Morally corrupt innovations are the easiest innovations to create – It’s the lazy approach with dangerous consequences
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Editorial Retort
Morally corrupt innovations are the easiest innovations to create – It’s the lazy approach with dangerous consequences
If we are to sum up the stories I shared this week alone on LinkedIn, I can confidently state that we live in a systematically corrupt era. An era where your right to owning your creation (aka copyright), or any other intellectual property, means nothing; your human right for privacy is expendable; your right of knowledge acquisition from trusted sources, as opposed to from whirlpools of misinformation and clickbait-driven podcasts and media content, is irrelevant; your ethical and environmental concerns are at the bottom of the list of priorities by the status quo, despite claiming otherwise.
In simple terms, their actions speak louder than words and promises. Their actions show clearly that moral corruption is their current economic priority – an economy built on shortcuts, cutting corners, and breaking the law. All, of course, masqueraded as “a new era” of something or other, ensuring “efficiency” or “cutting costs” as we see with DOGE; and of course, my favourite, “making the world a better place” 🤔
This is pretty much a typical approach of maximising profits the lazy way, which does not involve increasing revenue, but decreasing costs, no matter how damaging it is.
For example, a study from the London School of Economics (LSE) has shown that the austerity measures introduced by the UK Conservative-led government in 2010 had severe consequences for the British population, where spending cuts cost the average person nearly half a year in life expectancy between 2010 and 2019. These austerity measures not only widened regional disparities in life expectancy across the UK but also resulted in about 190,000 excess deaths, or a 3% increase in mortality rates, from 2010 to 2019, including many “deaths of despair”. This was peddled as “necessary” by the government to “ensure economic growth”. Have a look at the UK’s economic position today. Did it work? Was it worth it?
Another more recent example, while the Biden administration kept on boasting about the US economy growing at the highest rate, around 23 out of every 10,000 Americans – totalling 771,480 people – experienced homelessness in January 2024 according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). I’m sorry, but what kind of economic growth is this?
Perhaps we should ask: economic growth for whom? Certainly not for the homeless, as well as countless other families who descended deep into poverty through no fault of their own. And, I’m sure you will agree with me, the 190,000 poor souls who died did not benefit from “economic growth” measures.
In my world of deeptech and AI, we entered an era of stealing people’s work, pretending that it is all “available on the open web”, which is the new excuse peddled by many of my counterparts.
Open web does not mean that its content belongs to nobody. I’m sharing my content for free, but it does not mean I’m giving away my ownership of my content. In fact, I have the legal right to take you to court if you use my content without my consent. And bloody rightly so. I made it, so I own it. Period!
Let’s call a spade a spade. Copyright was never a problem in building text-based AI models. My previous company built language models in the early 2010s, and we had no issues. Yes, we had to make a few agreements with the copyright owners. So what? It’s called business, where you make agreements all the time with many stakeholders 🤷
But suddenly, today, such agreements stifle innovation. According to whom? Ask yourself, who actually benefits from tearing up these agreements? Who benefits from deregulation? This has nothing to do with replacing jobs or that AI models have the “intelligence” to replace creative people. They don’t. This has everything to do with the fact that AI model providers are haemorrhaging cash and are loss-making. So instead of figuring out improved business models to generate more revenue, they decided to go the easy (or lazy) way of cutting corners.
To put things into context, we can apply the same hugwash deregulation statements in any other business area. Oh no, food safety stifles innovation, car safety stifles innovation, you owning your home stifles innovation, speed limits stifle fun-driving (according to the right-winger radio host Nick Ferrari – yes, he said it live on the radio). I hope you get the picture. It is absurd but also dangerous.
The issue I see with the whole regulation debate is a complete lack of context from politicians and decision-makers. Perhaps it is by design?
There needs to be more granular discussions about the role of regulations in innovation because I’m seeing far too many people complain about how “regulations stifle innovation” without providing any actual examples. When I ask them directly to provide me with evidence of any specific regulations that stifled innovation or tech progress, they fail every single time. Or, at best, they provide me with some ChatGPT-generated nonsense – yes, I can tell 🫠
It is critically important to understand that organisations need to look at specific markets where AI is applied. If you deploy AI in biotech and healthcare, for example, there are more stringent regulations for obvious reasons than, say, AI-powered NPCs in games, or Chatbots. So it is vital that decision makers put things into perspective and not just say “all regulation is good” or “all regulation is bad”. This is the approach that we advised the ex-UK government to adopt, which identified loopholes within specific departments and their related sectors. No one talked about “deregulating” anything because it made no sense.
Another critical point to highlight is that when people talk about “AI”, they really think generative AI (GenAI). I know the media and techbros tend to peddle it as the crème de la crème of AI. It is not! GenAI models are just one approach out of many. The AI universe is vast, and the idea that we start deregulating anything that stands in its way is not only ludicrous but also dangerous. Let me tell you what really stands in the way of our innovative AI future: a lack of innovation!
Today’s world appears to be prioritising cutting corners rather than investing in new ideas and new approaches to generative AI models. Innovation is literally all about creativity, which is the key differentiator between humans and AI. No wonder the AI bros and their puppet governments want to convince you that human creativity is meaningless. They just don’t want to spend the money on anything that proves how shit their current approach is.
Perhaps this Lazy AI approach is just a cover-up for this fact. Or they just cannot be bothered and are too busy counting the cash flushed down towards them by investors, and gullible techbros and decision makers.
The robotic chickens are coming home to roost, and we are all paying the price for it.
Podcast: Guest Episode
Rachel Donald: Why Earth is in Crisis
Episode supported by: Ground News
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Tim El-Sheikh and Rachel Donald discuss the multifaceted crisis facing our planet, exploring the roles of capitalism, tech, media, and individual responsibility. Episode summary, timestamps and citations