Let me start with a statement that shouldn't be too controversial: I do not like the glorified text-prediction we call "AI".

It was already hard enough to identify when videos and photos were manipulated to misinform people, now false information can spun wholecloth from nothing but a text prompt. 

In the rush to embrace AI at every turn, the big corporations are falling into the same bandwagon-jumping crazes that they have in the past; in many cases to serious harm and even death. 

Back before the dangers of radiation were properly understood, the inclusion of radium was being marketed in everything from toothpaste to water to pain cream. Look up the Radium Girls if you haven't already heard that story.

Or what about asbestos? Used in everything from fireproofing, which it admittedly was good at, to cigarette filters to fake snow. You ever watch the original Wizard of Oz? That's asbestos snow there.

Putting aside the massive environmental cost of AI 91裸聊视频� the amount of electricity being used to grind away building the large-language models is staggering let alone the physical materials used for the computers 91裸聊视频� already we have seen deaths involving it.  

A 14-year-old who built a "relationship" with an AI-powered character committed suicide after it encouraged him to do so, his parents are claiming in a lawsuit. 

The man who set off a makeshift bomb in a cybertruck in Las Vegas allegedly used AI to help plan his attack.

It is generally pointless to appeal to the humanity or morality of a faceless, uncaring corporation to slow down and think a bit longer about what they're doing. 

Instead I'd rather appeal to their mercenary nature and talk about how going full-tilt into AI is going to be costly for them. 

Going back to the example of Facebook, Meta recently scrubbed clean a number of AI accounts that had been active for a couple years without much notice, initialized right at the start of the AI boom. 

They finally attracted attention when parent company Meta just recently announced plans and a future vision where, 91裸聊视频淎I users will exist.91裸聊视频�

You read that right. If you hadn't had enough fun with bot accounts for scams or otherwise, buckle up and get ready for official ones created by the social media platforms themselves. 

Those fake users don't buy anything. 

Social media's business model is predicated on the selling of advertising space on their platforms, connecting products to customers most likely to click through and make a purchase given their activity on the platform. 

They also sell their users91裸聊视频� data to third-parties for inscrutable uses but that's a battle for another day. 

The ads that they sell aren't based on actual purchases, because guaranteeing a sale isn't feasible, but based on outreach and viewership, much like a newspaper's ads. 

The value of that advertising though, assumes it gets to real people with money to spend. 

There is a concept I've come across called the Dead Internet theory that has it's roots in conspiracy over governments manufacturing consent and controlling narratives.

Putting aside the conspiratoral origins, the theory has a point about how automated bots are consuming web traffic. Some are benign, like the back-up crawlers that archive websites, while others plant malware, or are like Google's AI Overview that summarizes other websites' content. 

Facebook's parent company Meta recently announced plans to have AI users, complete with bios and profile pictures that will generate and share their own content with actual people. 

AI doesn't buy things though, and fake users indistinguishable from real ones will only devalue the advertising on Facebook. 

Fictional users also don't care about things like facts or community, and don't donate or support those in need. 

It's not the worst outcome though. Maybe it will drive people back to things like forums and chat rooms that are more strict about registered users. 

Even moreso, real people pick up the local paper, and they can also know that real people are behind the stories inside, whether it's donating to the community, building businesses, or just someone in need of support. 

Brennan Phillips is a reporter with the Penticton Western News.