(No clue why I didn't get around to this earlier, I've had this in drafts for too long.)
Eight months ago, as you probably know, I predicted the current AI bubble would destroy artificial intelligence as a concept, focusing on the unrelenting slop and failures of AI, and on the near-universal backlash it receives whenever it rears its ugly, slop-ridden head.
As it turns out, I had completely failed to recognise the the political elements of this entire bubble. In retrospect, I should've recognised it a lot fucking earlier.
Between Baldur Bjarnason outlining the esoteric fascist elements at the heart of the AI bubble, AI slop's enthusiastic adoption by fascists of all stripes, Damien Williams' notes on authoritarians' love for gen-AI, Ashley Lynch calling AI slop inherently fascist, its become clear the outright fascist nature of AI has been staring me in the face the entire time.
With all that in mind, I'd like to expand on my previous piece with three additional predictions.
- AI-as-Fascism
Right off the bat, I expect AI as a concept will pick up a public perception of being inherently fascist, or at least a tool of fascism. Beyond all the ink spilled about AI's fascist nature, Donald Trump going all-in on AI has done plenty to link his administration with the tech, whether through making AI slop of deportees, or letting Elon Musk's AI Powered^tm^ Department Of Government Efficiency go to town on the federal gov.
Long-term, I expect this will hamper future attempts to start new AI bubbles/AI springs, as attempts to revive the tech get treated as morally equivalent to creating the Fourth Reich.
- The Wider Tech Industry
On a wider front, I expect the tech industry at large will pick up a similar stench of Eau de Fash as well. Whilst the tech industry has long enjoyed a perception of apoliticality (which James Allen-Robertson has talked about (spoilers for Devs BTW), their own heavy involvement with the Trump administration has done plenty to undermine that.
Between their sucking up to Trump and AI's own stench of Eau de Fash, I can see the public starting to view the tech industry at large as a Nazi bar once the bubble bursts. Silicon Valley's given 'em plenty of reason to do so.
- A Bone for The Humanities
Ending this off on a vaguely positive note, I suspect the bubble's burst will earn the humanities some begrudging respect once the dust settles - primarily through cannibalising a fair bit of the cultural cachet that STEM has built up over the decades.
On one front, the slop-nami has given us an absolute torrent of slop flooding the Internet, notable both in its uniquely inhuman shittiness, and in AI bros' breathless adoration of it. Given that, I expect programmers/software engineers will come to be viewed as inherently incapable of making anything on par with anyone who has taken up art as a hobby/profession, and incapable of understanding art with any sort of depth to it.
Additionally, I suspect a stereotype of programmers/software engineers being hostile to art/artists may form, thanks to the rather drastic toll this bubble has had on artists, and the ongoing rhetoric of "democratising art" that the bubble's given us. (The age-old "learn to code" adage may also come back to haunt them as well, if this comes to pass.)
On a wider front, the breathless "AI doomsday" criti-hype, more general over-the-top AI hype, and nonstop hallucination-induced mishaps will likely also contribute to making STEM as a discipline look out-of-touch with reality, making the humanities look grounded and reasonable by comparison as the public looks in confusion at AI bros' inability to recognise LLMs' shittiness for what it is.
Zitron just dropped his latest premium column