LLMs are real, AI is fake
The author critiques the AI industry's corporate culture, arguing that the hype surrounding AI capabilities is often manufactured to secure investment. It suggests that industry insiders are unreliable narrators who use fear-mongering about existential risks to inflate their company valuations.
Why it matters
Highlights the skepticism surrounding AI industry marketing and the potential disconnect between corporate narratives and actual technological capabilities.
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Once you understand the corporate culture of AI "hyperscalers" consists primarily of everyone cooking their brains by locking themselves in the bathroom, holding flashlights under their chins, and saying "Aaaaaaaaaay Eyeeeeeee" until they wet themselves in terror, a lot of things snap into focus:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/ayyyyyy-eyeeeee/
It explains how a company can simultaneously be staffing up an enterprise sales division while also constantly freaking out at the thought that its product has "a 10% chance of ending humanity":
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-09-11/is-there-really-10-chance-ai-could-kill-us-all
Given that AI insiders have mostly cooked their brains in this fashion, it behooves us all to treat these people as unreliable narrators of their own products' capabilities. Remember: every time you repeat a story about how awfully, terribly dangerous their products are, you help them raise more investment capital, which is a key input for their business (hooking up statistical engines to money-furnaces):
https://peoples-things.ghost.io/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype/
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