportunity to finally not have to pay or deal with people anymore. (The capitalist ideology that businesses exist not to serve society, but to make them money, period.)
Cory Doctorow
… AI companies are much better at convincing your boss that they have a chatbot that can do your job than they are at making a chatbot that can actually do your job.
David Roberts
It is the AI industry’s one really transcendent, amazing, and admirable success.
Cory Doctorow
Oh, they’re pushing on an open door.
David Roberts
They have bamboozled the entire executive class.
Cory Doctorow
But they’re pushing on an open door. Bosses are insatiably horny for firing you and replacing you with a robot. And they will — literally, Elon Musk does demos of robots that can work in factories that are literally a guy in a robot suit. And bosses all over the world get, like, horrible priapism and have to go to the emergency room. Right? Like, this is — there is nothing easier than selling a boss on automation to fire workers.
I think about this when I see stories about these companies trying to force everyone to use AI… the employees see that it just doesn’t work like the promises say it does but the executives don’t really understand the tech they are in charge of so managers are all ordered to get it working so they can get rid of all the employees. The managerial/executive/finance class have all been sold by AI hype and are convinced the glory days are soon here.
Iran War Sold As The Big Solution
Now to the war on Iran. After Venezuela the Fox News hosts running the government thought they had the easy solution to the problem of the existence of “other cuntries.” In Venezuela they just “decapitated” the pesky leadership, stole the oil for themselves, and left the resulting mess behind. In a week. The Trump admin didn’t (care to) understand the world they are in charge of so they (literally) pulled the trigger thinking they could do the same with Iran.
Atari’s Collapse, AI And Iran
In 1983 Atari’s executives got sold on “ET” being the cure-all blockbuster game. They manufactured several million more ET game cartridges than there were game consoles to play them on and “stuffed the channels” – sold them to outlets all over the world for eventual sale to nonexistent customers. This ultimately collapsed the entire game industry.
I think Atari manufacturing more cartridges than there were game consoles to put them into is a metaphor for what’s happening with AI — and Iran.
PS Atari “marketing” was always bothering us to come up with a game titled, “Death From Above.”