For a while in the early part of this century, the hype was everywhere. A new world!
The American investor and venture capitalist, John Doerr speculated that it would be more important than the Internet. Steve Jobs was quoted as saying that it was “as big a deal as the PC.” It would revolutionize the Post Office, law enforcement, urban travel and transportation. In the end, only 140,000 units were sold during the lifetime of the product, 2002 to 2020.
Steve Jobs later said it “sucked,” and South Park devoted an episode to making fun of the hype around the product when it was released. What was it?
The Segway.
I was about to write that we can “only imagine” what the hype would have been like if investors had spent $1.6 trillion dollars (so far) on R & D for the Segway and needed to recoup their losses. But we don’t need to imagine, we know. We’re living through it. Or at least enduring it. For now.
With AI, the venture capital class is so desperate to recoup losses on their $1.6 trillion dollar bad bet, on something that might have a few practical brute force applications, that they’re willing to move fast and break everything, including valuation metrics and gainful employment, while they drown us in AI “slop” that sluices bad faith and misinformation like manure into a hog pen lagoon.
Meanwhile, as they race to make it the next big thing, they foul the air, destroy the landscape and suck up all the water.
The data centers they’re trying to build and the hording of DRAM and NAND memory chips have caused a stratospheric spike in prices.
Spot prices for DRAM chips, according to Bloomberg, have jumped 700% recently. And, speaking of data, the high cost and scarcity of chips is beginning to have an impact on laboratories. All this for something that “hallucinates” and outright lies.
The profligate waste reminds me of Orwell’s “floating fortresses” in 1984, which are scrapped as obsolete even before they become operational, or Milo Mindbinder in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 cornering the market on Egyptian cotton just as the bottom fell out. To recoup his costs, Milo went so far as to serve chocolate covered cotton in the mess halls, and he was insulted that the men wouldn’t eat it.
“They’ve got to eat it!” Milo says.
“It’ll make them sick,” Yossarian replies, “why don’t you eat it?”
“I did,” says Milo, “and it made me sick.”
In both of the above (albeit fictional) cases, to cry foul or point out that the emperor has no clothes (or, say, that cotton is indigestible) would be unpatriotic.
In the early part of his century, Segway Personal Transport only made up 1.5% of total company profit. The Segway’s learning curve and need to balance led to notable accidents involving Usain Bolt, George W. Bush, Ellen DeGeneres, Ian Healy, and Segway Inc. previous owner Jimi Heselden [links from Wikipedia]. While the Segway has remained popular for security and tourism, its electric scooters have been more popular for personal mobility.
Maybe Segway lacked boldness, and they should have skipped the pesky, fickle human user altogether, a lesson that AI investors may have taken too much to heart.
A $1.6 trillion dollar AI bet feels like another memory from earlier in this century: banks and investment firms in 2007 and 08 that were deemed “too big to fail.” Will we spend the remainder of the 2020’s paying off the AI bailout?
Will there be anyone able to do that work?
James McCrone’s stories pose questions about the nature of power, the choices we make and the lessons we don’t learn.
He’s the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. His current novel, Witness Tree, is out on submission.
All books are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon.
eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.
James is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, and he’s the current president of the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime. He has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and he now lives and writes in Philadelphia, PA.
For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And you can also follow me on Substack!
Some of his short stories are available FREE online. Links are HERE toward the bottom of the page.
Chosen Words - James McCrone 