<
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/08/sirius-cybernetics-corporation/#chatterbox>
'The AI bubble is the new crypto bubble: you can tell because the same people
are behind it, and they're doing the same thing with AI as they did with crypto
– trying desperately to find a use case to cram it into, despite the yawning
indifference and outright hostility of the users:
<
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way>
This week on the excellent
Trashfuture podcast, the regulars – joined by
404
Media's Jason Koebler – have a hilarious – as in, I was wheezing with
laughter! – riff on this year's CES, where companies are demoing home
appliances with LLMs built in:
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-hgi6c-179b908
Why would you need a chatbot in your dishwasher? As it turns out, there's a
credulous, Poe's-law-grade
Forbes article that lays out the (incredibly
stupid) case for this (incredibly stupid) idea:
<
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/03/29/generative-ai-is-coming-to-your-home-appliances/>
As the Trashfuturians mapped out this new apex of the AI hype cycle, I found
myself thinking of a short story I wrote 15 years ago, satirizing the "Internet
of Things" hype we were mired in. It's called "The Brave Little Toaster", and
it was published in
MIT Tech Review's
TRSF anthology in 2011:
<
http://bestsf.net/trsf-the-best-new-science-fiction-technology-review-2011/>
The story was meant to poke fun at the preposterous IoT hype of the day, and I
recall thinking that creating a world of talking appliance was the height of
Philip K Dickist absurdism. Little did I dream that a decade and a half later,
the story would be even more relevant, thanks to AI pump-and-dumpers who
sweatily jammed chatbots into kitchen appliances.'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
