Will GenAI Survive Capitalism?
(draft) Other useful technologies haven't fared so well.
Insane amounts of money are chasing Generative AI,
The White House's new AI policy recently gave them free rein to do as they wish.
Capitalism has a way of messing up good things.
We've seen this show before.
Multiple Promising Technologies Were Warped by Capitalism
I fear the outcomes.
When too much money chases initially good ideas, bad things often happen.
The Commons loses. We lose.
Capitalism, at least in its current flavor, is greedy and insatiable.
Whether we can fix Capitalism is a subject for future posts.
OpenAI's flight
Remember the bizarre weekend in November 2023 when OpenAI's board fired Sam Altman, then everyone resigned, then he was rehired and the board was fired? Weird, wasn't it? Oh, but before he was rehired, Microsoft hired him! Then not. The whole thing was a surreal, real-time soap opera, played out largely in the public sphere.
My interpretation of that weekend was that OpenAI was shaking off its higher purpose, and settling in to capitalism. Sort of like an insect, snake or crab shedding the carapace or skin it had outgrown, except not that positive. Later, OpenAI opted to become a for-profit company.
The Crazy Weekend wasn't the only sign of this shedding: Earlier, many of the early OpenAI staffers who believed in the company's higher calling quit, founding Anthropic, which still seems to hew to the open mission. In the face of the temptations I'm describing, this deserves extra praise.
#OpenAI, #critiquesofcapitalism, #innovation, #Anthropic,
This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.